How not to pick a president: Splintering primaries help extreme candidates like Trump; ranked choice rewards centrists

Chris Christie’s running. So’s Mike Pence. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And Sen. Tim Scott, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and, in case you haven’t heard, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And — oops, we almost forgot — a guy named Donald J. Trump, who was just a dishonest New York City real estate promoter before he became the 45th president of the United States (and the 10th president to lose his reelection bid). This is not 2016, when Trump benefited from an overstuffed primary field that included Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie (yep, him a...