Exploring Ranked Choice Polling: An Electoral Reform

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In the wake of the 2016 general election, Michael Lind published a piece on The Smart Set entitled: Can Electoral Reform Save America? This piece centered around a single question on the ballot of a single state, question 5 in Maine, and the impact on electoral reform it could have for the country according to Lind. Using deconstruction, Lind analyzes the idea of a Ranked Choice polling system, rather than the first-past-the-post system that is currently in place in the United States. His allusions to the past as well as separate government entities globally, as well as a deconstruction of both polling systems and the impact they have (or could have) allows the reader to absorb information and produce their own personal opinion. Ranked choice …show more content…

Never mind that Maine is not including the president in this change, yet Lind still references the recent election of Donald Trump and the upset from the election. Lind seems to spend a great deal of time talking about the massive political effects that the changes will incur but who is to say that if Maine makes this decision then every other state will also make similar decisions in the future? He also fails to mention that most people solely care about the president and the position that he holds, and the other elected officials at the state level are often disregarded by a large part of the public. Lind also references that this will incur a nicer kind of elections, where there is less hate towards other candidates. He writes “any rational candidates closing statement…” yet this implies that we need a rational candidate, which the country appears to be in a shortage of

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