Anna Kellar is the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Maine and Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. Jason Grenn is the former Executive Director of Alaskans for Better Elections.
Over the last several weeks, politicians, pundits, and activists on both sides of the aisle have expressed great concern about bipartisan political group No Labels’ push to run a third-party ticket in the 2024 presidential race. Some have shared similar concerns about progressive Cornel West running as a Green Party candidate.
Their concern that these candidates could “play spoiler” in 2024 makes sense. After all, as Republicans learned in 1992 and Democrats learned in 2000 and 2016, even a few thousand votes going to a third-party candidate in a single state could swing the election.
Yet, our home states of Maine and Alaska won’t have this concern. We’ve figured out the “spoiler problem.” We use ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting is more than just a technical fix that eliminates “spoilers.” That’s because it does so in a voter-friendly way – by giving us more choices, rather than trying to limit choice by shaming or even suing potential third-party candidates off the ballot.
With ranked choice voting (RCV), voters can rank candidates on the ballot in order of preference. They rank their favorite candidate as their 1st choice, their next favorite as their 2nd choice, and so on. If no candidate wins a majority of voters’ 1st choices, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who ranked the eliminated candidate as their 1st choice have their vote count for their 2nd choice. The process repeats until a single candidate has a majority.
In Maine and Alaska, that means voters can support independents and third-party candidates knowing that their vote won’t be “wasted” on a longshot. And if their favorite doesn’t have a chance to win, they can still express their preference between the Democrat and the Republican – instead of helping throw the election to their absolute least-favorite candidate.
Of course, many voters will still rank a Democrat or a Republican first on their ballot. This isn’t about supporting or helping any one type of candidate. It’s about ensuring election outcomes actually reflect the will of the voters – instead of a numbers game based on how many Green or No Labels or Libertarian candidates run for president. Moreover, in RCV elections, the winning candidate actually has to win a majority of votes.
Maine became the first state to use RCV for a presidential election in 2020, and Alaska will join them next year. It’s no surprise that Oregon may soon vote to do the same – and the No Labels conversation should only encourage more places to follow suit.
RCV is growing across the country, now used by about 13 million voters across over 50 cities, counties, and states. Polling shows that everywhere RCV is used, voters like and understand it. After all, ranking is common-sense stuff: If you go to the grocery store and they’re out of whole milk, you buy your 2nd choice instead – maybe 2 percent. By comparison, under our current system, if the store is out of whole milk, you’re out of luck. The other shoppers get to pick for you. Enjoy your anchovies!
For too long, partisans have tried to solve the spoiler problem by threatening us all with anchovies. They try to limit voter choice – attacking independents and third-party candidates, and blocking voters from even having the chance to support them. But whether you like the parties or not, that’s fundamentally undemocratic. It’s also increasingly tone-deaf, at a time when voters across the country are frustrated and clearly looking for more than two choices.
Voters are smart, and they’re getting wise to the fact that there’s a long-term solution out there – and that Maine and Alaska are already using it.
If more states use ranked choice voting in presidential elections, we could eliminate the “spoiler problem” once and for all, and give voters the true choice that they deserve – and that a functional democracy requires.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."