COMMENTARY
By Frank Miele
September 12, 2022
As I hinted would happen in my previous column, Alaska’s experiment in ranked choice voting had its intended result – the defeat of conservative hero Sarah Palin and the election of the first Democratic member of Congress from the state in more than 50 years.
No wonder Republicans are excited to see the same revolutionary system installed across the nation.
Huh? Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would Republicans want to see a Democrat elected?
Good question, and one best answered with another question: Why do you think they are called Republicans in Name Only?
Two such Republicans in Montana penned an op-ed last week that was published in newspapers across the state. Former Gov. Marc Racicot and former Secretary of State Bob Brown touted non-partisan elections (with or without “ranked choice”) as the path to “free and open primary elections,” ignoring the fact that primaries cannot achieve their purpose of selecting champions who will represent party ideals if they are open.
In most scenarios, the kind of open primary envisioned by Racicot and Brown is paired with a ranked-choice general election where the top primary candidates (usually four) compete against each other. If none surpasses 50% on the first ballot, then the votes of the last-place candidate are discarded and his voters’ second choices are tallied instead. This process continues until one of the candidates achieves a true majority of first-, second- and third-choice votes. Although it’s sold as a method to weed out extremists, it seems more likely to have the practical effect of ensuring mediocrity. Call it the Peter Principle of politics.
As with most dangerous ideas, it pays to follow the money to see where it originated. Although ranked choice voting is generally sold as a bipartisan, or even nonpartisan, idea whose time has come, the money says something different. The Capital Research Center concluded that most of the money behind advocacy of ranked choice voting comes from the left, including several George Soros-related foundations. So if you trust left-wing groups to reshape democracy, you’re good to go. If not, then take a close look before you buy the pig in a poke.
What RINOs and Democrats actually want to accomplish with open primaries and ranked choice voting is the suppression of populist outsider candidates and the validation of an establishment ruling class who makes decisions for the rest of us. To sell this power consolidation to everyday voters, proponents of ranked choice voting use the political tool promoted by Machiavelli and perfected by 21st century Democrats – fear.
Fear of so-called extremists. Fear of Sarah Palin. Fear of the Tea Party. Fear of parents who want to protect their children from Marxist ideology and gender-bending educators. Fear of “The Former Guy.” Fear of what Joe Biden calls Ultra MAGA Republicans. You saw that fear exemplified in Biden’s blood-red speech to the nation in which he called Americans who literally want to “make America great again” the biggest threat to democracy.
