| Brian Burns | kiiitv.com |
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Ranked choice voting bills will soon be voted on by the legislature.
Such a voting method would eliminate the need for expensive runoff elections, and it could have saved the city nearly $200,000 last year.
Change the voting landscape
Texas A&M University-Kingsville political science professor Travis Braidwood said such a system could change the voting landscape.
“Take like Ross Perot, 1992, a Texan, ran against Bill Clinton and H.W. Bush. Bush won and a lot of people think that if it wasn’t for Ross Perot running, H.W. Bush would have won that election because Ross Perot siphoned off some of those,” he said. “And so that’s one of the big arguments too is that you don’t have these so called spoiler candidates.”
Harriet Wasserstrum of Ranked Choice Voting for Texas says that another important factor to consider is cost.
“Since you don’t have to hold a second runoff election some months later, then the Texas taxpayer wind up not having to pay for runoff elections,” she said.