Originally published on The Salt Lake Tribune | February 28, 2024

Utah voters, like the majority of Americans, want a meaningful solution to partisan politics. Polling shows that there are sensible policy positions on almost every major political issue that a supermajority of the public would support, yet we seem incapable of fielding politicians who can win elections on that consensus platform.

Many believe that ranked choice voting might be the solution, yet do not appreciate that another voting method — approval voting — is a much better way to depolarize politics, while ranked choice voting actually tends to rank out consensus-building candidates. This is because ranked choice voting is designed to create a runoff between the top two first choice candidates, who usually are political opposites of each other.

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