Ranked choice voting seems like a good idea, especially for those of us who liked Al Gore, and don’t like the consequences we are living decades later of that election being stolen (yes, I said it out loud). Then again, for those of us who also liked Bill Clinton, there is the question of whether ranked choice voting would have changed the outcome of that one.

Anyway, here is a long, wonky article in the context of New York City politics, saying ranked choice voting does indeed work well most of the time. In a small number of cases it can result in a “Condorcet violation”, where the ultimate winner is not one a majority of voters would have chosen in a head to head matchup.

It still seems to me much better than the system we have, with nearly insurmountable barriers to entry for all but the two large parties, and party insiders and wealthy donors largely determining the two often mediocre choices that are put before the rest of us. The biggest downside I see is that with people so suspicious of even a very simple system of counting votes, a more complicated system will lead to even more mistrust among the public, and even more ability of bad actors to exploit that mistrust. Of course, one alternative would be open, ranked choice primaries followed by an old fashioned, non-instant runoff. But even there, many variations are possible, like having primaries with a large number of candidates whittle the choices to three or four, which are then on the general election ranked choice ballot. Having just two candidates in the general might risk a choice between extremist candidates, where three or four might allow that true compromise candidate to emerge.