THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR RANKED CHOICE VOTING

This paper evaluates the compatibility of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) with conservative principles. Americans have become so accustomed to our voting system we forget how strange it is. Many countries admire our Constitution to the point of imitation, and have adopted our system of checks and balances by dividing government into executive, legislative and judicial branches. Yet absolutely none of them elect candidates to political office the way we do. That’s because democracies want to avoid precisely those problems besetting America today: citizen apathy, low voter turnout, bitter partisanship, a lack of political competition, the lack of a political center, and the resulting division of the country into two warring factions that see each other as the enemy. To name a few. The Framers were exceptionally wellread and intelligent men, perched at the right point in history to create an exceptional system of government for an exceptional nation. We are right to consider significant changes to their legacy institutions only with great reluctance and deliberation. Experiments should be tried at the local level first, then the states, and only then at the level of national government. On the other hand, we should also note that our present conundrum is exactly what the Framers warned against over two hundred years ago. Their writings in this regard seem downright prophetic.

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