I had great hopes for the Libertarian Party in the 2018 elections.

The old parties had been shrinking for years and becoming shrill in their death throes: the Republicans were increasingly the party of Donald Trump, and the Democrats were morphing into the party of Bernie Sanders. The rising share of independents proved that they no longer met the needs of a great many voters. 

On Nov. 6, my hopes were dashed. The LP did not have a good day, including with the “bellwether” candidates who were running real and full-time races.

What happened?

It turns out that the bitter state of American politics, which we Libertarians thought would put us in the unexpected position of being the adults in the room, hurt us.  In an atmosphere of hyper-partisanship, tactical voting – voting against a particularly distasteful outcome – dominates, even among unaffiliateds (who, despite their name, usually lean one direction or the other).

So, from the standpoint of the 57% of Americans who tell Gallup they want a viable third party (a great many of whom are independents), we appear to be in a death loop: The old parties shrink and become more partisan. This disgusts a large number of voters, many of whom become independent. But at voting time, partisanship means that no individual will risk a “wasted vote” and the alternatives to the two-party status quo get crushed.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

How do we break out of this? Well, it won’t be easy but there is one change that would greatly help and it appears to be gaining momentum. It is called ranked choice voting, or “RCV” for short.

Our current system, in which you can only vote for a single candidate, encourages tactical voting and virtually guarantees that there are only two parties. RCV allows you to choose multiple candidates, meaning that you can name your preferred candidate as your first choice and your “lesser of two evils” candidate as a second choice.

If your preferred candidate does not win by gaining more than 50% of the votes, then your second choice comes into play. This means that you can express your true preference – perhaps for a third party or an independent candidate – without running the risk of a wasted vote if he or she does not win. The incentive to vote tactically greatly drops.

And there are additional benefits. Since candidates have to appeal not only to their own bases of support (in order to get those first-choice rankings) but also to other voters (to gather those potentially important fallback votes), RCV promotes civility. This is why the Economist magazine has recently referred to RCV as “a simple reform [that] might fix America’s dysfunctional politics.” 

A change like this may seem unrealistic, but it isn’t. RCV is used nationwide in several advanced countries (such as Ireland, New Zealand and Australia). In the USA, multiple cities use RCV and in 2016 Maine became the first state to adopt it for elections for U.S. Congress, the governor and the state legislature. Bills to create RCV have been introduced in 19 states with the support of multiple lobbying groups. It is frequently used for elections in universities, which means a generation is growing up used to the method.

The big impediment to this change is the entrenched old parties, which benefit from the current broken system. This is why activists are taking it directly to the voters, including in places like Aurora here in Colorado. 

The growth of independents shows that voters want change. The struggles of the Libertarian Party, the oldest and largest third party, show the difficulty of achieving this within our current system. Even if you don’t share my “big-L” libertarian sentiments, we can still hopefully agree on the “small-l” libertarian ideal of choice.

When activists bring the opportunity to your neighborhood, be sure to support RCV.

Roger Barris, an investor and entrepreneur from Evergreen, was the Libertarian Party candidate in the race for Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District in 2018.