What Truly Caused Maine's Voting System to Change

After our discussion about different voting systems, I was curious why Maine's rank-choice voting system was passed. This seems like a very significant change to our voting system; something unprecedented. Mr. Coppock's comment about Maine's former conservative Governor got me thinking in terms of political parties and strategies used to maximize votes. It reminded me of the Democrat-supported abolishment of the electoral college and their attempts to change various American systems in order to gain power. After looking into the rank-choice voting bill breakdown, my suspicions were confirmed that the change to the voting system was less of a question of fairness due to the voter, but rather an example of a self-interested political party achieving changes that increase their chances of winning.

In the Maine rank-choice bill that passed earlier this year, it is obvious that the move to this new system was fueled by pursuing the self-interest of the party rather than the voter's best interest in mind. Simply looking at the breakdown of the voting patterns, we can see that all Republicans and Democrats voted on party lines while only one Democrat voted against the bill. The fact that a strong, conservative Governor was able to secure the victory in a state such as Maine must have been the cause of such a drastic change to our democratic system supported by Democrats. We can debate about which system maximizes voter happiness, but when it comes down to it, these types of decisions boil down to one party's self-interest in winning elections. Viewing political parties as vote maximizers rather than a representative body of 'public despots' helps the citizen understand why Republicans and Democrats support the legislation they do.