Shannon is the founder of Negative.vote, which is promoting statewide ballot initiatives to allow voters to register firm opposition to one candidate in each race.
It was at a 1980 Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when someone is first recorded coining this famous aphorism: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." You may have heard a rumor that Albert Einstein said it, and that would be false.
We live in an era, though, when truth is subjective. If enough people believe a thing, it does not have to be true.
The coronavirus jumped to humans in a Wuhan seafood market. Vote-by-mail is fraudulent. Jared Kushner is a cyborg. The flu vaccine makes you susceptible to Covid-19. Hillary Clinton eats babies. All true, we've heard.
Just like the Romans reveled in gladiator games and torture, so too are our citizens addicted to conflict of their favorite untruths. Conflict is very entertaining, after all.
Our elections are the modern-day version of the Roman Colosseum. We keep the masses captivated with semi-regular clashes.
There is a 24-hour opinion industry that reaps the benefits of constant conflict coverage. Networks have devolved into de facto subsidiaries of the two major political parties.
And so, it goes. Another Black man receives unjust, extrajudicial capital punishment on our streets from a white police officer. No judge, no jury; just the death penalty, aired.
Protests turn counterproductive when antifa socialist agitators (and white supremacists pretending to be antifa) join in. Looters loot. Police shoot rubber bullets at badged media, on air. Our president openly calls for the shooting of looters. No trials or conviction required. Who needs a legal system? These ratings are gold.
We all seem to be living in a parallel universe, with time running in reverse. The 1960s are upon us and the 1860s may be on the horizon.
The root cause of all this suffering is plainly one fundamental flaw — the way we vote. A voter's voice is limited to just one thumbs-up vote, which guarantees conflict.
A one-vote system always manifests over time into a tug-of-war, or an actual war, between two major parties.
It also artificially empowers two ideological minorities to make them appear to be much larger than they really are. This is called a cramming effect. It inflates and emboldens extremists and unbalanced partisans, who then wrongly believe they represent a majority. In truth, Republicans and Democrats nowadays each represent less than 20 percent of the American electorate.
To make matters worse, some "reformers" prescribe a new way to vote, which is really the same old way in disguise. They call it ranked-choice voting — and it is yet another one-vote system.
Ranked-choice voting is spreading like a disease because Americans are desperate to try anything to fix their political system. And they are extremely gullible to disinformation that it will disrupt the two-party system. RCV will not.
That majority winner will always be from the two-party system, because multiple independent and minor party candidates must all split votes with each other.
One-vote elections fuel negative propaganda and a money-in-politics arms race — then generate plenty of close contests.
Ranked-choice elections perpetuate the two-party system, artificially inflate those parties to make one appear dominant, further empowers extreme partisans — then generate even more close red vs. blue contests
And the prospect of razor-thin margins of victory enable foreign governments to meddle in elections, exacerbate the money-in-politics arms race and cement the status quo.
RCV advocates shamelessly, and falsely, promote the opposite narrative. Here's an example of the disinformation and another below how this false claim is constantly re-spread.
Imagine for a moment that we decided criminal guilt by popular opinion. Now, I know that RCV advocates are going to say, "You can't possibly believe that crackpot Shannon fella. He's the guy that thinks we should decide guilt based on popular opinion."
To clarify, I do not think that we should resolve guilt or innocence based on popular opinion. It is just a useful mental exercise to illustrate how RCV fails.
So consider an opportunity to rank these three possible answers — President Trump, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin or George Floyd himself — to the question: Who was responsible for George Floyd's death?
This presents a complex dilemma. Because the first reaction for many is surely going to be "definitely not George Floyd!"
However, RCV prohibits you from voting against any options. You may only list in order of priority the options you favor.
Under RCV's instant runoff system, the second-place finisher will get a head-to-head matchup runoff against the first-place option, with ballots with the third-place option on top getting redistributed to those voters' next choices.
What if polls indicate well above one-third support for the idea that Floyd was responsible for his own death? What if many are also likely to vote that the president was responsible?
If you wanted Floyd to "lose the election" (as I would) but believe he is not going to be eliminated in the first round, your ranking decision would be influenced by your conclusion about whether Trump or Chauvin would fare better in a head-to-head against Floyd.
Accordingly, you cannot always vote sincerely with RCV. You must vote strategically to make sure your worst outcome does not prevail.
It would be much simpler just to vote thumbs-down against our worst outcome.
Unfortunately, Americans everywhere will adopt ranked-choice voting in coming decades. Its momentum of untruth is unstoppable. It will become widely accepted before voters inevitably experience its shortcomings — and it will ultimately be repealed by voters, again. All that will cost us millions of dollars and many years of precious time.
But if Albert Einstein invented ranked-choice voting, who can be against it
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.