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Nov 02, 2024

Screw voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’ – The Campus

Too many of America’s systems are broken or failing. The one in the most desperate need of change is the way we vote. Our political organizations are choked with polarization and campaign cycles

Too many of America’s systems are broken or failing. The one in the most desperate need of change is the way we vote. Our political organizations are choked with polarization and campaign cycles hammer dividing lines between neighbors. Not to mention the fact that our elections result in candidates who don’t win the popular vote — notably George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election and Donald Trump in 2016. Our political system leaves voters feeling like our voices are not being heard. American politics are now dominated by the incredibly backward approach of hating the other side more than you like your own.The problems that surround voting are our own creation. Years of nothing but Republican versus Democrat politics have left third-party candidates in the dust, no matter how strong their policy positions. Voters feel like voting for third-party candidates will waste their votes, even if those candidates would be supported by many voters.Ranked-choice voting could improve the way we select our representatives, lead to more third-party representation and work to heal some of the party divides our current voting system has scarred across America.The U.S. government and the vast majority of states currently use the plurality system in voting, which means that the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. The biggest weakness of this system is that it doesn’t matter if that candidate actually won the majority of the vote.In contrast, in an election using ranked-choice voting, the candidate with the majority of first-choice votes wins. In the case that no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, a new counting process starts where the candidate who performed the worst is removed from the race, and their voter’s votes are moved to their second-choice pick.In this system, even if you rank a losing candidate as your first choice, and the candidate is eliminated, then your vote still counts; it is just shifted to your second-choice candidate. That process continues until there is a candidate who has the majority of votes and thus win the election. This means that the winning candidate always ends up with the majority of votes — even if some voters picked them as their second or third choice. Picking only one candidate decreases the amount of control we have over the system that should allow us to share our voice.Ranked-choice voting saves time and money across the board, from the local to the federal level, by removing the need for runoff elections. Runoff elections are not only quite costly but also have less representation because they tend to have low and unbalanced turnout, resulting in the selection of candidates who may not reflect voter preferences.With ranked-choice voting, voters do not have to worry about strategically voting for candidates in an attempt to not throw away their vote. And more candidates will run because they won’t worry about splitting the party vote; for example, in the 2016 presidential election, Michael Bloomberg considered running but decided not to because of the possibility that he might split the Democratic vote with Hillary Clinton.A much-needed benefit of ranked-choice voting is that it encourages candidates to abandon the nothing-but-negative campaign tactics we have been subjected to nonstop. Under ranked-choice voting systems, candidates not only need the first-choice support of their supporters but also the second- and third-choice support from voters who prefer other candidates, meaning they must seek widespread support.While it might seem foolish to attempt to reform the basis of America’s democracy, we need change and, more importantly, a voice. We should support ranked-choice voting as a way to better incorporate the people’s input, promote more than just two candidates, and remove negativity around campaigns and voting.