FROM CHAD TO WORSE: Letting people rank their choices might have kept Trump from winning the Republican nomination.
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FROM TIME to time during this turbulent election season, it has seemed that the Republican standard-bearer might tell his staff they’re fired and return to New York real estate. It’s a world Donald Trump understands—a world where losing a billion dollars can be a good thing. Suppose he’d done that. Or suppose he had become sick or disabled. (There were risks on the other side too; pneumonia could have taken out Hillary Clinton.)
If a candidate disappears midway through an election, what is the fairest way to replace him or her? You might argue that the voters’ second choice should take over. But we have no way of knowing who the second choice in a given election would be—an inevitable consequence of our single-vote system.