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Ranked-Choice Voting Could Help the Fight for Democracy [1]

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Date: 2025-04-20

A large part of the Mango Mussolini’s hold over the Republicans comes from his control of the MAGA base, which is eager to primary any Congressperson who steps out of line (or is even thought to be thinking about rising from bended knee). (I’m not discounting threats of political violence, but that’s a subject for another diary.) Karen Tumulty wrote a column in today’s WaPo about Sen. Murkowski of Alaska and how ranked-choice voting kept her in the Senate even after she lost a GOP primary:

Murkowski bucks Trump — and makes the case for ranked-choice voting

Though her willingness to break from the pack is a reflection of the senator’s own character, at least part of the answer also lies in the fact that Murkowski does not have to compete in a Republican primary to win reelection. That’s because Alaska elects its lawmakers by ranked-choice voting, which reduces the influence of extremists in both parties.

Ranked-choice voting can work in several ways (see Ballotpedia’s Ranked-choice voting (RCV) article for an explanation), but they all act to reduce the impact of extremists in electing an officeholder. Tumulty points this out:

[I]n theory at least, the system encourages candidates to reach out beyond their most ardent supporters to become the second or third choice of those who vote for others. That favors contenders who are more moderate, independent and inclined toward consensus. [emphasis added]

The primary system we have been using for generations has in recent decades been skewed toward extremists, because the ones who tend to vote in primaries are the more committed members of their party. The Democrats almost fell into this trap in the George McGovern period, but (IMO) McGovern was such a disaster as a presidential nominee that Democrats realized the danger and for the most part escaped it. It also helps that Democrats are, as they have always been, a motley crew of ideologies, no one of which has achieved overall dominance.

Republicans, on the other hand, walked — ran full speed — into the trap, pushed in part by religious right figures such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. The GOP as a whole also became more ideologically monolithic overall, though they were and are lots of “minor” variations such as theocrats vs. oligarchs. The primary system has become one of main mechanisms by which the GOP assures that moderate and reasonable candidates have no chance of being elected — they will never make it past a primary. (Gerrymandering also ensures that in many districts, the primary is the election.)

This is also useful to Trump because he can threaten any Republican senator or representative with a primary if they so much as breath a word of dissent or doubt about his unlawful and unconstitutional actions. His political threats have been less effective against Murkowski because she holds her Senate seat through ranked-choice voting (first time as a write-in after she lost a GOP primary).

Murkowski’s electoral record is an object lesson in how modern party primaries distort the actual will of the people. In 2010, with the tea party movement reaching its zenith, Murkowski lost her GOP primary to attorney Joe Miller, who was backed by such hard-right figures as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. But Murkowski prevailed that year by mounting a write-in campaign, something no Senate candidate had done successfully since South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond in 1954.

RCV — ranked-choice voting — won’t be easy to implement — Tumulty mentions that efforts to implement RCV lost in every state in 2024 — and the only other state to use it for Congressional elections is Maine. Even if manages to get put in place, it will be only one of the many weapons we will need to save our democracy. RCV is not a perfect solution — nothing is — but it will help.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/20/2317586/-Ranked-Choice-Voting-Could-Help-the-Fight-for-Democracy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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