Ranked Choice Voting Complicates Elections and Disenfranchises Voters, Critics Say

Proponents say the process gives voters more say in election outcomes

Zoe Buck, 14 months old, checks out an empty voting booth as her mother, Julie Buck (L), votes at the Alaska Zoo polling place in Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 4, 2014. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Proponents of ranked choice voting (RCV) say it gives voters more choices and decreases campaign attacks because candidates are trying to appeal to a broader base.

But Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project, said while it is objectively true that RCV gives voters more choices, the more important question should be, does RCV improve elections?

It’s one thing to rank five candidates on one ballot, but when there are five candidates for multiple races on one ballot, it raises significant issues, Mr. Snead said.

“You’re making voting more complex by increasing the informational burden in order to be able to participate because now you don’t just have to know about one or two candidates—the major party candidates in the election—now you have to know about four or five candidates,” Mr. Snead told The Epoch Times.

Voters must then weigh each candidate and their platforms against one another and come up with ways to rank them, he added.

According to Ranked Choice Education Association, RCV is a voting method that requires a voter to rank candidates in order of preference.

If one candidate gets at least 51 percent in the first round of the votes, he or she wins. But if no one gets a majority, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate as their first choice will have their votes counted for their 2nd choice. This process continues until a winner gets 51 percent or more of the votes.

Will Mantell is a spokesperson for FairVote, an organization that promotes RCV. He said Americans are used to ranking and find it easy to do.

“It’s no surprise that everywhere ranked choice voting is used, voters across all demographic groups understand it and like it. For example, 95 percent of New York City voters, 92 percent of Minneapolis voters, and 85 percent of Alaska voters say that ranking candidates is simple,” Mr. Mantell told The Epoch Times in an email.

To Mr. Mantell’s point, 74 percent of New York City voters backed a referendum to implement ranked choice voting in 2019.

In one of its videos, FairVote explains RCV by comparing ranking candidates to choosing what to eat for dinner and choosing ice cream flavors for dessert.

But Mr. Snead is skeptical.

“Choosing candidates for office is different than choosing flavors of ice cream,“ he said. ”Everyone knows what chocolate is. Most people don’t know who five candidates are in a down-ballot race when they’ve never heard of most of those people before.”

Only Georgia and Louisiana require a runoff—a second election held if neither candidate meets the required threshold—in general elections, and 10 other states conduct primary runoffs, while all 50 states hold some type of primary.

Better for Primaries

Some Republicans believe that RCV can be useful in a primary or other nominating process, such as when Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was running in 2021.

“While some have legitimate concerns about using RCV in general elections when you have a two-party system, using it in a primary makes a lot of sense,” Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan GOP, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “The purpose of primaries is to pick the strongest candidate with the broadest base of support. RCV helps do that.”

The Virginia Republican Party used RCV with paper ballots in its nominating convention for the 2021 election, which included the races for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.

“Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares swept statewide after winning RCV primaries in 2021. Previously, Republicans had failed to win a single statewide office since 2009,” said Mr. Mantell.

Ranked choice voting scores for the lieutenant governor's race in the Virginia Republican Party's nominating convention in 2021. (Courtesy of FairVote)

Ranked choice voting scores for the attorney general's race in the Virginia Republican Party's nominating convention in 2021. (Courtesy of FairVote)

Ranked choice voting scores for the governor's race in the Virginia Republican Party's nominating convention in 2021. (Courtesy of FairVote)

“The presidential primary offers a unique opportunity for our party to hear from our brightest stars and future leaders. Using RCV allows for candidates to stay in the race longer than usual,” said Mr. Anuzis.

FairVote claims RCV is better for democracy because it ensures the majority is heard.

Even if voters don’t get their first choice, with RCV, voter preferences do influence the outcome of the election because their subsequent choices will determine a winner, ensure that military voters have backup candidates if their top choice drops out, and save money on primaries and runoffs, FairVote says.

FairVote

Mr. Mantell told The Epoch Times that his organization is nonpartisan, working to make elections fairer. However, Mr. Snead said FairVote is funded by the “who’s who” of left-wing donors.

Some of FairVote’s donors include nongovernmental organizations such as Bridge Alliance, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

FairVote, a major proponent of RCV, says it is not just supported by Democrats and progressives but by many Republicans as well.

“We’re proud to be supported by individuals and organizations from across the nation and across the political spectrum,” Mr. Mantell said.

Mr. Snead criticized activists for lobbying for a ballot measure to promote RCV in Idaho, despite the fact that the state Legislature passed a bill to ban RCV in April.

Mr. Snead said his organization promotes policies that make voting easy and cheating difficult and that allow only lawful U.S. citizens to vote.

Honest Elections Project began as part of the 85 Fund, a conservative legal organization formerly known as the Judicial Education Project, according to Influence Watch.

Cost of Educating Voters

“In the short run, you also have to keep in mind that changing elections requires educated voters, and jurisdictions that are adopting RCV are spending enormous sums of money to educate voters on how to cast ballots,” Mr. Snead said.

“Alaska, for instance, we don’t know exactly how much they spent, but I’ve heard figures of approximately $3 million to educate Alaskans on how to vote in a rank choice election. In New York City, approximately $15 million to educate voters,” Mr. Snead continued.

One estimate from the Alaskan government (pdf) puts the initial cost of RCV at a little over $800,000, with another $1.5 million to educate voters. Maine estimates its initial cost to be close to half a million, which does not include voter education initiatives.

Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services estimated that implementing RCV for all of Montgomery County—the state’s most populous county—would cost $1.2 million the first year, and then about a quarter million in subsequent years.

A survey conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures found that among responding jurisdictions, the average cost of switching to RCV was $154,759, but actual costs can be more accurately estimated according to the population of a specific locality.

