Five states and Washington, D.C. have referendums next month that could profoundly change—and pervert—the way each conducts elections.
Normally, a candidate who wins the most votes wins the election. But such a sensible, traditional, straightforward and democratic approach is under assault from a system called “ranked choice voting.” Maine and Alaska have adopted it, as have a number of municipalities, such as San Francisco and Minneapolis.
This episode of What’s Ahead describes how this scheme works and leads to voter confusion and weird, undemocratic results. In Maine, for instance, a Democratic Party candidate for Congress was declared the winner, even though he received fewer votes than his Republican opponent.
These referendums should be rejected. Ranked choice voting is a bad choice.