In 2021, voters in Austin chose to use ranked-choice voting to elect their city council. Why aren’t they using it? Because the state of Texas won’t let them.
In many cities, you may have 3 to 10 candidates seeking to represent your precinct on the city council. The likely result is that nobody will win, so it will go to a runoff election in which very few voters will cast ballots. A very small number of voters decide who governs your city.
The bigger problem is the warlike culture of political campaigns. When you can only choose one candidate on the ballot, the incentive is for candidates to attack each other. There is no incentive for common ground. That is why politicians treat their opponents as enemies, calling each other stupid and evil. This is also why political parties rig the game with exclusionary ballot access laws and gerrymandering.
If you were interviewing people for a job, would you hire the person who professionally presented their qualifications or the one who wants to start fights in your company?
As governor of Texas, I would support the ability for cities to use better voting systems. My favorite system is Approval Voting, which would use the same mechanism we currently use except you can vote for any candidate you approve of. You could choose one, everyone except one, or any number of candidates you approve of. Our experience in the Libertarian Party shows that you get a winner on the first ballot who has the support of more than the majority of voters. The Center for Election Science (https://electionscience.org) is a good resource for case studies on Approval Voting, such as St. Louis’s 2001 adoption of Approval Voting. I also support Ranked Choice, but there are several different Ranked Choice systems. In either case, candidates are politically rewarded for finding common ground.
If you want to fix the toxic nature of politics, we need to strike at the root. Allowing cities to improve their voting systems is a good start, and I support it.