States are right to reject ranked-choice voting 

Action in state legislative sessions are proving that ranked-choice voting is as unpopular as ever. 

After last year’s string of losses on state ballot measures, some progressive activists claimed they would fare better with lawmakers than they had with voters. Yet legislatures are not enacting ranked-choice this year — instead, they are banning the convoluted scheme.  

The idea behind ranked-choice voting is to get voters to express “preferences” about multiple candidates, rather than just voting for one. This raises questions about one-person, one-vote, but that’s only the beginning of the problem. The system makes elections more difficult from start to finish, slowing the process and introducing new possibilities for errors and irregularities.  

It starts with the ballot. In a normal election, a voter can vote once for each office. If there are six offices up for election, that means voting for six candidates — one for each office. With a ranked-choice ballot, however, if there are five candidates running for each of those offices, then a voter is supposed to “vote” 30 times, ranking all five candidates for each of the six offices.  

This requires a longer, more complicated ballot with more instructions, more pages and more ways to make mistakes. The process takes longer, which means more ballots are left incomplete. Many voters simply don’t have an opinion about who is their third, fourth or fifth choice in many elections. Yet leaving rankings blank creates the possibility of a ballot being excluded from the final results.  

Counting ranked-choice ballots must be centralized and can only proceed after all ballots are returned and adjudicated. Initially, only first-preference votes are counted. If a candidate has a majority, he or she wins (and the whole ranked-choice process becomes irrelevant). If not, then the least popular candidate is eliminated, ballots with that candidate first are “adjusted” to move up the second preference to be counted as a first preference, and there is a new round of counting. Any of those ballots that have no second preference are eliminated.  

This means that some ballots are counted for the same candidate in every round, while voters who prefer the least popular candidates may be counted for several different candidates as their choices are eliminated. If a voter’s preference is eliminated with no more rankings, then that voter’s ballot is considered “exhausted” and is not included in any further counting or in the final results.  

No wonder voters last fall rejected ballot measures that would have enacted or encouraged ranked-choice voting.  

The states with failed ballot measures were diverse: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Oregon. Only the District of Columbia adopted ranked-choice last year. Voters in Missouri also passed a state constitutional amendment against the practice — making it the 11th state to prohibit ranked-choice voting and related election schemes.  

The momentum against ranked-choice continues this year in state legislative sessions. Already, three more states — Kansas, West Virginia and Wyoming — have banned it. In Georgia, Iowa and North Dakota, bills to ban ranked-choice voting have passed one chamber, and similar bills are pending in at least five more states.  

On the other hand, it does not appear that any states will adopt or significantly expand ranked-choice this year. While some cities and other local governments use it, only Alaska and Maine use ranked-choice statewide. In both states it was implemented for nakedly political reasons.  

In Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s political machine used a four-winner primary election followed by ranked-choice to keep Republicans from replacing her with a more conservative candidate. (A ballot measure to repeal ranked-choice voting there lost by 737 votes last fall.) Maine Democrats wanted ranked-choice to boost the odds of their fractious coalition winning statewide, although a court struck down part of that plan. In both states, Democrats picked up a congressional seat.  

Progressive groups and their donors spent more than $100 million last year pushing ranked-choice voting, massively outspending opponents yet losing nearly everywhere. That trend continues today in state legislatures. Within the next few years, it seems likely that at least half of the states will have banned ranked-choice. Yet no state is likely to join Alaska and Maine, and another repeal measure is likely in Alaska next year.  

It turns out that Americans prefer elections where it is easy to vote, simple to count the votes, and easy to understand and verify the results.   

Trent England is an elections expert and the founder and executive director of Save Our States.