FairVote claims that RCV increases civility by eliminating negative ad campaigns, as candidates have to appeal to a broader base to get their second-choice vote, but Mr. Snead said this doesn’t hold true because politicians get dark money groups to run these negative ads instead.

“This message of positivity sort of obscures the fact that that’s a surface-deep thing, and you’re actually inviting more dark money into elections to run the negative ads and do the stuff that you need to do to win an election,” said Mr. Snead.

RCV Can Prolong Vote Count

Another concern about RCV is the time it takes to count ballots, which could lead to a lack of confidence in the results.

Mr. Snead said states have adopted various policies over the last 20 years that have made voting more complex and more drawn out, with final tabulations taking weeks and even months.

“If we want prompt and accurate results, I think that we need to be making some policy choices that get us closer to having ballots in on Election Day, prompt and accurate tabulation, and of course rejecting RCV,” Mr. Snead told John Solomon, editor-in-chief of Just the News, during a June 28 interview for Real America’s Voice.

During Alaska’s initial RCV election, the state’s Division of Elections opted to withhold preliminary round-by-round tallies during the 15-day post-election ballot return window, citing concerns about confusing the public, according to the Honest Elections Project.

In the 2009 Minneapolis mayoral race, the election office estimated that tabulation for 70,000 voters would take 37 eight-hour shifts with 102 election officials working, the Foundation for Government Accountability reported.

In addition, the results of the June 22, 2021, Democrat primary for New York City mayor were not known for 14 days because of widespread absentee voting and the need to run multiple rounds of RCV tabulation.

Arlington County, Virginia, used RCV for the first time in June for its county board election.

Patch conducted a nonscientific online survey in Arlington County from June 26 through June 28, with 250 respondents. The survey found that nearly 61 percent of respondents were against using RCV in a general election.

Many respondents said they had a hard time understanding the tabulation process for RCV and think it would work better for a single election rather than the November general elections.

“I understood the voting process, but the tabulation process was a mess,” one survey respondent commented.

The Arlington County Board collected feedback about RCV from June 20 through July 5. Once all the feedback is collected and analyzed, the board will vote to decide if RCV will be used in the upcoming November general elections.

Catherine Gunsalus, director of state advocacy for Heritage Action, told Mr. Solomon that RCV presents challenges to hand recounts and makes the process dependent on a machine.

However, Mr. Mantell told The Epoch Times that RCV results can be hand counted.

The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center says the hand-count process is more complicated and time-consuming with RCV, but that it can be done.

Voting booths in Arlington, Va., on March 3, 2020. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Both Parties Object

Mr. Anuzis said concerns over RCV are not a partisan issue.

Both Democrats and Republicans have voiced concerns that RCV ballots could confuse or deter voters, possibly disenfranchising groups of people who aren’t familiar with enough of the candidates to rank them properly.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a progressive Democrat, vetoed a 2019 bill that would have brought RCV to California, saying the process led to greater confusion in the jurisdictions where it was used.

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP in New York, also criticized New York’s ranked choice voting system while urging the New York City Board of Elections to repeal the policy.

“Ranked choice voting is not beneficial to minorities. It’s voter suppression,” Dukes told the New York Post in 2021.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Politico in 2020 that he opposed ranked choice voting, saying that RCV disenfranchises minority voters.

Many Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have said photo ID requirements make voting more complicated and will discourage voting, but RCV is far more complicated, said Trent England, executive director of Save Our States, during the June 28 program with Mr. Solomon.

“There was a disproportionate impact against minority voters. Particularly, black voters in New York were far more likely to be disenfranchised by the system,” Mr. England said, referring to the 2021 mayoral primary in New York City.

Another guest on Mr. Solomon’s program—Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation—discussed the concept of “ballot exhaustion,” which can occur when a voter’s choices are not taken into consideration in the final rounds of tallying because they didn’t rank every candidate.

In New York City’s 2021 mayoral primary, voters were supposed to rank 10 candidates, Mr. von Spakovsky said.

“Because nobody got a majority of the vote, they had to go through eight rounds of vote counting and throwing out people’s ballots,“ he said. ”So many voters in New York did not rank all the candidates that by the time they got to the eighth round, they had thrown out 140,000 ballots.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a press conference on gun violence at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York City on June 26, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Jurisdictions Using RCV

Maine adopted RCV in 2016 for state and federal primaries. It was then used in 2018 for all congressional elections, with the state later broadening its use to presidential elections in 2020. Maine will use RCV for the 2024 presidential election.

Alaska began using RCV in 2022, starting with a special election in August in which Mary Peltola, a Democrat, defeated former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, and Nick Begich, also a Republican, for an open U.S. congressional seat.

In November, Nevada voters approved a ballot measure changing the state’s election system to a nonpartisan primary in which the top five candidates advance to a ranked choice general election.

Nevada will use RCV for all state and federal general elections except for presidential contests.

More than 50 cities use RCV in local elections, including Minneapolis, which used it for 22 city offices and some park board and board of taxation seats. New York City uses RCV for some primary and special elections. Santa Fe, New Mexico, has used RCV to determine mayoral, city council, and municipal judge elections since 2018.

More jurisdictions have tried to implement RCV in recent ballot initiatives, including 9 cities and the state of Nevada. The measure failed in two cases.

The United States is very divided over major issues, including how elections are run, but the tension cannot be eased with superficial solutions like RCV, Mr. Snead said.

“Arguing that you can change the way that people cast ballots in order to change the fundamental decisions that are all throughout our politics today is like saying you'll cure cancer by putting a Band-Aid on a scratch,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense. There are deeper ideological and political concerns that we’re working through as a nation right now.”