American politics is deeply broken. Ranked Choice Voting would help fix it.

I hate the ‘electability’ trap. People say, “Don’t waste your vote on a fringe candidate because they can’t win. Sometimes, you have to choose the lesser evil. Don’t vote for the primary candidate closest to what you want unless you’re sure they have broad support in the general. Don’t do a protest vote; you’re just pulling votes away from someone more likely to win, and you might let the party you hate win. Don’t vote for someone just because you like them. Be strategic: only vote for a bland centrist party’s candidate with financial backing and major-party support.”

Don’t you hate that stuff? I know I do.

How about this instead: Ranked Choice Voting everywhere. No more ‘wasted’ votes. ‘Spoiler’ candidates stop being a problem. No ‘lesser evil’ choices. And no annoying runoff elections. Done! Simple and painless. Easy-peasy!

Quick background: Ranked Choice Voting is when, instead of giving you a ballot with ‘check the box’ votes, elections use ballots where you rank who you want, in order. If your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your next choice, and so on, until one of the candidates gets over half the votes. You can’t win unless you convince most voters to at least be OK with you.

Unsurprisingly, the two bland major parties hate RCV. They tell us that it’s too complicated. People won’t know how to rank their choices. No, I don’t believe it’s a good-faith argument. They think we’re stupid, but not that stupid.

They don’t want us to have more choices. If we weren’t throttled down to their limited offerings, we might elect someone from outside. Someone with ideas. Someone they don’t control. No, neither party will ever allow us to implement RCV. Not without force.

So, you know, we should start forcing them to give us more power. Every officeholder has a website where you can leave messages. Let your candidates know what you want. Make them stand up. Press them for their position. Not many people actually contact their representatives. If you do, you’ll be more influential than you think.

Sometimes, we get referendums on Ranked Choice Voting. If they come up in your area, vote yourself stronger voting power.