With cries of “make elections fairer,” advocates are pushing for ranked-choice voting as a solution to the rampant partisanship and polarization that currently plague the United States. Their model, touted as a democratic innovation, undermines the democratic principles of our electoral process and, ironically, often results in the disenfranchisement of voters.
Ranked-choice voting differs from traditional election models in that voters do not pick one candidate for each office. Instead, they rank all the candidates running for each office based on their preferences.
Instead of broader representation, ranked-choice voting causes chaos, uncertainty, and a loss of faith that a person’s vote matters.
Under ranked-choice voting, if a single candidate is ranked first on more than 50% of ballots, that candidate automatically wins. But if no candidate receives at least 50% of support as the first preference, then the lowest-ranked candidates in the race are removed and the voters who chose them as their first option are then reassigned to the remaining candidates based on those voters’ second and perhaps even third preferences, depending on the number of candidates in the race.
Imagine if the 2024 presidential election were conducted using ranked-choice voting in a swing state whose outcome will decide the winner of the Electoral College. Under this hypothetical scenario, let’s say that 45% of voters choose Donald Trump as their first preference, 44% choose Kamala Harris, and 11% choose Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Under the current system, Trump would win. With ranked-choice voting, the outcome would be decided by voters’ second preferences.
Because Kennedy received the lowest support, he would be eliminated from our hypothetical race. The voters who picked him as their first choice would then have their votes reassigned to Trump or Harris based on their second preference. If significantly more Kennedy voters list Harris as their second choice, Harris would win the race, even though Trump had more first-preference votes.
Most elections still use the traditional model, but ranked-choice voting has gained remarkable support in recent years. “As of the 2022 elections,” the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center reports, “RCV has been adopted in 62 jurisdictions,” including statewide in Alaska and Maine and in large cities such as San Francisco and New York City.
Some Americans are attracted to ranked-choice voting because it empowers people to choose the candidate they like the most, regardless of whether the candidate is likely to win the election. It also stops unpopular candidates with small but passionate bases from winning crowded races in which support is spread out among many candidates.
Disenfranchising voters
Despite its advantages, the downsides of ranked-choice voting are greater and should concern voters and policymakers supporting such a system.
For example, under many ranked-choice systems, if a voter fails to rank all candidates — which happens often because of confusion or laziness — his or her ballot could be “exhausted,” a kind term for throwing out people’s votes. It’s nothing less than ballot erasure and disenfranchisement caused by voters confused by the rules.
This is not a theoretical concern but a reality that silences the voices of those who have taken great care to exercise their right to vote.
For example, in Maine’s 2018 federal election, 9,000 voters (6% of ballots) were not counted due to voter confusion or because their ballots were exhausted or left blank in the ranking process, according to the Center for Election Confidence. Keep in mind, many elections are won or lost by fewer than six percentage points.
That’s not the only problem with ranked-choice voting, either. The Cato Institute found that ranked-choice voting lowers voter participation and increases ballot errors. Citing Cato’s work, the Foundation for Government Accountability noted “RCV jurisdictions have on average eight percent lower voter turnout rates than non-RCV jurisdictions” during odd or off-cycle election years.
In a time when rebuilding trust in the American election system is paramount, these outcomes are the exact opposite of what we need. How can we expect to restore faith in our elections when we adopt a system that confuses voters and leads to widespread disenfranchisement?
Proponents of ranked-choice voting argue that it allows for a wider array of ideologies to be represented in politics. However, studies, including those by the Cato Institute, show that this perceived diversity of candidate choice often results from voter confusion and unfamiliarity with candidates rather than genuine consensus. Instead of broader representation, ranked-choice voting causes chaos, uncertainty, and a loss of faith that a person’s vote matters.
Ranked-choice voting is inherently unfair, because it effectively gives ideological and political minorities supporting unpopular candidates two or more votes in races where no candidate earns more than 50% of the vote.
After Maine’s 2018 congressional race saw Democrat Jared Golden defeat incumbent GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin — despite Poliquin ending the first round of voting with more votes — one commenter put it quite succinctly: “That’s crazy. The guy with the highest votes loses???”
A left-wing dream
Although ranked-choice voting is always presented by its proponents as nonpartisan, the truth is that it’s now being used by many on the left as part of an effort to undermine districts where conservatives hold much of the power. That’s why many of the groups pushing for ranked-choice voting just happen to support left-wing policies.
For example, left-leaning organizations FairVote.org and Rock the Vote are lobbying hard to convince lawmakers to adopt the voting scheme. These groups and their allies support policies such as a national popular vote, open primaries, and universal voter registration — all of which are widely favored by the left and disfavored by conservatives. Their wholehearted support for ranked-choice voting is telling.
Thankfully, some states are waking up to the dangers. Ten states have banned ranked-choice voting, recognizing the threat it poses to election integrity. It’s a step in the right direction, but more states need to follow suit to safeguard their election processes.
Ranked choice voting eliminates the voices of countless voters and prevents “we the people” from exercising our rights by causing endless unnecessary confusion.
One person, one vote. That is how our system has worked for two centuries. Why change it now?
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