Maine Ranked Choice Voting Initiative Could Fix a Broken System

You have heard this story before: the system is broken and a majority of Americans are feeling their voice doesn’t matter.

Dylan Ratigan points out that “We’ve got the two least popular presidential candidates in modern American history and less than ten percent of us voted for either of them in the primary process. The system of how we vote for president is clearly broken.”

How can this be? What is happening to our vote and what can be done to fix it? Ranked choice voting could be the answer. However, as is common with election reform, it will certainly take time and will need to begin with the states.

The drive for ranked choice voting is beginning on the state level in places like Maine. Ratigan explains:

“On a state level, there are reforms underway as we speak. In…Maine, there is an effort underway to completely reform the way we vote so that we get away from the lesser of two evils and ‘who do I hate more,’ and we actually get a real sense of how people prioritize their opinion of any given candidate.”

In order for this push to gain traction, the public will need to be educated on how this reform would affect them, and how such a change would help strengthen their voice in the election process. By allowing people to rank candidates from favorite to least favorite, the idea is that a lesser of two evil situation is likely to be avoided. If there is no obvious majority when counting the first choice votes, the second choice votes would be counted, and so on.

Maine could pave the way for this type of election reform if they approve ranked choice voting so that it applies to all statewide races. If Maine can do it, hopefully other states would begin to follow suit.

This article was originally published on IVN.us a non-profit news platform for independent writers, and authored by Kendall Shain.