ABC RadioIn less than three weeks, the American people will cast their vote for the next leader of the free world. As Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic sees it, however, the election process could be a lot freer.
Novoselic is the Board Chair of FairVote, an electoral reform organization. Among the several innovations that FairVote advocates is ranked-choice voting, which would allow voters to rank several candidates instead of picking just one.
“You put your favorite — your first choice — number one,” Novoselic explains to ABC Radio. “Then you have, like, ‘Well, you know, I could live with this person,’ and you put them as your number-two choice. And then third or fourth choice, maybe there’s somebody you vote for, or maybe not. Maybe you don’t want to vote at all.”
Overall, the goal of ranked-choice voting is to give voters more freedom and agency, which Novoselic says will lead to the election of more moderate candidates, as opposed to voting for one of two deeply polarized parities. He also rejects the idea that ranked-choice voting is too complicated — after all, it’s essentially the same system the Oscars use to choose the Best Picture.
“We rank things all the time: what’s our most favorite thing, who’s our most favorite candidate, who’s our second-most favorite candidate?” Novoselic says. “So…it’s really simple for voters.”
Of the many things FairVote hopes to fix about our electoral process, the idea of voter fraud or a rigged election is not something that they’re worried about, despite what one candidate in particular is saying.
“We need to be vigilant against fraud, we can’t just be lax and say it’ll never happen,” Novoselic tells ABC Radio. “But I don’t see it happening.”
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