United States | News & Politics

No, ranked choice has serious issues and won't likely fix the issue. I'd prefer to avoid citing specific alternatives because they all come with their own biases and trade-offs. One example of surprising results is the Burlington, VT mayoral election, which is contentious because the winner was neither the plurality or majority winner.

That said, I think it's a case of "don't let perfect be the enemy of better." If RCV is on the ballot, I'll vote for it. But I'd very much prefer one of the other many alternatives because I think it doesn't resolve the spoiler effect satisfactorily and can have very surprising results.

I highly recommend looking into the various alternatives and reading up on condorcet winners before jumping on the RCV bandwagon.

Regardless I think an even better solution is to focus on fixing gerrymandering. I think we should consider proportional representation in the House, which should get more third parties elected and give us a real shot at breaking the two party system there. I think we'll always have one of the two major parties in the White House just based on voter demographics, but changing at least on house of Congress should force the President to actually work across party lines instead of waiting until their party gets a majority. Having Democrats and Republicans need to cater to the greens, libertarians, etc would be awesome.