A new form of voting could more faithfully represent the will of voters.
The American voting system has come under intense scrutiny in the past years for issues like the reliability of mail-in ballots, miscounted votes, and voter suppression. However, some state legislatures are now re-thinking not just the way of processing votes, but the manner in which votes are cast. A new, more detailed way of casting ballots may result in a more accurate representation of which candidates voters truly support: a ranked-choice voting system.
Already largely adopted in Maine, a ranked-choice voting system consists of voters ranking their preferred candidates in order of their first position being most preferred, then second, and so on. First-place votes are counted first, but if no candidate wins the majority of the vote, first-place votes are discarded and second-place votes are counted, going down the ranks until one candidate gets over fifty percent of the vote. According to FairVote, an organization that advocates for it, ranked-choice voting provides an incentive for candidates to be more civil and appeal to voters outside their base.
Vicki Hiatt, chairwoman of the Kansas Democratic Party, explained the dilemma of current voters: “Sometimes they’re voting for the lesser of two evils. So most people have said to me: ‘This is great. Now I can vote for who I really want.’” Critics of ranked-choice voting have claimed that it presents intricacies that may prove unpredictable and exploitable. Adrienne Adams, a member of the New York City Council, has claimed that “Ranked-choice voting has the potential to erode the voting power that we’ve worked so hard for.”
In Maine, a heated senate election took place under the ranked-choice voting system between incumbent Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Sara Gideon. Despite her eventual victory, the ranked-choice system threatened Senator Collins’ chances. The New York Times projected that neither Senator Collins nor Ms. Gideon would claim fifty percent of the vote, due to a third candidate, independent progressive Lisa Savage. Ms. Savage encouraged her supporters to vote for Ms. Gideon as their second choice, putting Senator Collins at a stark disadvantage should the first-choice votes not yield a definitive winner. Ultimately Senator Collins did win over fifty percent of the first-choice votes. Her situation serves as a prime example of what an election under the ranked-choice voting system could look like.
While ranked-choice voting offers a more specific method of measuring voter support, its drawbacks are unpredictable. According to Sarah John, a researcher at the University of Virginia, “It will take some time for researchers to come to definitive answers about its effects. Until then, the jury is still out, as it were, on whether ranked-choice voting will improve or hurt turnout and descriptive representation.” While it has already been adopted in other countries such as Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, many are uncertain how well ranked-choice voting will work in the U.S. Nevertheless, it offers an intriguing alternative to the troubles of the current system.
