Partisan politics now do more to polarize than unite. But more to the point, party politics has severely divided our nation. Many during this presidential election year do not intend to vote for either candidate the political parties have produced.
According to the Pew Research Center, based in Washington, DC, “The biggest change in party affiliation in recent years is the growing share of Americans who decline to affiliate with either party: 39% call themselves independents, 32% identify as Democrats and 23% as Republicans, based on aggregated data from 2014.”
There is growing suspicion that the election process is rigged. Duverger's law is a theory that constituencies that use first-past-the-post systems (plurality method) will have a two-party system, given enough time. And because we now have just two major parties, gerrymandering of electoral districts is one very good example of election rigging.
Millions of voters are programmed to vote for their party lineup rather than bother to be informed about candidates on the ballot. An example of this phenomenon is the last election for Maine governor in which three candidates were on the ballot. The Democrats put up their recently retired US congressman. The Republicans put up their sitting governor up for a second term and a non-party candidate rounded out the threesome. That resulted in the governor being reelected with only 48% of the vote. Michaud gathered 43% and Eliot Cutler received the remaining 9%. Some suggested that this was a “split-vote” against rather than a vote for.
Democrats didn’t want a second term for LePage and expected voters would choose their candidate with a well-known name, instead of the immanently more qualified but relatively unknown Eliot Cutler. Many may have thought Cutler couldn’t beat LePage even though he was just a few votes short in the November 2010 election.
Clearly the plurality voting method does not coincide with the core values of our democracy, majority rule. “Fair Vote” of Takoma Park, MD has written that “Voters should be able to vote for candidates they support, not just against candidates they oppose.” Robert's Rules of Order, the guide to fair election procedures, makes the point that an election by a mere plurality may produce an unrepresentative result. RRO recommends voting methods that can determine a majority winner.
That widely used method to help assure there is a majority winner is called “Ranked Choice Voting” or “Instant Runoff Voting.” A comprehensive Rutgers University poll of voters in seven cities with Ranked Choice Voting found that voters reported friendlier campaigns and that Ranked Choice Voting had majority support in all of the cities using it.
Qualified candidates, that are not party insiders, have a better chance to be elected than they do now under the plurality method. Many prospective candidates now don’t run because they may feel they are not funded adequately to challenge well-funded party candidates and therefore have no chance. With Ranked Choice Voting qualified non-party candidates do have a better chance of winning and will be encouraged to enter races. Thus voters will have more choices than just party candidates, that these days don’t seem to meet voter’s expectations.
We, here in Maine, can join the many others that now have Ranked Choice Voting. A Citizen Initiative Referendum, Question 5, “Ranked Choice Voting,” will be on the ballot for this year’s election, November 8, 2016. Be sure to go to the polling place and vote. When this ballot question passes, “Shall we have Ranked Choice Voting,” one benefit might well be that we can in the future avoid the agony of having an unpopular governor reelected