The Octonaut

Sorry, you don’t get how it works or how voters behave at all. This isn’t some hypothetical. This works in dozens of other countries, thousands of other elections. You’re hand-wringing about who people choose to vote for. Letting people vote for their preference is literally the point. Completely eliminating the biggest thing stopping Americans from voting for the person they actually want to vote for.

America’s biggest problem is that votes don’t transfer. All this rhetoric that everyone has to weigh in behind the “viable” centrist candidate - consistently drifting right - or “it’s a vote for the Republicans”. And the establishment expects you to vote for that person who can win, their policies don’t matter, so long as they have the best chance of beating the other guy. Republicans are doing this too. Potential third party voters are doing this too.

What?

The opposite of this is true. Assuming you’re not describing a different thing by the same name - an American speciality - ranked choice allows you to vote for the most extreme option as first choice and if/when they are eliminated, your vote is not wasted but assigned to the next most extreme option. How exactly would it boost moderates except in that once the extremes are eliminated, your vote goes to the moderate that you want rather than it failing to oppose the people you don’t want.