There is a fair way to ensure third-party candidates don't 'spoil' the US election | David Daley

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his presidential campaign and is supporting Donald Trump, partly because he did not want to be a spoilsport in the contested swing states. Unfortunately, the “spoilsport problem” of third parties will not disappear with him.

Three staunch independents and third-party candidates remain: progressive activist Cornel West, libertarian Chase Oliver and Jill Stein of the Green Party. They could still make the difference: The White House is likely to be won only with narrow majorities in seven swing states, as was the case in 2016 and 2020.

The next president should not be chosen based on whether Stein earns 0.4% or 0.2% in Michigan, or whether Oliver earns 1.1% or 0.8% in the libertarian-friendly states of Georgia and Arizona. But under our current system, that is entirely possible.

We need a modern solution that recognizes that third parties are here to stay, but also that a nation whose guiding principle is majority rule deserves winners who receive more than 50% of the votes of their fellow Americans. The best solution to the pressing “spoiler” problem – which we have been debating exhaustively since Ross Perot's candidacy in 1992 – is ranked choice voting (RCV).

Two states – Maine and Alaska – have already adopted this common-sense, nonpartisan method for fairer results and will use RCV to vote for president in the fall. Others should follow suit. RCV has many advantages, but the most important is that it gives voters a chance to rank the candidates, avoiding the spoiler effect that occurs in any race with more than two candidates.

An RCV election works similarly to a runoff election. If someone wins a majority of voters' first-choice votes, they win – just like in any other election. If not, the last-place finishers are eliminated one by one and the second-choice votes of their supporters come into play to determine a majority winner.

In other words, a Democrat in Michigan who wants a different approach to Gaza could safely put West or Stein first and Kamala Harris second. A conservative in the Sun Belt who believes the national debt has grown too quickly under Trump could put Oliver first and the former president second. They could make their voices heard without fear that their vote would elect someone who they think might do worse on the issue they care most about.

Despite our political nuances and the increasing number of registered independents, the spoiler problem continues to be the prism through which every third-party candidacy is viewed. Kennedy never seemed likely to win, but pundits spent months racking their brains over whether he got more votes from the Democrats or the Republican Party. It's no surprise that serious independent candidates or anti-Trump conservatives like Larry Hogan and Chris Christie declined calls to run this year, since such a candidacy would be reduced to a question of who they would “siphon” votes from.

It's too early to tell what impact Kennedy's resignation will have on the race. His support has waned in recent weeks, but no matter how his supporters split up, the most competitive states remain extremely close.

As of August 21, Harris is ahead by 1.2% in Arizona, 1.6% in Pennsylvania, and 0.2% in North Carolina. Trump has a 0.8% lead in Georgia. Any of the remaining third-party candidates could easily exceed the lead in battleground states.. This is not only true in Florida in 2000, when George W. Bush won the Electoral College by 537 votes – a margin far exceeded by Ralph Nader's electors. In Wisconsin in 2020, libertarian Jo Jorgensen and conservative-leaning independents received more than twice the vote margin between Joe Biden and Trump.

It's easy to imagine something similar this year, perhaps even an election night in 2024, where the Electoral College race is neck and neck. Harris and Trump each have 251 electoral votes. Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin remain too close to predict a winner; they are each only a handful of votes apart. A tense nation awaits the verdict.

Wouldn't the result have more legitimacy if everyone knew that the electoral votes in these states went to a winner who received more than 50 percent of the votes cast?

Kennedy may be gone, but third-party candidates aren't going away. And they shouldn't be forced to step down, either. We can adapt to that reality, or we can dig our heels in, repeat that tired debate, blame Ralph Nader and Jill Stein for everything forever and ever, and — at a time when the country feels increasingly polarized — risk electing a president without a majority in the key states, which would leave us even more divided than we already are.

There is no magic formula for all the ailments of our civic spirit. However, the way out of this toxicity could begin with remembering the values ​​that most of us hold dear: more individual freedom of choice is good, each of us should be heard, and majorities must decide. Ranked choice voting makes this possible.