I have decades of experience with a system of ranked-choice voting in a nonpolitical world where it has proven its worth.

I work at one of Maine’s family practice residencies and was its director for almost 17 years. The National Residency Matching Program annually matches virtually all U.S. senior medical school students and hospital postgraduate residency programs, which train doctors for three-plus years after medical school. It reliably allows both student and residency to get their top-most possible choice. And that’s what Question 5, ranked-choice voting, will do for us with elected officials.

If your first choice doesn’t win, then your vote goes to your second choice, and so on until you hit a winner. It’s an election and a run-off all in one. Portland uses it. With it, we avoid office holders elected by a minority, thereby getting more consensus and a more unified electorate.

Dan Onion

Vienna

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