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I was recently watching some political videos about elections and different types of elections that could be implemented and it made me think about how different the USA could be had there been a major political shift that caused a new form of election to take hold in the USA called Ranked Choice.

The idea for it is pretty much you get a ballot and instead of voting for one candidate per position you instead rank them, 1 being you preferred candidate, 2 being your second choice and so on. If a candidate fails to get 50% of the vote, the candidate with the least amount of Rank 1 support is eliminated and the votes from the people who voted for the lowest candidate then are allocated by their 2nd choice and so on, eliminating lower candidates until one candidate remains with 50% of the vote.

While I think this would radically change US politics (debate on whether it would be better or worse notwithstanding) but let's make this a little more specific: What do you think US politics would be like had this form of voting been implemented shortly before, oh, the 1952 US Presidential Election? I pick this date because it marks a major shift in the US, with FDR's legacy starting to fade, the military industrial complex just starting to properly rev up, and malt shops abound (I know, it wasn't as intense as the shows and movies would depict but sue me).

Would the US still be the major power it is today? How would policies be different if more choices for various levels of government (All federal except the Supreme Court) and some (if not most) of the states having this system?
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