Ranked choice voting is growing in popularity. Here's what you need to know
Unfortunately we&#x27;re already seeing new examples of how RCV generates unintuitive outcomes, with Sen. Tom Cotton tweeting[0]:<p>&gt; 60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat ‘won.’<p>We might dismiss this as self-serving and disingenuous, but I actually have some sympathy for the claim that ballot exhaustion &quot;disenfranchises voters&quot;, since it means that voters who have done more research about all the candidates (and can thus express a fuller set of preferences) potentially have their votes included in more rounds than less-informed voters (whose ballots are discarded earlier).<p>I suppose some people might think that more-informed voters <i>should</i> be given more power at the ballot box than their fellow citizens, but this seems equivalent to (for example) requiring voters to have a college degree, or passing a &quot;literacy&quot; test (which is a barrier that has historically been abused for purely partisan goals).<p>Anyway, we shouldn&#x27;t be too surprised that RCV produced a result that was open to such criticism, since a similar thing happened back in 2009 during the mayoral elections of Burlington, Vermont.[1]  The unintuitive outcome lead to RCV being scrapped for future elections there, and I fear that failures of RCV for state-wide elections could cause similar disillusionment with the idea of voting reform in other states.<p>One cause for optimism, however, is that Burlington did end up changing its mind again, and approving RCV in 2021, so perhaps the bad experience was only a temporary setback.  It would still be prudent, however, to consider other types of reform, to be tried in different states, which are, after all, the laboratories of democracy.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehill.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;blog-briefing-room&#x2F;news&#x2F;3624553-republicans-rage-against-ranked-choice-voting-after-alaska-election&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehill.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;blog-briefing-room&#x2F;news&#x2F;3624553-re...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States#Burlington" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...</a>