Rank-choice voting is solution for our time

The fear of a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency has a simple solution: rank-choice voting.

Rank-choice voting takes the fear out of democracy, whereby if your first choice candidate loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice.

A system that exists in many cities and countries around the world, it allows voters to vote for their ideals instead of their fears.

One of the fundamental principles in American politics is majority rule: our elected leaders should be selected by over half of the population. But this is not always the case in elections with more than two candidates. Take, say, Maine, where in the last 11 races for governor, nine of them ended with a candidate who received fewer than half of the popular votes.

In fact, none of Maine's governors have won their first election with a majority of the vote in 40 years. As the American people clamor for third-party candidates, and as Jill Stein (G) and Gary Johnson (L) gain additional coverage in the mainstream press, visions of the 2000 election are reappearing.

When Green Party candidate Ralph Nader won 3 million votes, many Democrats chastised Nader supporters, claiming that had they voted for Al Gore (likely their second choice), he would have won the election. And the same is playing out today.

It is for this reason that rank-choice voting (also called instant runoff voting, IRV) works so well. Not only does it restore majority rule in selecting our leaders, whereby the winner must not only have a strong core of supporters but also a broad coalition of support, it also eliminates vote splitting.

It allows voters to vote for their ideals, rather than strategically voting to ensure they do not vote for the candidate they like the least.

Zach Carter

Mundelein