System #7: Ranked Choice Voting

America's political system is gridlocked. While we used to have meaningful compromise to help America adapt to life as we progressed, we've gotten smarter lately. We've finally figured out that the ultimate result of our two party system doesn't go to the team that can compromise the most or best, but the team that can can gain the majority. With the majority...who needs compromise? This thinking leads to more radicalization of our rhetoric and policies, and necessitates a greater a greater radicalization of our political discussions and representation. To win this "war" you need to dehumanize your opponents to cement your standings. Dehumanizing opponents ALWAYS leads to radicalization. Running a country shouldn't involve war or division, but should lean towards compassion, understanding, and representation. The best way to make our neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries the best that they can be is to open the doors to everyone's opinions so that they can be heard, understood, and voted on. Our two party system instead alienates the conversation as if EVERY issue was binary.

Dehumanizing opponents ALWAYS leads to radicalization

The Problem

With our current two and a half party system, we have Democrats versus Republicans and if you don't vote for one, you are (whether you wanted to or not) voting for the other. Even if you wanted to vote for a 3rd party, which many people have, they can never gain traction because the path to getting traction is to steal votes away from the closest party...which means the opposing party will win until a balance is formed again. This snaps everyone's votes back to not choosing who they believe in, agree with, or trust to run our government, but only the lesser of two evils.

The Solution

Since a binary systems' stability is self perpetuating within our current voting structure, the only way to change the outcomes is to change the voting system. To eliminate the stranglehold of our two party system you can allow voters to rank the candidates instead of just choosing one. This system is called Ranked Choice Voting and results in a more nuanced representation of the overall population and allows for amazing things to happen. First off, it allows new parties to enter the arena and actually compete with the titans of today's political landscape. Since our democracy is majority based, more parties means more collaboration. More collaboration can lead to two things, larger and larger bills (which our binary system has led us to) or smaller and smaller bills which is what I believe will be the result. Once you have, for instance, 7 parties, you can't have 1 bill represent everyone's additions because every addition would have to be agreed to by the majority made up of those different parties. Instead, we'll fall back to the least common denominator, which, for you non-math geeks out there, means that we'll start to see bills that have the smallest footprint and largest representation. Doesn't that sound like what should already have been happening?

How does it work?

Step #1 - Rank - As a voter, you go to a ballot box like usual and you're presented with a list of candidates, like usual. This time, instead of only bubbling in one candidate, you're presented with a grid. The candidates, like usual line the left side, with numerous bubbles following their names indicating their possible rankings. You're job is to rank them from favorite, to least favorite. You don't NEED to rank all of them, but the ones you do rank, need to be in order from first to last.

Step #2 - Tally - Once the votes come in, each ranking is assign a point, and all the rankings are tallied and candidates are ranked based on their score.

Step #3 - Elimination Rounds - Once all the ballots are tallied, the bottom candidates are eliminated until some one gets a majority. The votes from the eliminated candidates roll-over to their second choices (or next choices if later rounds). This keeps happening until a winner is declared.

Step #4 - Victory declared - after a candidate collects a majority, victory is declared.

Benefits

Ranked Choice Voting has many benefits including:

• Cheap - This system is compatible with our current voting technology. It also makes runoff elections unnecessary because you have all the data from the initial vote and the rounds happen automatically. This, alone can save millions of taxpayer dollars AND increase representation since runoff elections frequently attract less voters than initial elections.
• Nuanced representation - With Ranked Choice Voting, you, as an individual get your voice heard through your nuanced alignment with candidates. This breaks the radicalization of our politics and fosters a broader understanding of other points of view.
• Increased representation - Allowing individuals to vote with their hearts and values instead of a lesser of two evils mentality can allow new smaller parties to join the fray which will lead to greater representation AND, by necessity, greater collaboration amongst elected officials. This, literally, makes every vote count.

Ranked Choice Voting Now

With Maine leading the way, Alaska and Hawaii following close behind with districts in California and New York. Ranked Choice Voting is on the rise across America. As of this writing, at least 14 states will be considering bills that call for the implementation of Ranked Choice Voting!

Conclusion

Ranked Choice Voting has a chance to finally give the people of America back the power over their government. With people seeing change in their government, and with them seeing that people can be elected to provide change, the political culture of America will change to accommodate. No longer will people check out of politics, or waging war against one another. We will once again have the hope of becoming a country of engaged citizens.

"A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny"
- Thomas Jefferson