Voters should not be forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils”!

We should adopt Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) for all elections. RCV allows voters to vote for their favorite candidate rather than being forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils”, because RCV eliminates the “spoiler effect”. Voters often want to vote for a 3rd party candidate or a more moderate candidate, but they are worried that if they vote for their favorite candidate, then their least favorite candidate will win, spoiling the election results. 

Voters in RCV elections rank candidates by preference rather than selecting just one candidate. If no candidate receives a majority of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The ballots of voters who ranked the eliminated candidate as their first choice are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on their second-choice preferences. The votes are then counted in rounds, eliminating the least popular candidate until a candidate receives a majority of votes.

A huge benefit of RCV is that candidates are forced to be less polarizing, because candidates have to appeal to a much wider audience. Rather than just focusing on the most extreme voters in their party, the candidates must consider the opinions of Independents and Moderates.