More related to Ranked Choice Voting

I had the opportunity to discuss Ranked Choice Voting on WOSU All Sides with Ann Fisher. (Mike Thompson was substituting for Ann Fisher today.) I was fortunate to be joined in the conversation by Nate Atkinson, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin Law School and who also published in the Hill his own op-ed on Ranked Choice Voting (co-authored with Scott Ganz of Georgetown’s business school), which is very much in line with my Washington Post column with Eric Maskin, about which I blogged yesterday. Broadly speaking, both Nate’s piece and mine argue for an adjustment to Alaska’s RCV system that would counteract the way in which its particular “instant runoff” method elevates more extreme candidates at the expense of candidates who, although having fewer first-place votes, have broader appeal across the entire electorate.

The conversation that Nate and I had on the All Sides program is, I think, useful for anyone interested in the pros and cons of alternative versions of RCV, and these alternatives also compared to the current prevailing way of conducting elections. The conversation focused on basic principles concerning the purposes of holding elections–and especially how those purposes can best be achieved in the current context of polarization. The program will be available in podcast form for anyone wishing to listen.

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