OPINION:
Sometimes known as “instant-runoff” voting, “ranked choice” allows for more than two people to run in an election without fear of their vote being ’wasted’ and possibly getting a last choice elected with a mere plurality — as has happened twice in Virginia.
Unfortunately, the latest fiasco in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has cast a bad light on the concept of ranked choice (“NYC election officials retract vote-count report amid ranked-choice confusion,” Web, June 29). Fox News host Tucker Carlson used that event to denigrate the basic concept. But he was right that allowing voters to rank all the candidates is complex and confusing.
If the ballot allowed only two choices for each election race, that would be sufficient to provide the advantage of ranked choice mentioned above. Side-by-side, first-choice/ second-choice, select-one bubble columns would be easy to understand and easy to tabulate.
Ranked choice is clearly better than the standard, two-party plurality voting method. But as engineers recommend, “Keep It simple, stupid.”
DAVID SWINK
Vienna, Va.
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