Is there ever such a thing as too much democracy?
There sure is, and it's called Ranked Choice Voting. This confusing way of voting is now going to impact City of Eureka races, and that is not good news.
A ranked-choice voting system --that's where voters rank candidates by preference. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference, the candidate with fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. Are you with me so far? Now, the First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted determining whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority (1)
Ranked Choice elections have one noticeable advantage, they deliver a final verdict very quickly on who wins the race. Are quick elections really the problem though? As revealed in the 20-20 presidential election (2), the problem has been cheating and grievous misconduct of how mail in ballots are collected and processed. If we don't get rid of Dominion counting machines and restore proper in person voting in this country, then the change to Ranked Choice Voting will only make hiding the fraud that much easier, as the secondary and third option picks can be faked as well, leading to even more confusion. One thing we have to remember about the people that installed Mr Biden, they are able to use some impressive analytics for how they cheat, and Ranked Choice just gives evil-doers more pathways to victory.
Besides being confusing, ranked choice voting leads to moderate, squishy candidates. Proponents of Ranked Choice argue that it will deter fringe candidates and support more moderate, well known candidates. I don't think this is a very good argument. The people need the ability to radically shift gears and elect candidates for special circumstances. You could argue year 20-16 was a time when America's voters had enough of the do-nothing nonsense in Washington DC, and elected President Trump, who was well known, but in many ways not a moderate politician. The voters need a clear and present way to elect the right people for the times they live in, a Ranked Choice Voting muddies those waters and supports the middle path, which can often be the wrong path. To keep this topic more local, as homeless issues and the failed housing first model continue to make Eureka a tougher place to do business, maybe the voters will decide in the future to take the city a new direction. With Ranked Choice Voting now in place, setting Eureka on a necessary new path with more appropriate leadership will be almost impossible.
This is AM with your CC
SOURCE:
1) https://ballotpedia.org/
2) https://ttvdevv.wpengine.
