From personal experience, I can agree with your recent op-ed on ranked choice voting (“Voters and democracy would be better off with ranked-choice voting,” Oct. 18). I grew up in Australia and voted there for 20 years before moving to the U.S. and voting here for 20 years.
In Australia, I voted for my preferred candidate from a list of usually around five candidates. I didn’t have to consider “strategic voting,” where I may vote for a candidate I don’t like but who I think has a better chance of winning than some other candidate whom I positively dislike. I can tell you that my heart felt better choosing the person who best reflected my values. If they did not win on the first round of counting, my vote was not wasted, as my second choice was then counted.
No candidate could win with less than 50% of the vote, and the system favored the “least unpopular candidate,” so it paid to be nice to your opponents and find common ground with other candidates.
Some people like having only two parties with any chance of winning seats, but I prefer more choices. Who wants only two national supermarket chains or only two banks to choose from, or two TV channels? The trend in Australia for the last two decades has been an increasing number of independents as voters are turned off by the major parties and their “politics as usual.” Here, we have to hold our noses and vote for one of two parties when we may dislike both.
There are lots of voting best practices that other countries have tested in the last 230 years that could well be adopted in the U.S.
I’m glad that Evanston voted to adopt ranked choice voting in April, and I hope that Chicago will follow soon. Eventually, I would like to see the U.S. adopt this system because it provides voters with more choice and favors finding common ground.
Don Wedd, Hyde Park
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