Ranked-choice petition first step towards reform
1. The editorial’s central claim is that Mainers should should sign a petition to replace the state’s current electoral process with a Ranked-choice system which would guarantee that a winning candidate would have the approval of a majority of voters. The Ranked-choice system sounds more complicated than it actually is. Here’s how it works: in a race with more than two candidates, voters are given the option to rank as few or as many of the candidates in order of who they want elected. In the event that no candidate wins a majority, the last-place runner is immediately eliminated and his or her second place votes are assigned to those still in the race until someone reaches fifty percent.
2. The argument made in this editorial mainly relies on soft facts. For example, the author claims that with the implementation of the Ranked-choice system, Maine would see a drastic decrease in the amount of attack ads during election season. The author reasons that these negative ads would alienate groups of voters, and it would be less likely that these voters would put the politician running the ad as their second choice. The system would require politicians to appeal to ALL Mainers and would encourage cleaner elections.
3. I believe that Mainers should sign this petition because I believe that a Ranked-choice system would be the best for the state. The biggest problem with the current electoral process is that voters aren’t choosing who they think is the best candidate, instead they're conceding by picking their second choice candidate just so the “other guy” doesn’t end up in office. We let polls and negative ads have more an impact on our selection than the actual qualities of the candidates. These are decisions made out of fear and they only perpetuate this extreme political polarization currently taking place. Ranked-choice voting is an immediate fix to this problem. Voters would be able to vote for who they think is the best candidate without fear that their vote would be wasted. Something’s clearly wrong with the system if no governor since 1998 has won a majority of votes in their respective elections. We need ranked-choice voting to ensure that at least a majority of Mainers approve of the winning candidate, otherwise splits in the vote caused by similar candidates could land someone in office with little popular support.
No comments:
Post a Comment