Jennifer Arriola in SUNThisweek:
To the editor:
In American politics these days, it’s all or nothing. Thumbs up for one candidate: thumbs down for the other. You like one side, and you hate the other. Except for the times when you hate both sides. Right? Is this the best we can do? We can land a man on the moon, as they say, but we can’t develop a better system of voting?
Actually, we can. Actually, we already have, and it’s called Ranked Choice Voting.
RCV is a modern and dignified system that takes away the archaic “all or nothing” system and replaces it with so much more than a thumbs-up/thumbs down choice, a competition where disparaging the other party is just as good and often better than having good ideas of your own.
And RCV is not complicated. You simply rank your choices: Number One for who you like the best, Number Two for who you like next, and so on down the line. If you don’t like someone at all – you don’t vote for them at all.
RCV allows you to vote your conscience. You can vote for a third-party candidate without worrying about wasting your vote. You don’t have to vote “for the lesser of two evils.” There is no “spoiler effect” when a certain third-party candidate clearly has the best ideas.
We do not have to be so divided. RCV lowers the temperature of political debate, and it promotes coalition building instead of all this constant battling. There is a bill in support of RCV in the Minnesota Legislature. Please contact your representatives today to support House File 89.
