Voting system seems a goat rope

Ranked choice voting looks to be something of a goat rope.

Since Alaskans have now chosen the RCV system as their preferred way to vote, we shall see whether it is, in fact, a real problem. We will presumably see how it goes when we have our first ranked-choice ballot election two years from now.

The difficulty, it seems from here, is that you have to choose from four candidates and list them in your order of preference. The four finalists on the ballot would be chosen in the primary.

It’s hard enough to learn enough about one person to consider giving them your precious vote. Knowing enough about four candidates to rank them in a preferred order seems way more than can be expected from the average voter, me included.

Ranked choice voting is growing in popularity around the country and has already been adopted by the state of Maine and many communities including New York City, which took up the system a year ago.

There are some obvious advantages to RCV. They say it reduces polarized election campaigns, though those haven’t been a big problem here at least in recent years. They also say it increases the number of women and minorities running for office successfully and decreases the amount of negative campaigning, both of which seem like a good idea.

When you vote an RCV ballot in Alaska you will have four choices for each office. On your ballot you will give your first choice for each office, then your second, your third and — the one you have the least enthusiasm for — your fourth.

When the votes are tabulated, the candidate with the poorest showing is eliminated and the votes are recounted, eliminating one candidate with each round until a final winner is chosen.

For each office the winning candidate will be the one with the greatest popularity, even if many of the voters listed him or her as their second, third or even fourth choice. But the more people list the candidate as their first choice, the likelier he or she will be to win the office.

And simply listing the individual as a second or third-place choice can boost the person into office if enough people do it and a winning combination of high-enough votes is garnered. Presumably if the candidate was most people’s fourth choice, success would be pretty difficult to come by.

But if a majority of people list the candidate as their first choice, he or she is the winner. No need to start ranking the various lower levels of enthusiasm indicated on the ballot.

One of the advantages of the system is that it gives many novice candidates a better chance of winning against the professional politician types. That is why women and minorities do so much better under RCV.

It also allows voters to allocate a portion of their vote to each of their favorite candidates. You don’t have to leave your second or third choices off your ballot, just list them in your preferred order.

The system might encourage many people to run for office since they won’t have to consider whether their candidacies would compete with others they like.

There would be room on the ballot for pretty much everybody willing to do it.

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.