You were right that plurality voting is broken. You were sold the wrong fix. Here's what the data actually shows—starting with a chart that should settle this.
In 2012, researchers conducted an exit poll at Occupy Wall Street using four simultaneous voting methods: plurality (the current system), ranked choice voting, approval voting, and score voting. Same voters, same candidates, same moment. Only the counting method changed.
Approval voting = check every candidate you find acceptable. Score voting = rate each on a scale. Both explained fully below—for now, just look at what they do to third-party support.
Jill Stein: 3% under plurality and ranked choice → 52% under approval voting. Gary Johnson: 2% → 27%. Ranked choice produced results virtually indistinguishable from the broken system it was meant to replace. Maine confirmed this in 2020: under ranked choice for the presidential race, Jorgensen (Libertarian) received 1.7%, Hawkins (Green) 1.0%—statistically identical to plain plurality voting.
You vote for every candidate you find acceptable. You can check one, or all of them, or anything in between. The candidate with the most approvals wins. That's it.
No ranking. No elimination rounds. No fear that supporting your sincere favorite will hand the election to your least favorite. Every candidate you approve receives your full support simultaneously—nothing is ignored, nothing deferred.
Score voting extends this to a scale—rate each candidate 0 to 5 or 0 to 10. Approval voting is score voting on a 0-to-1 binary: the simplest implementation, capturing roughly 95% of the benefit. If approval voting opens the political window, score voting is the natural next step. They're the same reform at different resolutions.
Fargo, ND adopted approval voting in 2018 (64% of voters). St. Louis, MO in 2020 (68%). Both cities saw minor candidates receive genuine, unstrategized support for the first time.
The failure of both plurality and ranked choice voting traces to the same root: they force exclusive choices in each round. You express support for one candidate at a time. This sequential constraint is the mechanism that produces two-party systems. It creates strategic incentives to abandon your true preference for a "viable" candidate—incentives that compound into the duopoly we have now.
RCV advocates sometimes argue that a centrist "great mediator"—a broadly acceptable candidate who's everyone's second choice—could break through under RCV. In practice, the opposite occurs. Voters on the partisan left rank the Democrat first; voters on the partisan right rank the Republican first. Those large blocs eliminate the centrist before the final round. RCV only counts your second choice after your first is gone—meaning a broadly tolerable candidate with no passionate base gets knocked out early, exactly when they'd matter most.
Sarah Palin (R), Nick Begich (R), and Mary Peltola (D) ran under ranked choice voting. The electorate leaned approximately 60% Republican. No candidate reached a first-round majority.
| Candidate | Party | First-round votes |
|---|---|---|
| Mary Peltola | Democrat | 40.2% |
| Sarah Palin | Republican | 31.3% |
| Nick Begich | Republican | 28.5% |
Under RCV, the last-place candidate is eliminated. That's Begich. His voters' second choices now transfer.
Most Begich voters had ranked Palin second—they wanted a Republican outcome. Their votes transfer to Palin in the second round.
| Begich voters' second choice | Share |
|---|---|
| Sarah Palin | ~50% |
| Mary Peltola | ~5% |
| No second choice marked | ~45% |
Palin gains votes. But something critical had already happened—built into RCV's design from the start.
RCV promotes "later-no-harm": ranking a second candidate can't hurt your first choice. To guarantee this, RCV ignores your second-choice vote while your first choice is still active.
Palin voters who also found Begich acceptable had those preferences completely invisible while Palin was in the race. But invisible votes can't be used against Peltola either. The Republican coalition's preference for Begich over Peltola was systematically erased.
Under approval voting, Palin supporters who also found Begich acceptable could vote for both simultaneously—from the start, no elimination phases, no ignored votes.
The Republican coalition's combined support would have been visible from the moment polls closed. The candidate preferred by the most voters would almost certainly have won.
Spoiled ballot rates under ranked choice voting are consistently higher for voters of color, lower-income voters, lower-education voters, and non-English speakers. The complexity of ranking imposes a disproportionate burden on already-marginalized communities. Approval voting requires no ranking—the error modes essentially disappear.
Australia has used ranked choice voting for every House of Representatives election since 1918—the world's longest-running test of whether RCV breaks two-party dominance. The chart below plots major-party combined seat share across every election since federation.
The plurality era shows real variation—three-party competition was genuine in Australia's early decades. Once ranked choice voting was adopted, major-party dominance snapped toward 100% and stayed there. The Great Depression briefly disrupted this, as economic catastrophe disrupts everything. But by the 1940s the two-party lock was back and virtually total.
In 2022 and 2025, crossbench representation ticked up—but almost entirely from teal independents winning specific wealthy Liberal-held urban seats, not third parties achieving systemic viability. The Australian Greens, a major national political force, hold 1 house seat out of 150 after the 2025 election. For comparison: the United States under ordinary plurality voting has elected Bernie Sanders and Jim Jeffords to the Senate as genuine independents, and Justin Amash to the House as a Libertarian. By that narrow metric, American plurality voting has arguably produced more functional third-party representation than over 100 years of Australian ranked choice voting.
Many RCV advocates will acknowledge, if pressed, that what they really want is proportional representation—a system where a party with 15% of the vote gets roughly 15% of the seats. They're right that PR would transform American politics. They're wrong about the sequence of steps required to get there.
The path to proportional representation at the federal level is blocked at a specific, concrete point: a 1967 federal law that made multi-member congressional districts illegal. Repealing it requires an act of Congress. Passing that act requires electing enough members who aren't dependent on the two-party duopoly to push it through. Electing those members requires a voting method that doesn't systematically eliminate them. The voting method has to change first.
Adopt approval or score voting. Third-party candidates begin receiving their genuine level of support. Viable alternatives to the major parties can emerge and win seats.
With third parties actually winning seats, Congress is no longer a closed two-party club. Reform legislation has a realistic path to passage.
With a genuinely competitive Congress, legislation restoring multi-member districts can pass. Proportional representation becomes legally possible at the federal level.
Now PR is achievable. The full diversity of American political opinion can be represented in Congress.
Representative Cynthia McKinney understood this sequence and tried to advance it directly—bypassing step one entirely. The results were instructive.
RCV is being promoted as the stepping stone to PR. But over 100 years of Australian evidence shows it doesn't break single-winner duopoly. Which means it doesn't create the congressional coalition needed to pass PR legislation. Which means it isn't a path to PR—it's a detour that keeps reformers occupied while the duopoly remains structurally intact.
FairVote—the leading RCV advocacy organization—was founded in 1992 as "Citizens for Proportional Representation." They know proportional systems work. At some level, they know the sequence. The question worth asking is why they keep promoting the stepping stone that doesn't step anywhere.
Vote for one. Most votes wins. Produces spoiler effects, strategic abandonment of preferred candidates, and reliable two-party lock-in. Everybody agrees this is broken.
Rank candidates 1–2–3. Eliminates sequentially. Reduces some spoiler effects when third parties are weak but reintroduces strategic pressure precisely when minor parties grow strong enough to matter. Over 100 years of Australian evidence confirms it maintains major-party dominance. Not a stepping stone to PR.
Vote for every candidate you find acceptable, or rate each on a scale. No vote-splitting. No ignored votes. No strategic cost to honesty. Exit poll evidence shows dramatically more minor-party support. Simpler ballot with lower error rates across all demographic groups. The actual prerequisite for proportional representation.