If the American people love one thing, it’s fair representation. The ability to vote for the candidate seems like a basic and understood aspect of democracy in the United States. It is unfortunate, then, that the quality of political representation in this country is quite low in comparison to other, younger democracies and republics. The United States has a serious problem and its name is first-past-the-post.
How else could one solve such a problem than with something newer and fairer? Despite the popularity of the first-past-the-post voting system, the alternative voting system better represents the American people’s preferences.
First-past-the-post is a seriously flawed voting system. First-past-the-post is simple majority voting. “Voters put a cross in a box next to their favored candidate and the candidate with the most votes in the constituency wins. All other votes count for nothing." Numerous problems exist with this seemingly innocuous and fair voting system. One of the more problematic issues with first-past-the-post is that it punishes minorities and women, “representation of minorities and women suffers from 'most broadly acceptable candidate syndrome.'" The candidate who looks the most like the average American – in this case, white males – are the most likely to win under first-past-the-post. Minorities and women lack any real opportunity to participate in the system for this reason. Furthermore, tactical voting is a must in this system. First-past-the-post encourages citizens to consider who everybody else will vote for, instead of considering who they want to vote for. One is discouraged from voting for a third party because third parties tend to remove support from a more favorable candidate, thereby forcing voters to vote for whoever they believe is the lesser of two evils. Clearly, this is not even close to an adequate representation of what Americans want. First-past-the-post is simply an easily breakable system. Something needs to be changed.
The alternative vote is the change that the United States needs. Also known as the instant runoff vote and the ranked choice vote, the alternative vote is a preference-based voting system in which candidates are ranked in order of most wanted to least wanted. “If no candidate achieves an absolute majority of first-preferences, candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated and votes re-allocated to the next viable candidate until one candidate has an absolute majority of votes cast." This system adequately solves the problems that first-past-the-post causes. Alternative voting works well to represent the United States citizenry. The system, being preferential, does not require tactical voting. As such, it encourages Americans to vote the way that they actually want to vote instead of considering how others will vote. The removal of the tactical element created by first-past-the-post would also encourage minorities and women to participate more in the political process by eliminating the "most broadly accepted candidate" problem. The alternative vote solves all of the problems of the first-past-the-post voting system and represents Americans more fairly.
This video by CGP Grey shows how the alternative vote would work in a presidential election.
Citizens of the United States love proper and fair representation. It is a pillar of our country’s formation and it stands as an important right in our constitution. When that right is hampered, it is the people’s duty to change the system to reflect how the people truly feel. As such, it is clear that the proper change to be made to preserve America’s quality of political representation is replacing the first-past-the-post voting system with the alternative vote.
