Making ranked choices is easy — we do it every day. When the store runs out of our first choice of candy, we choose our second. We also have third and fourth preferences, giving us a range of options that make us happy. With ranked choice voting, we can apply the same preference based advantage to Montana’s elections. Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank the candidates from favorite to least favorite. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, the last-place candidate is dropped and their votes are redistributed to the voters’ second choice. This continues until a true majority is achieved by one of the candidates.
You may wonder, why is this better than our current election system? Four reasons: less political polarization, greater representation of third-party candidates, smaller influence of big money in politics, and a lower average cost of administering elections.
Reforming our current two-sided plurality voting system will enable a more diverse pool of candidates to run for office, and it discourages negative campaigning strategies like attack ads. Ranked Choice Voting eliminates the need for expensive primary races, compiling all candidates into the single ballot on Election Day. It gives every voter the chance to vote for their favorite community leaders rather than choose the lesser of two evils.
The United States is suffering from a rise in tense, unwelcoming politics— Montana is not immune. It is time to offer a solution to the woes facing Montanans and fight back against the polarization of our communities. It is time for Montana to implement ranked choice voting. Help fix our elections by reaching out to your local legislators and asking them to support ranked choice voting in the big sky state.
Abigail Dean
Belgrade
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 3/6/21
Food for thought. She doesn’t present any other elections done this way in the US nor does she provide enough details in this article – note from Pat Simmons, who posted this LTE