Wrote this one for my friends in the Pacific Northwest who have Approval Voting and/or Ranked Choice Voting measures on the ballot this November. Done correctly, both reforms can empower the electorate to vote for better environmental policies without inherently favoring one party over the other.
In environmental terms, the best way to win the “approval” of a sufficiently large coalition is through protecting the many from pollution instead of allowing a few to enrich themselves through polluting.
By making candidates compete to be voters’ top-two or top-three pick, ranked choice voting similarly requires elected officials to pull together larger winning coalitions that prefer greener policies. When built on a preexisting foundation of voting rights and ballot access, both approval and ranked choice voting put fire under the feet of elected officials to do the right thing for the environment — or else risk being voted out.
Read more at The Revelator.