“But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena’s help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile, when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilion.” – Homer, Odyssey
Most of us are familiar with the concept of a trojan horse. Derived from Greek mythology, the trojan horse was a giant wooden horse constructed by the Greeks and rolled to the gates of Troy as a concession of defeat during the Trojan War. Unbeknownst to the people of Troy, the Greeks had filled the giant wooden horse with an elite force of soldiers. Under the cover of darkness, this elite force slipped out of the horse and opened the gates to the city, allowing the Greeks to launch a full assault from within while the people of Troy slept.
Today, we often refer to trojan horses in software terms. In this instance, a trojan horse is a piece of malware that we unwittingly but willingly bring into our computers and devices that wreaks havoc on them from within. Similarly, we willingly adopt harmful policies and ideas dressed in a sanitized package with the best intentions, only for those ideas and policies to corrupt us from the inside.
Our political class understands the trojan horse concept well, and they understand that Americans are particularly susceptible to it. Americans are good people at heart, and this leaves the population subject to being taken advantage of. Many proponents of those policies which we most fiercely oppose often believe that the ideas they espouse will lead to a better future, and we all want a better future. We disagree on how it is we arrive there and what a better future looks like, and the political class is all too eager to promote those ideas that best perpetuate their influence.
One recent trojan horse of national conversation is ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting is a system whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference. Rounds of voting proceed, and the bottom vote-getter is eliminated until at least one candidate has reached greater than fifty percent of the votes, thus giving them a majority. In this system, candidates with less support often surpass candidates with more support, as was the case in Alaska’s recent congressional special election.
In Alaska’s recent special election to replace long-time representative, Republican Don Young, dozens of candidates vied for the seat. After the first rounds, three candidates remained, with a republican garnering two of three slots. The third slot went to Democrat Mary Peltola. Because the republicans in the first two slots essentially diluted their share of the vote, that left Democrat Peltola as the winner.
Alaska’s ranked-choice voting was passed as a matter of ballot initiative in 2020, and it was made possible by the campaign of moderate Republican US Senator Lisa Murkowski. Hidden camera footage by media outlet Project Veritas uncovered the push for ranked-choice voting on behalf of Senator Murkowski’s campaign. The reasoning behind it is simple, ranked-choice most benefits the most moderate candidates. This scheme has recently been promoted and failed in states like Missouri, reportedly with the support of moderate Republican Governor Mike Parson.
Having recently successfully escaped a contested primary season here in Idaho, Idaho’s good old boys are up to their same tricks and promoting ranked-choice voting as their next electoral ploy. During the primary, they utilized the captured press to paint their opposition as extremists and appeal to the minority democrats in the state to cross the aisle and crown their guys as sane alternatives. Organized as TakeBackIdaho.com, insiders like former Idaho Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones have begun to headline the papers with calls for ranked-choice voting here at home.
Citing Alaska’s primary results as sensible electoral reform, Jones limps through his recent victory lap and lauds the results of their newly adopted ranked-choice system. I’m not sure on what bizarro planet two candidates of your own party getting leap-frogged by the opposition party is considered a victory. Republicans would do well to immediately dismiss any and all opinions of the nonagenarian and start to defend their own turf. Idaho did go sixty-five percent for Trump, after all.
Subversive electoral schemes like ranked-choice voting are allowed to take root because conservatives have been asleep at the wheel. Most engaged conservatives in red states will reject schemes like this outright, while most liberal democrats in red states will support them outright. The battle for the country’s future falls in the middle, largely with the moderate and uninvested voters. This is why schemes are concocted to appeal to this demographic. The challenge then consists of educating conservatives on why these schemes will be our undoing before we are undone.
Photo by KEMAL HAYIT
- A Season Of Change - November 24, 2025
- A House To Call Home - November 11, 2025
- Restore Smith-Mundt - September 22, 2025
RCV is the only path out of the Uniparty. However, for it to work properly, it needs to be paired with these three things:
1. Closed party primaries
2. Strict Sore Loser laws
3. Only one candidate from each party in the general election
Every failure of RCV can be traced back to the lack of one or more of them.
There are plenty of alternatives to RCV that elevate voices outside of the duopoly. But it would be naive for us to believe that any alternative scheme we create will not have its own playbook for advancing the uniparty. Thanks for the comment!
The problem that everyone is trying to solve is vote splitting. The current standard voting method (Plurality Voting) is notoriously vulnerable to it. The alternative method currently called Ranked Choice Voting (Instant Runoff Voting) is better, but not great, and much more complicated. There are actually other ranked methods, notably Condorcet, that are quite good, but RCV has leftist mindshare.
You’re right about RCV being a Trojan horse. Their end goal is proportional representation.
A better and yet simpler solution to vote splitting is Approval Voting—vote for as many as you like. The winner is the candidate with the highest approval rating. AV can use the current ballots and software. It’s how you’d vote among friends for a restaurant or movie. Each person would just pick one, and they certainly wouldn’t rank the options. Sometimes common sense is actually best.
IMO, AV would be most useful in GOP primaries. In my experience (New Hampshire) the Dems “manage” the primary process and limit the candidates, while the GOP often has had too many candidates, and the vote gets split. This sends a weaker candidate into the general election. We had a real unfortunate case where I was volunteering for a campaign that just ended up being a spoiler….
The problem that we face in Idaho is that voters can remain unaffiliated up until the weeks before the Primary, and thus they hop back and forth and it’s actually the Democratic minority that controls the Republican candidate that advances to the General. At which point they just vote for the Dem. and the Reps. are left with milquetoast. There’s not much you can do about splitters in party primaries, but certainly locking down primaries is a start. One big issue is that Idaho holds their gubernatorial in the off-years from the Presidential election. When this happens, Dems. happily cross over to control the GOP primary by voting as a bloc and advancing the most moderate candidates. To solve this, the gubernatorial and presidential primary should be held in the same year so that Democrats who wish to have a say in national politics must choose their own party and not jump the aisle to control Republican candidates. The problem here is that those who most benefit from the status quo are the same who benefit from RCV, the milquetoast moderates. who are most for sale. Thanks for the comment.
Isn’t Proportional Representation more desirable than both ranked choice and winner take all systems? Don’t we want people to have a say in proportion to their numbers?
In a pure Democracy proportional representation makes sense. Certainly in legislative bodies.
But our system of governance is a Republic, which is a happy medium. Democracies historically subjugate the minority blocs no matter how they’re represented. In our Republic, the localities elect their representatives. What was originally setup that is missing is accountability and a proper adherence to the Constitution. Things like the elastic clause & judicial review and the ignoring the 10th and addition of the 17th Amendment. Thanks for reading.