Most people have never heard of ranked choice voting before. It’s a system in which voters rank candidates before an election. If no candidate gets 50% according to voters’ first choices, then the voters’ second choice is taken into account to decide the winner.
For example, pretend one candidate receives 42% of the vote, another gets 41%, and a third candidate gets the rest. No candidate reaches 50%+1 needed to win the election outright. In many states, the top two candidates would go to a runoff election in which voters could clearly choose between the two. But, ranked choice voting has a different process. In those systems, the third candidate’s votes are thrown out, and their votes are redistributed for the voters’ second-choice preferences.
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It’s hard not to be confused. In areas that implement ranked choice voting, state and local officials will have to educate the electorate on how to fill out a ranked choice ballot. Many voters never quite get it, and they suffer for it. But here’s the worst part of ranked choice voting: Voters are denied the right to vote for one of two finalists in the head-to-head race. In ranked choice, voters never get to vote in a real race between the two final candidates. This system forces voters to vote in hypothetical and fictional contests. This is real vote denial, not the imaginary kind.
Ranked choice voting also ultimately protects establishment candidates with high name recognition. Consider Alaska. In 2020, the state passed a ballot measure to enact ranked choice voting. Project Veritas caught incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) campaign staff taking credit for changing to ranked choice voting to help her reelection.
Josiah Nash, Murkowski’s campaign interior coordinator was caught on camera by Project Veritas saying, “Between you and me, Ballot Measure 2 was actually created — I think it was created for two reasons. No. 1, it was created because there were people in this state who wanted to see a better system, but they also wanted Lisa to get reelected.” The senator’s campaign coordinator, Emma Ashlock, said that “while we were working on Ballot Measure 2 and voting for Ballot Measure 2, we had Sen. Murkowski in mind the whole time.”
Lastly, ranked choice voting encourages political parties to run decoy candidates in an effort to thwart a legitimate challenger. Imagine a politician who has had a long career in office, and some old policy decisions haunt the politician with the base against a credible opponent from the other party. To help the incumbent candidate win, his or her political party props up single-issue independent candidates to get the party’s wandering base to the polls so he or she can snatch them up in the second or later rounds.
Now that you know the dangers of ranked choice voting, I’m sure you’re wondering where is this happening. Utah and Virginia created frameworks for local offices to be elected by ranked choice. Alaska and Maine are using the practice for some state and federal contests. This November, there are ballot initiatives in Nevada and Portland about implementing ranked choice voting. It could be coming to your state soon. The only states that have a law banning ranked choice voting are Florida and Tennessee.
Every state should ban ranked choice voting. It is the real vote denial.
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J. Christian Adams is the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
