I want to thank Mr. Torrey for his clear, concise and accurate explanation of how ranked-choice voting works (“Believes ranked-choice voting disenfranchises voters,” July 15), and for his thoughtful engagement with this issue.
However, Mr. Torrey’s conclusions about the effects of ranked-choice voting are not correct, and I’d like to address them here. One of the biggest problems with our current voting system is that a fringe group can pick the winner.
In a race between four candidates, someone can win with as little as 26 percent of the vote. That means 74 percent of people would have voted for someone else. With more candidates, this problem only gets worse. If the Democratic primary were held today, a candidate could win with as little as 5 percent of the vote.
Fringe groups cannot pick the winner in a ranked-choice election. The winner of a ranked-choice election must establish support from a true majority of voters, not just from the largest small slice of a highly fragmented pie. Candidates must build a coalition, rather than energize a vocal minority that’s larger than all the other minorities.
Mr. Torrey brings up the topic of abortion, but ranked-choice voting is a non-partisan issue that only improves representation. Ironically, in Easthampton — a city in which Donald Trump received over 27 percent of the vote — we have a City Council consisting of eight Democrats and one left-leaning independent. I’m not particularly conservative, but I’d much rather have conservative voters represented on our City Council, as opposed to them having no representation whatsoever.
At the end of his letter, Mr. Torrey expresses his approval of holding runoff elections. Interestingly, ranked-choice voting goes by another name: “instant runoff voting.” One high-turnout ranked-choice election provides all the benefits of a runoff election without any of the extra cost.
Ranked-choice voting is the best way to re-enfranchise voters who have been disenfranchised by our current broken election system. Many people disengage from civics entirely because their votes for so-called “fringe” candidates are effectively wasted.
Based on his stated concerns, I suspect Mr. Torrey might come to actually appreciate the benefits of ranked-choice voting once he gains additional familiarity with its effects.
Daniel Gilbert
Easthampton