Gordon Weil’s arguments against ranked-choice voting in Maine (Maine Voices, Dec. 13) are not convincing.

Furthermore, his gratuitously snide comments (calling the concept a “flavor of the month” and comparing it to a TV game show) insult the Mainers who have thought long and hard about the problem of minority-elected officials and the potential for ranked-choice voting as a solution.

And yes, Mr. Weil, there is a problem, as more and more Mainers of all political stripes come to believe that having minority-elected officials is not a good thing, especially in cases where those officials do not have the confidence of Maine’s moderate center.

Weil called ranked-choice voting advocates would-be “philosopher kings” who “don’t trust democracy.” It seems to me that it is rather Mr. Weil who doesn’t think Mainers have the intelligence to understand the ranked-choice voting procedure and who grandly proposes a “let them eat cake” runoff alternative that would cost strapped Maine municipalities hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Weil also claims that the proponents of ranked-choice voting “want to see the end of political parties.”

No, sir, we want better parties and better candidates, and it seems to me that the parties themselves would serve us better with a ranked-choice nominating procedure that would put an end to their recent habit of nominating candidates from their extremist fringes.

Charles Graham

Camden