Republicans haven't been good at much of late, but one thing they've definitely been good at is shooting themselves in the foot. If you follow any news at all, you probably don't have to ask how.
Thanks to historic ineptitude, tone-deafness, corruption, and a litany of bad decisions beginning with starting and promoting yet another pointless, inflationary war in the Middle East, the Party of Trump is set to suffer historic, well-deserved losses in tomorrow's midterm elections.
Whether you want people to hold their noses and vote GOP because you want Democrats — who are definitely worse — out of power, or you want the Party burned to the ground so it can hopefully rise anew like a phoenix someday and actually represent the people it purports to represent, you have a strong argument. I'm not going to judge you either way.
Even so, we all should be able to agree on one thing: that Republicans and conservatives writ large should, well, stop shooting themselves in the foot. And while that certainly applies to policy decisions like actually not breaking promises on things like mass deportations, Epstein disclosure, and not starting ridiculous wars that make everybody's cost of living skyrocket, I believe it also applies to what most conservatives believe about how elections should be held.
The things we focus on in this area aren't all bad. In fact, most of them are good. For example, I've yet to hear a left-leaning person give me a straight answer on why voter ID shouldn't be a foundational principle in every election in every jurisdiction in the country. They get similarly tongue-tied when you explain that mail-in ballots should, horror of horrors, be verifiably tied to an actual voter and shouldn't be allowed to be accepted indefinitely after election day.
We generally do a solid job of explaining our reasonable belief that the only possible reason anyone could be against these basic principles is that they either want their side to win by cheating or they want to cheat themselves.
However, the vast majority of Republicans and conservatives absolutely lose their minds when presented with election reform proposals that could actually help them win elections they are otherwise losing. A perfect example of this is Ranked-Choice Voting, or RCV, something most Republicans have not only been against, but want to ban outright.
In an RCV system, voters rank their preferences of candidates, as many or as few as they desire. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated. Each ballot supporting that candidate then transfers to that ballot's highest-ranked remaining candidate, if the voter chose to rank other candidates. The process continues until one candidate reaches 50 percent.
There it is. You knee-jerked just now. Tell me it didn't with a straight face. Visions of Lisa Murkowski's skeleton-like face just danced across your brain like a creepy jump-scare from this past weekend's Halloween festivities, didn't it?
So before delving in a bit, let's get that one out of the way. Sure, Alaska implemented RCV, but Murkowski would have still won in 2022 under a plurality system, just as she won her previous elections. You can hate her all you want, and believe me, I share your hatred, but RCV didn't put her where she is, and it's disingenuous for Female Skeletor to be your anti-RCV poster child.
What has happened, however, is that too many GOP candidates have lost too many close elections over the past couple of decades because of Libertarian and Constitution Party spoilers. (For starters, just ask Jon Tester how he won his first two Senate elections in Montana.) And what is probably about to happen is that too many GOP candidates are going to lose their elections tomorrow for the same reason.
Consider Texas, where Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico are running neck and neck. Ted Brown, a Libertarian, has consistently polled between 2 and 3 percent. If the race is as close as it appears right now, the third-party candidate could easily swing this in the Democrat's favor, turning Texas blue in a statewide election for the first time in decades.
Libertarian candidates, who tend to draw mostly from Republicans, have also polled high enough to tip the balance in close races in Iowa, Kansas, and Ohio, states Republicans should win easily in any other political environment.
And those are just the Senate. There are doubtless plenty of House and other races where the same concept applies.
Sure, Democrats have also lost elections because of their own left-leaning third parties, like the Green Party. There is even a Democratic movement afoot to ban RCV themselves. But Libertarians have won far more votes than Green Party candidates have nationwide, thus affecting Republicans far more than Democrats.
Like it or not, RCV is the best way to fix this. It's also a far, far better alternative than, say, Georgia's runoff system, which arguably cost us two Senate seats because an entirely separate election had to be held (and paid for by taxpayers!). Where it's adopted, RCV would allow voters to vote for their chosen candidate and make whatever statement they want while still ensuring someone who largely fits their values will receive support in case their candidate doesn't make it through.
It may not be for every state or every situation, but RCV should definitely be an allowable tool in the toolbox, and it's silly for Republicans to want to ban it.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
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