By: Ian Robinette
The main idea of ranked-choice voting is a voting system where people will be able to rank the candidates and then submit a ballot of the candidates ranked by the voter’s opinion. In some forms of ranked-choice voting, voters can only rank three candidates while in other they can rank all the candidates. No single type of ranked-choice voting is being widely used. However, The state of Maine is using ranked-choice voting as well as many other cities including San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, and, Santa Fe. Ranked-choice voting is better than the current electoral process because it gives more in-depth results than the current system. Ranked-choice voting is designed to make the most people happy, it is essentially the utilitarian voting system.
The way the system works now is if someone votes for a candidate and the candidate drops out, the system assumes that they wouldn’t vote for a different candidate and their vote is then wasted. Also, if a voter prefers two or more candidates over others, this is ignored, the system only allows one choice, which is heavily flawed. This is an issue because people know that their vote could be wasted so they worry about wasting their vote on a candidate they personally like but isn’t as popular as the other candidates, so they end up not voting for which candidate they want, but the candidate they think is more popular, resulting in an inaccurate and unfair election.
Another issue we still face today is that most people aren’t far left, or far-right, but they are actually in-between the parties. For instance, 70% of Americans support increased gun control, however, gun control is advertised as a democratic ideal and the common interest of the public. but ranked-choice voting hopes to fix it. When comparing two candidates, the candidate that is less extreme will be more appealing to the average voter, thus they will have the advantage. They won’t win in a standard election, because they won’t make it through the primaries were only registered democrats and republicans are allowed to vote. The majority of registered democrats and republicans are less likely to vote for a candidate of an opposing party or someone they don’t think honors the ideals of the rest of the party, leading to swing-voter candidates rarely making it through the election. Congress only represents democratic and republican values even though by only representing republicans and democrats they are ignoring the majority of the population, and betraying their people.
Now for some candidates, money will always haunt them. Many candidates regardless if they were popular or favorable have dropped out of elections because they couldn’t afford to continue funding their campaigns. This was a frequent issue during the 2020 election, where Pete Buttigieg, Kamala harris popular candidates were forced to leave the election because they couldn’t afford to keep their campaigns going, leaving the election to the richer candidates. Nonetheless, the advantage will be with the candidate who is less left or right motivated and who reflects the ideals of the people.
With ranked-choice voting, someone can use their first vote for who they think will win and use their second vote for their favorite candidate. This way the results can be analyzed and it can see how many people have a common second or third choice, mean it wouldn’t be entirely based on the voters’ first choice. When comparing two candidates, the candidate that is more in the middle and less left or right will have an advantage. They won’t win in the current system because candidates that represent the people don’t make it through the primary elections. In the primaries only registered democrats and republicans are allowed to vote. So someone who represents the people who are in the middle, and id they aren’t extremely democratic or republican won’t survive the primaries.
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