Are large primaries an argument for ranked choice voting or runoffs?

| Marshall Zelinger | KUSA.com |

COLORADO, USA — With wide-open Republican primaries in Colorado's three Republican-held congressional districts, the next representatives may be picked by primary voters and confirmed in a less-than-competitive general election. That means whoever primary voters pick to be the next Republican nominee may be opposed by three-quarters of the voters.

“This is a good example of what I have foreseen as a problem,” election administration expert Amber McReynolds said. McReynolds is a former Denver Elections Division director and a proponent of ranked choice voting.

More than half of the voters didn’t want that candidate

“In a primary, when you got a large field, people can advance to a general election with 20, 30% of the vote, or less than 50, which means that more than half of the voters that participated didn’t want that candidate,” McReynolds said. “In essence, we are allowing 20% of a political party’s primary to determine who the representative is.”

“[RCV] ensures that a candidate would get over 50% support,” McReynolds said.

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