Ranked Choice Voting

A Saner Democracy?

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I’m not a fan of most of the popular suggestions for improving western democracy. But ranked choice voting (RCV) has potential for finding a more responsive government.

In RCV, the voter gets to rank his/her preferences on the ballot. The first preference gets a #1, the second gets a #2, etc. When the votes are counted, the candidate with the lowest #1 votes is dropped from the contenders. Then those ballots are cast towards their #2 choice. The The ballots are recounted. The lowest number is dropped in the next round of counting and the votes are recast. This process repeats until one candidate gets 50%+1 of the votes.

The main reason for RCV is to raise democratic legitimacy. By “legitimacy,” I mean the public accepts the result of the election and allows the victors to govern until their term is over. This is part of the deal living in a civil society. We accept that some decisions will not be in our favor, and we might not like our political leaders. In exchange, we get peace and order. Society works better when people are not violently protesting in the street, which is what happens when the government is seen as “illegitimate.”

In Canada, our general elections are done by the first-past-the-post (FPTP) counting, a tradition we inherited from the early UK parliament of 1688. The USA also…