Two Great Election Reforms That Go Great Together.

• Author: Sharp, Alexandra

RANKED-CHOICE VOTING BRINGS NUMEROUS BENEFITS AND ONE DOWNSIDE: IT REQUIRES VOTERS TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH THE BALLOT. VOTE BY MAIL GIVES THEM THAT TIME.

A decade ago, if you'd asked politicians and citizens about "ranked-choice voting," you'd have gotten a collective "Huh?" Today, it's one of the fastest-growing reforms in the world of elections. Starting in Maine, where the first statewide ranked-choice elections took place in 2018, the practice has spread to Alaska's statewide elections and more than 60 localities by the 2022 midterms.

Ranked-choice voting is a system where voters indicate not just one but all of their top preferences--No. 1 for the candidate they're most enthusiastic about, No. 2 for the second best, and so on. If no candidate wins the majority of first-choice votes, then the lowest-performing candidate's votes are redistributed to their supporters' second choices. The process continues as many times as needed for one candidate to break 50 percent, ensuring that whoever wins the election has some support from a majority of voters. Under ranked-choice voting, argues Deb Otis, research director at FairVote, a nonprofit that advocates for the system, "every voter's vote is counted, and everybody's voice is heard."

There are indeed many good reasons why reformers are pushing ranked-choice voting and why more and more jurisdictions are adopting it. In the United States's prevailing "first past the post" mode of elections, the candidate with the most votes wins--regardless of whether most voters support them. With only two major political parties to choose from and an increasingly ideologically divided public, that can lead to results where a candidate disliked by the majority of their constituents wins with a minority of total votes.

In Maine, for instance, Paul LePage won a five-way gubernatorial election in 2010 with 38 percent of the vote, was reelected in 2014's three-way race with 48 percent, and left office with a disapproval rating of 54 percent. LePage governed for eight years despite never having most Mainers' votes; his tenure inspired the state to introduce a ranked-choice system that would make that impossible. (Maine's highest court, unfortunately, has blocked the use of ranked-choice voting in gubernatorial elections, though the system is now in place for other statewide elections.)

Another potential benefit of ranked-choice voting is that it allows voters to support third-party and unaffiliated candidates, who...