Earlier this month we had municipal elections in Minneapolis. Although I have sometimes voted early or by mail, I prefer voting in person on election day. It helps that my polling place is so close to home that it would take longer to drive there and find parking than just to walk. But I really like exercising this privilege alongside my neighbors. Minneapolis and St. Paul both have ranked choice voting—something I wish we had for all elections.
Most elections in the United States let you cast one vote for each office. The ballot for the general election lists the candidates who won their respective primary elections. Many voters don’t bother to vote in the primary. As a result, the winners reflect the preferences of the party faithful rather than the average voter. So in the general election the choices tend to one extreme or the other—not the middle where most voters are.
How ranked choice voting works
With ranked choice voting, everyone gets a first, second and third choice. The first tabulation counts the first-choice votes. If no candidate wins 50% or more of the votes, those with too few votes to have any possibility of winning are eliminated. The second tabulation counts the second-choice vote of anyone who voted for them. If there’s still no candidate with 50% or more of the votes, there’s a third tabulation. Counting can take a little longer than for traditional voting, so we may not know who won until the next day or later that week.
Ranked choice voting essentially combines primary and general elections. Instead of a few candidates representing the extremes, you’ll have quite an array. Naturally it takes some work to learn about eight, ten, or more candidates. But you have better choices. For example, if your favorite candidate has little hope of winning, voting for them is not throwing away your vote. If your first choice vote doesn’t count, your second choice will. You may not get your top candidate, but you’re likely to get someone you like better than the others. It also provides more nuanced information to the winning candidate: they can adopt ideas from candidates who attracted large minority support.
Favoring moderates
Because most voters are somewhere in the middle, having more of us participate means we end up electing more moderate officials. Also, more of us feel some sense of ownership—maybe my first choice didn’t win, but my second or third choice did.
I’ve watched with disgust as elected officials publicly espouse patently absurd positions, reversing themselves to keep up with the latest whim. Some have given in to threats of being “primaried”—that is, defeated in their next election by a more extreme candidate. It’s no accident that Sen. Murkowski stands her ground when few others do. Like the Twin Cities, Alaska uses ranked choice voting. Sen. Murkowski can’t be primaried because Alaska doesn’t have primaries.
It seems to me that broader use of ranked choice voting would put more representative candidates in office. They’d be less vulnerable to intimidation from party leaders and extremists. And maybe we’d have less polarization of our political discourse.