David Miller: Proactive measures like ranked-choice voting help keep democracy alive

To The Daily Sun,

Unfortunate that Jim Shuff's letter in Thursday's edition of The Sun expressed such intolerance; Celine Champagne, I appreciate diverse perspectives which can benefit our democracy. Thank you for contributing and I hope other residents of New Hampshire will be more welcoming.

Without providing evidence, Mr. Shuff claimed ranked-choice voting is a disaster for Mainers. How so? Maine is considering expanding ranked-choice voting to include the governor's election.

Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, improves elections by reducing overall costs, increases fairness to third-party candidates by eliminating the "spoiler effect" from their now viable candidacies, creates better (more) choices for voters, and campaigns become more positive and civil as candidates seek to appeal to voters who otherwise prefer a different candidate. This latter part — civility — will clearly be a period of transition as bad actors will learn attacking neighbors does not often win majority support.

Yes, initially ranked-choice voting may appear complex, but it is very much like sporting tournaments where weaker teams are eliminated round by round until one team is determined to be champion; in ranked-choice voting, an election happens all in one ballot and the champion is the first candidate to majority — 50%+1 — support of voters. Has every attempt been perfect? No, but the achievable improvements to democratic efficiency/efficacy are too great to ignore.

The United States is the oldest continuous democracy in existence, meaning everyone else who has experimented with democracy before the United States has failed. Shall we continue to evolve and strengthen our shared democracy or go extinct like all other democracies who came before us? Voters need to adopt proactive measures like ranked-choice voting to empower their vote and build a sustainable democracy where candidates, and their parties, are accountable to the people.

David Miller

Meredith