Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

People are starting to accept the fact that strict majority-outcome democracy has some major flaws, particularly in the situation where the vote is split among conservative candidates but not for the liberal candidate so that even though the district is majority conservative, the liberal wins; or vice versa. One possible solution that is actually being implemented in some places is Ranked-Choice Voting, or RCV. The idea is that voters pick a second choice candidate too and the votes are calculated at least twice to see who wins. The biggest advantage of RCV is that it would allow Third Parties to actually compete. For example, a liberal-leaning voter could give their first vote to the candidate they liked the best, and the second vote to the establishment party: people would be unafraid of wasting their vote and candidates could be a much better fit for the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, like the Electoral College, RCV could have multiple winners, and it’s complicated by the different implementations, sometimes even multiple rounds of voting: that wouldn’t go over well. And does RCV really solve anything when one person is supposed to represent millions? Democracy has probably reached its expiration date regardless of how it’s done.