US Representative Bruce Poliquin, a Republican candidate from Maine, was riding high on the polls in 2018. His chances at winning the seat over his biggest rival, Democrat Jared Golden, were said to be very good and, indeed, early returns appeared to bear this out.
Then, something odd and terrible happened. When all was said and done, and the balloting had been tallied, Poliquin, who had received many more votes than Golden, was declared to have lost the seat!
The race that occurred in the state of Maine happened to have fallen under a new Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) elections system that took into account not merely the two frontrunners, but also two lower-ranked candidates. The RCV system ended up awarding Golden the seat by virtue of its dizzying stipulations and rules that appeared to make Poliquin the less popular choice of the people.
In other words, his votes in excess of his closest rival didn’t matter. The RCV system determined that Poliquin just wasn’t popular enough.
So goes the Ranked Choice Voting system, where the rules are so completely confounding and the instant runoff at the end of the balloting period so lightning quick, that voters do not have an opportunity to know exactly how their candidate lost, but only that their candidate with the most votes just didn’t rise to the level of popularity that the RCV system demands.
The Heritage Foundation:
In 2018, the first-ever general election for federal office in our nation’s history was decided by ranked choice voting in the Second Congressional District in Maine. Jared Golden (D) was declared the eventual winner—even though incumbent Bruce Poliquin (R) received more votes than Golden in the first round. There were two additional candidates in the race, Tiffany Bond and William Hoar. However, the Maine Secretary of State, Matt Dunlop, “exhausted” or threw out a total of 14,076 ballots of voters who had not ranked all of the candidates.
Confused yet? Well, be prepared. Because this is only the beginning. As it turns out, this system is so consternating that even the very Leftist former California Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown rejected the effort by Progressives in 2016 to install this RCV system in his state, claiming it to be:
“[O]verly complicated and confusing” and “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”
Why is the RCV so dangerous, you may ask. One would believe that the ability to rate your five choices by best to worst would be a very fair system…that the winners and losers in that race would be clear-cut.
Think about what ranked choice voting destroys. It destroys your clear and knowing choices as a political consumer. Let us call it the supermarket contemplation. In reality, you are choosing one elected official to represent you, just like you might choose one type of steak sauce to buy when you are splurging for steaks. At the supermarket you ponder whether to buy A1, Heinz 57, HP, or the really cheap generic brand you have never tried.
In the real world, you compare price, taste, mood, and maybe even the size of the bottle and then decide on your steak sauce. You know nothing about the generic brand, so you rank it last among your choices, while A1 is ranked a distant third. In your mind, it comes down to Heinz or HP, and you choose the Heinz. You buy that bottle and head home to the grill.
Now imagine if, instead, you had to rank-order all the steak sauces—even the ones you dislike—and at checkout the cashier swaps out your bottle of Heinz 57 with the cheap generic you ranked dead last. Why? Well, the majority of shoppers also down-voted it, but there was no clear front-runner, so the generic snuck up from behind with enough down ballot picks to win. In fact, in this ranked choice supermarket, you might even have helped the lousy generic brand win.
This is a way in which the average voter may be able to wrap his/her mind around the RCV system. Honestly, the system is so devastatingly intricate as to require a Ph.D. to even begin to unravel its mysteries.
Turn to the next page to discover why RCV is being pushed by FairVote.org and the DNC and whose fingerprints are ultimately all over this attempt to overturn the US Constitution free and fair elections process!
It’s c**k wonbles like you who are hastening it’s demise.. it’s every person who wants this corrupt government to succeed. What it’s goal is to do is work with the electoral college and break the 2 party system. But I wouldn’t expect your dumbass to understand it since you’re part of the problem
F**k this little snowflake bastard from Indiana that is being paid by Soros to try and destroy the electoral college vote
This should not even be discussed. Our country has a voting system in place and it’s fair.
Why would someone want to change it? Please look for the answer to that question; you won’t like the truth if you can find it.