Letter: Rank Choice Voting fundamentally unfair

To the Editor:

I have been reading about the upcoming 2024 presidential election and the promotion of Rank Choice Voting as a new and fairer voting system.

Voters will check off their first choice, second choice and so on. When no single candidate receives a majority of the votes, then all of the votes going toward the candidate finishing last are transferred to the remaining candidates. If no one gets a majority, we repeat again and again until someone does.

A small but influential group of Left-leaning people want to fundamentally change American elections by using Rank Choice Voting. Capital Research Center official Scott Walker announced that the financial promoters of ranked-choice voting are overwhelmingly left-wing. While RCV promoters declare that RCV is nonpartisan, Alaska Sen. Mike Shower informs us that RCV makes it easier for Democrats to win races in Republican-leaning populations.

Since America began, it’s always been the candidate with the highest number of votes who won. In Ranked Choice Voting, we will have a candidate win without having the initial highest number of votes as a result of all of the second- and third-choice votes being redirected to that candidate.

RCV is an unnecessarily complicated process that produces weary, confused and invalidated American voters. The fair-minded resent that this process also makes recounts or audits impossible and allows for second-rate, obscure candidates to be elected over preferred candidates.

Are you in favor of adopting a system of voting that erodes the voter’s birthright to make self-determining choices of who ought to represent them?

As a free people, we must never permit a small but influential group of Left-leaning people to fundamentally change American elections through the exploitative use of Ranked Choice Voting.

Charles Danyus

Round Lake Beach