LOCAL COLUMN
OPINION: Both parties agree on limiting your choices
When a highly partisan Democrat campaign manager, Neri Holguin (Sunday Journal April 5), and the chair of the Republican Party, Amy Barela (April 3 press release) agree that ranked choice voting is bad, it鈥檚 worth paying attention.
The two major parties care more about winning than governing, but these two polar opposite camps love to collude when it suits them: when it limits competition.
Both represent the hardcore party base. Neither are interested in coalition building or problem-solving across the aisle. And ranked choice voting, along with other democracy reform measures, tends to reduce the influence of the extreme elements in both parties. Less yelling, more solutions. It is not watering down solutions, it is listening and solving.
Forty-five percent of Americans and 27% of New Mexican voters are independent voters, having had their fill of party politics. They want sensible, data-driven solutions, not a party purity test.
Hundreds of communities in the U.S. and the world use ranked choice voting, also called instant-runoff voting, with good results, including Santa Fe and Las Cruces.
Without it, we will continue to have a winner-take-all system where only the two major parties can compete, offering a limited and sometimes draconian approach to policy solutions. In most races in New Mexico, you don鈥檛 need more than 50% of the vote to win. Elected officials have won with 30% or so of the vote, a weak mandate and questionable legitimacy to govern. In fact, in many races there is only one candidate with no competition.
Nonpartisan open primaries (like Nebraska and Alaska), nonpartisan voter registration (like Texas), independent redistricting commissions (like Arizona), term limits for all offices, elimination of dark money and equal ballot access for all candidates regardless of party affiliation (like Colorado) are all important democracy reform measures that we need to see passed to increase competition at the ballot box.
If the server at a restaurant tells you they are out of your first choice, it鈥檚 not hard to decide on a second choice. That is ranked choice voting.
Bob Perls is the chairman of the New Mexico Forward Party and a former state representative.
