By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Ranked choice voting, a relatively new concept,
is on the ballot in Missouri next week.
Only, Amendment 7 – placed on the ballot by the
Missouri legislature – would prohibit ranked choice voting.
House Elections Committee chair, Rep. Peggy
McGaugh of Carrollton, says ranked choice voting only confuses voters.
“Here in Missouri, we are built on the best man
for the job and that might be a woman as well,” McGaugh tells host Barry Birr
on the KFEQ Hotline.
But Larry Bradley with Better Ballot KC claims
the ballot in use today is antiquated and ineffective.
“And it has flaws in it that you can’t fix,”
Bradley tells Birr during his appearance on the KFEQ Hotline. “You know, with
software they talk about patches, patches for software. There’s no patching
this ballot. The only way to fix it is to change to something else, namely
ranked choice voting.”
Under ranked choice voting, voters select their
preferred candidate and then can select two alternatives. If no candidate in an
election garners a majority, those votes for second and third place enter the
calculation. The vote total is recalibrated and recounted until a candidate
receives a majority of the votes.
Only Alaska and Maine have experimented with the
concept.
McGaugh points out Alaska has placed on the
ballot an issue to overturn ranked choice voting.
“They adopted ranked choice voting for some of
their elections, but, matter of fact, Alaska now has it on the ballot to reverse
that choice,” McGaugh says. “So, it didn’t work in another state so I don’t
think Missouri wants to be a test pilot state, either.”
Disagreeing is Bradley, who says ranked choice
voting gives voters more options.
“Our problem is not that we have political parties
in this country,” according to Bradley. “Our problem is that we have
insufficient competition within and between political parties, because of the
ballot we’re using that limits our choices.”
Amendment 7 also makes a subtle, yet to McGaugh
significant change to who is eligible to vote in Missouri by changing a word in
the state constitution, from all citizens of the United States can vote to only
citizens in the U.S. can vote.
“And the reason why that’s necessary is that some
state court can change that in their jurisdiction to that non-citizens can vote
in local elections; the political subdivisions like the schools and the cities,”
McGaugh asserts.
But it’s the banning of ranked choice voting that
bothers Bradley, who says a national poll indicates a majority of Americans
don’t like what the two political parties offer.
“Let me explain something to you, you will never,
ever have more competition and more choices so long as you use the ballot today,”
according to Bradley.
Amendment 7 is one of six issues Missouri voters
will decide next week.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.
