Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in New York City
I absolutely support ranked-choice voting as an improvement to the current system.<p>BUT, the proposed system is specifically Instant Run-Off Voting (IRV), which does <i>not</i> make a centrist third-party candidate likely to win. Because it removes whoever gets the least first-place votes, the only improvement it gives is that a third-party candidate doesn&#x27;t <i>spoil</i> an election, because your second-place vote will still count. 
(E.g. Nader wouldn&#x27;t have taken votes from Gore, so Gore would have won instead of Bush.) But you&#x27;re still stuck with one of the polarizing two-party candidates who will win.<p>Contrast this to the Borda Count [2], where points are assigned by rank. In this case, suppose about half of everyone votes first-place for an extreme liberal, and the other half vote first-place for an extreme conservative. But everyone votes second-place for a moderate centrist they can live with, and third-place for the opposite-party candidate they detest. With IRV, the centrist is ignored and one of the extremists will win. But with Borda, the centrist candidate will win.<p>So to really get away from the poisonous political polarization of our times, ranked choice is necessary, but it needs to be Borda or similar, <i>not</i> IRV. Still -- it&#x27;s a start, and I&#x27;m grateful for that alone.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Instant-runoff_voting" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Instant-runoff_voting</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Borda_count" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Borda_count</a>