Ranked Choice Voting, Part One

For baking a cake you want a splash of whole milk. If the store has none in stock, then skim milk will do, and absent that, in a pinch you can use condensed milk.

Intuitively we make selections like this every day, yet many explanations of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) make it sound more complicated. On an individual level, it really is as simple as the analogy above. On the societal level, tabulation purges the least favored options from ranks one, two and three, leaving the winner with a clear majority, which is democracy by definition.

In our increasingly polarized society, imagine that a victor emerges towards whom we all have voted in some ranking or another, rather than our current winner-takes-all system which leaves us futilely screaming at the sky.

September 15th, 2020, published to the Facebook page of “Daniel Donnelly - Libertarian”