If discarded ballots, inaccurate election results, and election outcomes that contradict the wishes of voters aren’t enough to make you distrust ranked-choice voting (RCV), then maybe an endorsement from members of America’s communist party will.
On Sunday, Drew Bradley and Ryan Krueger, two members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), penned an op-ed calling on the party to consider “ranked choice voting as part of the broad democratic struggle and an aspect of building a stronger Popular Front.” Under RCV, which critics often refer to as “rigged-choice voting,” voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
Alaska, Maine, and various U.S. municipalities have adopted the system for their elections in recent years.
Bradley and Krueger used their article to note the “resurgence in interest for ranked choice voting,” which they claimed “has emerged as contradictions within capitalism have created the need for political parties outside the liberal/conservative dynamic.” The two further lamented how this “dynamic” has prevented “working class mass organizations [from having] the option of electing candidates outside of the two capitalist parties” and opined that RCV can be used to “back candidates that fully reflect their goals in the electoral arena.”
In other words, they support adopting RCV because they view it as the
