Can ranked-choice voting heal our poisoned politics?

This article is about electoral reform, also known as instant-runoff voting, which promises bridge-building and broad appeal rather than culture war and gridlock, citing the 2020 RCV report. Read an excerpt below:

Will ranked-choice voting really heal political divisions?

Maybe. Ranked-choice campaigns certainly seem less negative, according to a 2016 survey that Donovan coauthored with University of Iowa political scientists Caroline Tolbert and Kellen Gracey. And this perception of heightened civility was confirmed in a novel way this year, when political scientist Martha Kropf of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte published an analysis of Twitter comments and newspaper stories about ranked-choice contests. Kropf found that the ratio of positive to negative words in news stories was significantly higher than in regular elections.

This heightened civility, along with decreased concerns about acting as a spoiler, may in turn make ranked-choice campaigns feel more welcoming to women or minority candidates: Studies show that the system is generally not a barrier for them, and in some cases may even have boosted their chances.

Still, says Benjamin Reilly, a political scientist who studies voting systems at the University of Western Australia in Perth, the ranked-choice approach doesn’t automatically make people nicer. Even after a century of it in Australia, he says, “we have a highly adversarial system with all the usual theater of politicians shouting at each other.” There were also plenty of verbal punches thrown in Maine’s 2020 Senate campaign, and in this year’s New York primary.

Read the full article here.