A New Election Method is the Change Our Democracy Needs

Taking advantage of a new election method like instant runoff voting could set our democracy free

Here is a key excerpt from this Bloomberg piece by Leonid Bershidsky:

Third-party voters feel some rule changes are in order to level out the playing field. Yet they don’t like the idea of moving toward a European-style parliamentary system: They see it as the same kind of establishment oligopoly as in the U.S. with the ruling parties indistinguishable from each other. Besides, as far as they are concerned, it doesn’t work any better than the current American system — worse, if anything. “Europe is burning,” McDonnell says.

Instead all the third-party supporters I’ve talked to are in favor of a system backed by Fairvote, a voting-reform group: ranked-choice voting. Under such a system, a voter ranks candidates in order of preference. “If we had a ranked choice now, I would not even consider Clinton or Trump as options,” Castor Silva says. 

The system is used, for example, in the Irish presidential elections. Voters rank the candidates. The weakest is eliminated, and his votes go to the politician who was next on his voters’ list. The procedure is repeated until only the winner is left. The procedure breaks down the two-horse race mentality. Under such a system, no candidate is a “spoiler” or “the lesser of two evils.”

Also see our entire section called Voting Methods Central.