Columnist

OTHERS SAY: This is no way to pick a president

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.

This is not 2016, when Trump benefited from an overstuffed primary field that included Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie (yep, him again) and Ted Cruz. The entertaining guy with a flair for ginning up the base and saying the outrageous things got just enough votes to take state after state.

Still, it would be far better if the primaries, which start early next year, used ranked-choice vote-counting systems so that anti-Trump Republicans don't effectively throw their votes away by splitting them among a half dozen or more candidates.

The state GOP primaries are a hodgepodge; some are winner-take-all, meaning the candidate who gets the most votes captures all the delegates. Some are proportional, and some are mixed. However you slice it, a betting man at this point would be wise to wager Trump will become the nominee.

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