Graphic by Yujin Kim ’23
In a letter dating back to October 2, 1780, John Adams wrote to the First Marshal of Massachusetts,
Jonathan Jackson: “There is nothing I dread so much, as a Division of the Republic into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting Measures in opposition to each other.”
Of course, Adams was not the only Framer who warned against our current two-party system. In his farewell address, Washington famously called it a “frightful despotism,” and one that would be “sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension.” Alas, we find ourselves in such a system today — we’ve seen the obstruction of democracy on January 6, and now polarization has seemingly
become a hallmark of our democratic system. If America is to escape this partisan nightmare, it must consider ranked-choice voting in its elections.
Currently, the United States uses an Electoral College in presidential elections — 538 electors distributed across all 50 states based on population, typically vote for either the Democratic or Republican candidate. The candidate who reaches the magic number of 270 votes wins the election.
The glaring problem with the system is that the votes of certain states’ residents are far more valuable than others. California, worth 55 electoral votes, is more desirable to presidential candidates than Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey combined. This inevitably leads to cases where candidates win the election despite not holding the popular vote. The most recent examples being Bush’s victory over Gore
in 2000 and Trump’s victory over Clinton in 2016. In short, we end up electing presidents who most people do not want in office.
An alternative ranked choice voting system (RCV) is neither complicated nor revolutionary – many of the
world’s leading democracies, from New Zealand and Australia to the parliament of the United Kingdom, have already adopted this system. There are also instances within the country where RCV is used in
elections — from cities such as Minneapolis and San Francisco to the state of Maine. Even the Academy Awards use RCV to determine winners.
The standard RCV system is strikingly simple. If there are four candidates in an election, the system begins with voters selecting candidates in order of preference, one being their favorite and four being their least preferred. A candidate wins immediately after the first round of voting if they win a majority of the votes.
However, if no single candidate in the first round manages to win more than half the votes, the voters who put the candidate with the fewest votes as their first choice have their votes cast for their second
choice candidate, effectively distributing their votes. This process continues until one of the four candidates manages to win a majority of the votes.
One of the most important ways in which America’s democracy would benefit from ranked choice voting is the potential to have more than just the Democratic and Republican parties — one where the scope of the values of parties accurately reflects the true beliefs of citizens.
Currently, most Americans who vote for either Democratic or Republican candidates likely do not agree with all of the candidates’ policies, but their votes do not reflect this. With RCV, citizens can be hopeful
that through exercising their Constitutional right, they have contributed to what they believe to be a better nation, not to the marginally better of two undesirable outcomes.
Candidates would be able to focus on highlighting the attractiveness of their policies rather than smearing those of their opponent. It encourages higher voter turnout, not only by clearing sludge for the voters by only requiring them to head to the polls once but ensuring that their votes don’t go to waste.
A common point of contention with RCV is the confusion that it could create for voters and the education the implementation would require. Educating the United States’s schoolchildren on RCV would likely take no more effort than explaining the current Electoral College system.
Another common point of contention is RCV’s seeming violation of the “One Person, One Vote” rule. If voting “multiple times” is a result of the voters’ first-choice candidate being eliminated, RCV would still be more equitable than the current state-based divide in influence within the “Winner Takes All” system.
As globally consequential issues such as climate change become increasingly urgent, so does the need for the UnitedStates to adopt a voting system that focuses more on building a better future by providing more options to the American people. The United States is among the most influential of all democracies across the globe, and through adopting RCV, we can ensure it doesn’t also become one of the least democratic ones.
