Some Interesting Benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting

During and after the election I monitored the results of Maine’s ranked-choice voting Senate race because, after we discussed it in class, I was interested in the effect it might have on the results. It was cool watching the news anchors on election night discuss Susan Collins’ need to obtain 50% of the vote so that the ranked-choice aspect of the election didn’t kick in. I’ll admit, I really wanted Susan Collins to miss the threshold so that we could see the effect of transferred votes, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Since the election I have done some more reading and was interested to learn of a few more benefits to this different voting method. 

I found a cool opinion article in USA Today, written by Andrew Yang and Bill Weld, that discussed the effect ranked choice voting might have on campaign strategies. They said that due to a candidate’s goal of winning second-choice votes in addition to first-choice votes, that candidates would shy away from negative ads as to not sour the impressions of the opponents’ supporters. Ranked-choice voting then has the effect of more respectful and polite elections, something I believe all would appreciate especially in this day and age. Another interesting effect ranked choice voting has, according to an article on FairVote.org, is that it is more likely for women and minorities to not only run for office, but win their elections as well. One way ranked-choice voting can increase representation is due to the decreased effect of two similar candidates “splitting the vote”. Say for example (in an egregious oversimplification) that two women are on the ballot against one man: if almost all women support a female candidate, and most men support the male candidate, the female candidates might split supporters, but as long as the male candidate doesn’t win a simple majority, one of the women should gain the supporters of the other and the effect of this split is diminished greatly. Obviously this example is an oversimplification, but I thought the research data about how ranked-choice voting could directly lead to more representation was fascinating, and makes me curious about what other positive effects it could have.