The Maine Supreme Judicial Court is going to be deciding on whether Maine will move forward with ranked-choice voting in November or if it will need to face a voter referendum following a signature drive. Whether it survives or not, it should be made clear: Ranked-choice voting is an abomination.
The premise of ranked-choice voting is to allow voters to support parties outside of Democrats or Republicans without “wasting” their vote. If you want to vote for the Green Party candidate, you can do that, but if he or she finishes last, then your backup vote can be counted for the Democratic candidate. It’s also premised on forcing candidates to win a majority, rather than a plurality, of votes cast in their race.
But ranked-choice voting is a failure on its own terms. Instead of allowing smaller parties to garner more support, it encourages voters to still funnel their votes to one of the major parties. In Maine, for example, a Green Party voter is encouraged to throw a backup vote to Sara Gideon, the Democratic challenger to Susan Collins. Since the Green Party will never win a notable statewide election, all ranked-choice voting accomplishes in this scenario is another vote in the bucket for Democrats in a crucial Senate race.
While support for ranked-choice voting is more prevalent among Democrats, the same would apply for Republicans looking to bleed votes from the Libertarian or Constitution Party without being their primary option. The two major parties should be trying to win over voters, not get rewarded for being their second (or third) option.
More importantly, ranked-choice voting violates the principle of “one person, one vote” and punishes voters who support a candidate rather than oppose one. To use the Maine example again, a Collins supporter would be using his or her vote for Collins. Someone who simply wants Collins defeated could end up using his or her vote for Green candidate Lisa Savage and then for Gideon.
In 2018, Maine congressman Bruce Poliquin lost despite winning 46.3% of the vote because of backup votes for his opponent, Jared Golden. A single vote for Poliquin was the most common ranking in that race.
There are plenty of odd election methods, from top-two runoffs to jungle primaries, but ranked-choice voting is a terrible idea in theory and in practice. Voters should not be given multiple votes counted in the same race, and our political parties should not be rewarded for being voters’ second or third choice.
