You can call me old-fashioned. You can call me stubborn or stuck in my ways. I am 75, and I moved my family and business to Maine in 1980 and immediately got hit with the fact that Maine was 20 years behind all the other states. The state has improved thanks to people from “away” that have moved here, but it is still playing catch up.

Now all of a sudden Maine wants to be the first state in the nation to have ranked-choice voting. What is wrong with the person who gets the most votes wins? Why do candidates have to be ranked and the votes moved around until somebody is the winner? I don’t care if the person wins by 10 votes or 1,000 votes, that is the voters’ choice and the one with the most wins.

The idea of the ranked voting is as confusing as the first article you have to vote on when you go into the booth June 12. The question should have been written as such: Vote” “yes” if you want ranked voting and “no” if you want to leave it as it is.

You will see what I am referring to when you read the question. It is very easy to vote the wrong way because of how it is worded.

Sure, there are a lot of candidates and that does spread out the votes, but that’s how it is. Just as in high school football the team with the most points wins, and in a 10K race the person that finishes first wins. The system is not broken, so don’t try to fix it — just leave it alone.

Dominick Rinaldi Sr.

Skowhegan


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