MADELINE MALISA: It’s Time To Close The Door For Good On Ranked-Choice Voting

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz thinks ranked-choice voting “gives us better trust in our democracy.” What he really means is that ranked-choice voting gives us better trust in Democrats’ ability to win.

The left is engaging in an all-out effort to implement ranked-choice voting in red and swing states across the country. It cannot be overstated how dangerous this is. States without ranked-choice voting must be on guard.

Ranked-choice voting is a far cry from the beacon of fairness advocates claim it to be. In practice, ranked-choice voting silences voters by throwing ballots away, strongarms voters into voting for candidates they don’t support, delays ballot counting, reduces voter confidence in elections and turns losers into winners.

Why advocate for it, then? Because it turns elections into a game that can rack up wins for the left, particularly the most radical candidates.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters must rank every candidate on the ballot in order of preference. This includes the ones the voter may find intolerable, morally reprehensible or just plain incompetent — or risk having their ballot thrown out. Yes, thrown out and not counted. If no candidate wins a majority after one round of ranked-choice voting tabulation, it goes into further rounds of tabulation — with ballots repeatedly “exhausted” (a nice way of saying discarded) — until a candidate receives more than 50% of the remaining votes.

Two of the most noteworthy users of ranked-choice voting, Maine and Alaska, show how this undemocratic ploy works in action. In Alaska’s special election to fill the late Rep. Don Young’s seat, a majority of voters only ranked the two Republican candidates because they didn’t want to vote for the Democrat. As a result, during tabulation,