Ranked voting. Maine does it. New York City approved it. Kentucky Republicans should yearn for it.
The Republican governor lost to a Democrat. The Republican governor refuses to concede. He claims some voting irregularities. He wants to recanvass the vote. He will get that. Kentucky will check to make sure the vote reports were accurate.
Will he challenge the results then? In the hope that Republican legislators will follow an obscure Kentucky law that calls upon the legislature to decide a challenged election?
This was a close election: The Democrat, Andy Beshear, got 709,846 votes. The Republican governor, Matthew Bevin, got 704,760 votes. He lost by 5,086 votes. A Libertarian candidate, John Hicks, got 28,442. A supporter of the governor argued for a challenge because most of the Libertarian voters would prefer the governor.
Maybe. There is a system for identifying whether or not that is the case. Ranked voting. Let’s say 15,000 of the Hicks voters would prefer that Bevin be governor. Let’s say that 8,442 of the Hicks voters would prefer Beshear. Let’s say that 5,000 of the Hicks voters truly don’t care.
In ranked voting, the 15,000 would rank Bevin #2, the 8,442 would rank Beshear #2, the remaining 5,000 would not make a second choice. Second rank votes would be redistributed and Bevin would win the election.
Kentucky Republicans? Are they arguing for introducing ranked voting? Not one has made that argument. Because it is the kind of idea that gets play in the northeast. As with a lot of things, the Republicans in Kentucky have not noticed what is in their self-interest.