I Love Brad Landers For Moving Ranked Choice Voting To The Next Level

THIS DISCUSSION WITH MEHDI HASAN is a landmark in pushing the far more democratic method of voting,  one in which you have a far better chance of getting your first or second choice instead of the old fashioned one where you have a far higher chance of getting your dead last choice.   Maine adopted ranked-choice as a result of a popular referendum - the politicians in office, already, by and large didn't want it, especially those high up in leadership- ESPECIALLY SQUARED THE REPUBLICANS.   It came after we had one of the worst governors in the country elected by 38% of the voters due to our idiotic ease of getting guaranteed losers such as attract idiot play-lefties and Green Party style Republican-fascist spoilers on the ballot which always turns out to benefit the Republicans and now Republican-fascists.  

Alas, our idiotic state constitution has thwarted attempts to extend ranked-choice to the Maine governors' election, which left us vulnerable to the combination of Republican-fascist,  Green Party and other spoilers giving us another Le Page or McKernan (generally agreed to have been the worst one we had before Le Page).   Though I'll point out that, as in the recent New York City Democratic Mayors nomination process,  winner takes all has given us some really bad Democratic candidates and some less than great Democratic governors - we haven't had a really good one of those since Ken Curtis in the 1970s,  though Janet Mills has been better than average. 

The media has generally presented ranked choice voting, in which you designate your first choice,  your second choice and your third choice -  or leaving out your dead last choice from the ballot - as if American voters were too stupid to understand it.   It's no more difficult than choosing a flavor of ice cream or pizza toppings,  though the media pretends it's terribly complicated.   I caught one of the cabloid pudits doing that over the NYC mayors election.  They like Republicans getting into office with a minority of the voters, they want garbage like Green Party spoilers putting them in office.  

As Brad Landers points out,  ranked choice can bring a new dimension to American political races in which not only the voters but the candidates,  themselves, can work so that THEIR second choice has a chance to beat out their dead last choice.   He and Hasan point out that if the progressives in New York City had done the kind of cross-endorsement that Landers and Memdhani did,  the criminal Eric Adams wouldn't have won.   If Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had done that, we may have had one of them as president instead of Joe Biden - though, other than his fatal support of Israel's genocide, Biden was a great president.  

I think we need to tell The People the benefits of rank-choice voting everywhere,  to break through the fear campaign that's waged by the media - and some of that is alleged comedy,  COLBERT.    Calling it getting your second choice instead of your last choice - use Trump as an example as well as garbage like Paul LePage and Eric Adams.