JD Vance feigned not to understand a perfectly understandable voting system. Ranked-choice voting simply lets voters rank candidates in order of preference. If nobody wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and those ballots are redistributed according to voters’ next choices. The process continues until someone wins.
Vance told reporters ahead of the Texas rally that ranked-choice voting is “confusing.” But it’s not confusing. It’s just different from the winner-take-all system he’s used to.
“It seems to me that you have an election; the person who wins the most votes should win,” he said. “That seems to be not what happens with rank choice voting. So I’m not a big fan of it.”
“The fact that it’s so confusing to a person who pays pretty close attention to politics, I think suggests we should do our elections in like the normal way, which is if you vote for a person and they get more votes than the other person, they should win,” he added.
Oh, like Hillary Clinton when she received more votes than Donald Trump? Like that, JD? Because I’d be all for abolishing the Electoral College.
And that line about doing elections “the normal way”? Oh, please. Ranked-choice voting IS a normal way to conduct elections. It’s used in various U.S. jurisdictions, including Alaska and Maine, and in many other democracies worldwide.
read more