Green Party's Stein Calls For 'Ranked Choice Voting' Election Reform To End Spoiler Panic

Former US presidential nominee for the Green Party Jill Stein told Sputnik that the United States needs to implement election reform through Ranked Choice Voting

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 02nd July, 2019) Former US presidential nominee for the Green Party Jill Stein told Sputnik that the United States needs to implement election reform through Ranked Choice Voting.

Ranked Choice Voting is an electoral system that lets voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. The candidate with the majority of the first-preference votes is declared the winner.

"Right now I'm very interested in liberating our political system because right now it's very constrained behind money and corrupt media and so on," Stein said on Monday. "We badly need a simple reform called Ranked Choice Voting, which the state of Maine recently passed. It's due to be voted on as referendum in 2020 in my home state of Massachusetts and many other states are looking at this also. It basically ends the spoiler panic."

The former presidential candidate said the Rank Choice Voting method would encourage more individuals to cast a vote.

Stein argued that some 100,000,000 Americans are not voting for lack of real political representation.

"A simple reform gets rid of the spoiler hysteria which has shut down public dialogue right now. We're in this era of McCarthyism which is creating a new Cold War both against Russia and China and Iran and anybody else," Stein said. "Along with that is also a lock down on the press and censorship and the demonizing of independent political parties and political opposition.

Stein was the Green Party's candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections but it sounds like she has no plans for 2020.

"I can say for certain not this cycle," Stein said when asked about entering the US presidential race in 2020. "At some point I will run for office, I'm not sure which office I'll run for or when that will be."