A bad election option

Ranked choice voting is a silly idea. If there are more than two candidates for a single office it’s difficult enough to find one worth voting for.

Developing enough information to rank four candidates in order of your preference is way beyond the capability — and interest — of the average voter.

A ballot measure approved by voters in November 2020, when implemented, will greatly complicate future elections. Such a change will make voting more like a quiz than a traditional election. My guess is that in future elections a lot of people either won’t bother and will pick only one candidate or will skip the question altogether. Either way the winners are going to be those most determined and able to game the system.

Ranked choice voting is understandably popular with some election officials since it provides an instant runoff and gives them greater involvement in the process. But the deterrent impact on the voter seems to make the system undesirable. And undesirable may be the most polite word I could come up with to get the point across.

The system may be viable in that it provides election officials more information to be used in determining who most voters want in office, but it creates a disincentive to voting that makes the change a net negative.

It might make our elections considerably more expensive to conduct since doing the math would require officials with capabilities well beyond anything we have had before. That will require giving them more extensive — and expensive — training than what they now receive. The number of volunteers with mathematical expertise is presumably limited.

In other words, what we have had for many years worked pretty well and should be continued. It doesn’t give the elites as much power as they might like. But giving those folks greater advantages than they already have is a bad idea that will help undermine our system — and therefore detract from the benefit of having a democracy in the first place.

Ranked choice voting was approved by Alaska voters in the 2020 November election and it looks like we will be stuck with it for at least a couple of years. But it deserves reconsideration by the voters.

Any change to voting that discourages potential voters should be avoided at almost any cost. It could potentially destroy a democratic system. And the more difficult or complicated the decision seems to the voter the greater will be the deterrent value of the election system.

The average person has a limited attention span and those who design elections should take that into consideration. The objective, after all, is to determine who the voters like best. And if you have to dig too deep to come up with likes and dislikes, you are creating a system that the average person will hate — and stay away from.

Hate almost always arises in an electoral system but the greatest value to the decision-makers — the voters --would be to minimize the impact of that emotion. The voters, through their decisions, will hopefully utilize their thinking capabilities and their better natures.

The hope should be that the voters as a whole will choose candidates that will make the best decisions for the good of the nation, state or community they represent. Complicating our electoral system will be a deterrent to voting. And that will just put more power into the hands of those who are most likely to misuse that power.

Alaska should get rid of the ranked choice voting system as soon as possible. That would require putting it on the ballot again, which might require that we adopt what is already passed and see how it works.

That could be a very painful experience.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.