There’s a good case to be made for ranked-choice voting in NC

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Ranked-choice voting best for NC

Regarding “In NC, unaffiliated candidates at a disadvantage,” (April 5 Opinion):

In Opinion writer Paige Masten’s column on unaffiliated candidates she argued that North Carolina should make it easier for them to appear on the ballot because the state’s large and growing number of unaffiliated voters are often left feeling like they have to choose between the “lesser of two evils.”

But merely increasing the number of candidates won’t reduce that dilemma, as long as N.C. law permits candidates to win with as little as 30% of the vote.

When there are three or more candidates, unless there’s an overwhelming favorite, all voters — affiliated or not — face the same dilemma. Instead of simply voting for the candidate who best represents your views, you must consider whether your choice might enable your least favorite candidate to be elected, even if they earn less than 50% of the vote.

The solution, already used by states as different as Utah and Massachusetts, is ranked-choice voting, where voters rank their preferred candidates.

If no candidate wins a majority of first choices, the one with the fewest votes is eliminated. But their supporters are automatically redistributed to the candidates they ranked second.

This process continues until someone gets more than 50% of all votes cast. It can easily handle a broad slate of candidate choices, without the cost and delay of runoff elections.

Ranked-choice voting doesn’t favor one party over another, or the unaffiliated over party-sponsored candidates. It favors whoever can earn support from a majority. It restores the principle of majority rule to our democracy.

Steven Cardoze, Durham

Minorities and COVID deception

As the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic minority communities must remain mindful and vigilant.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the Old North State Medical Foundation has been assisting the rural eastern North Carolina community by hosting free COVID testing sites, food giveaways, and vaccination events.

In fall 2021, we took on a new way to battle the pandemic — fighting misinformation and disinformation on social media. We wanted to give individuals in rural eastern N.C. the ability to fact-check information through a tool we call TruthCheck Training.

Minority communities struggle to trust information from official sources because of the country’s history of not being truthful with minorities about medical treatment. Nationally, minorities are less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and with low vaccination numbers, minorities have higher COVID mortality rates.

Many factors contribute to this, but we wanted to ensure that misinformation and disinformation on social media would not be a significant one.

Minorities are overwhelmed daily by false claims, “fake news,” and hoaxes surrounding COVID. Unfortunately, many people do not realize how quickly sharing information you have not verified can spread misinformation out of control.

TruthCheck Training gives participants the tools to protect their social media accounts from widespread misinformation. It gives people the tools to be media literate and walks them through an in-depth interactive presentation that informs participants how to read past headlines and “clickbait” and empower themselves with facts.

It helps participants avoid spreading or believing misinformation.

The training covers topics such as media literacy and teaches participants to consider things such as who created a post and how different audiences might interpret and act on its message. The training details steps to take to verify information on social media, including lateral reading, reading upstream, reverse image searches, and reading beyond headlines.

We encourage everybody, no matter how comfortable they are with social media, to take TruthCheck Training. As we enter Minority Health Awareness month, minority communities need to arm themselves with the tool of truth — the most powerful tool of all.

Visit truthcheck.org.

Dr. Johnny Lee Williams

President, Old North State Medical Foundation

Camille Simmons

TruthCheck Influencer

This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 4:30 AM.