The proponents of ranked-choice voting (RCV) have been saying for years that the U.S. was on the verge of adopting the practice wholesale.
In an RCV system, voters are asked to rank their choices one through four. If no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed based on the loser's second-place, third-place choice, and so on until one candidate gets a majority.
The trend was believed to be unstoppable after Maine, Alaska, and several counties and cities adopted ranked choice voting in the last decade. But 2024 dashed those hopes. Only Washington, D.C., successfully adopted RCV, which was rejected in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada. Primary reforms to make the top four or top two finishers face off in a general election, regardless of party, also failed in South Dakota.
Most voters know that ranked-choice voting won't fix what ails the electoral system. Moreover, RCV favors the elites who have more time to research four or five candidates instead of the two in the current primary system. The system delays the vote count, creates long lines at the precinct as people are supposed to fill out several pages, and is so confusing that many more ballots are disqualified.
Supporters of those changes believe that abolishing partisan primaries and ensuring that general election winners have majority support will shift the equation for successful campaigns. Rather than rewarding only candidates who can appeal to the fringes of the two major parties in low-turnout primaries, an open primary would create more paths for candidates to reach the general election—and winners would have to appeal to the broadest cross-section of voters.
None of those changes have taken place. In fact, in Alaska, 11% of the statewide ballots in 2022 were discarded due to mistakes made by voters trying to fill out the confusing ballots. That's three times the normal rate. More than 15,000 Alaskans had their ballots tossed, with 11,000 votes thrown out because voters only made one choice on their ranked-choice ballot.
Trent England and Jason Snead, co-chairs of the Stop Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition, point out that in many cases, RCV forces voters to vote for their opponent because there aren't four of five candidates to vote for.
Beyond confusion, voters can become frustrated and disillusioned when candidates with fewer first-choice votes prevail. In the Alaska special election, although Republican candidates initially garnered 60 percent of the vote, the Democrat emerged as the winner.
Moreover, ranked-choice elections risk extraordinary delays because ranked-choice voting often guarantees multiple rounds of counting. It took over two weeks to determine the outcome of the Alaskan special election using ranked-choice voting, for example.
This confusion and havoc created by ranked-choice is not confined to Alaska. In Alameda, Calif., election researchers discovered a programming glitch that caused misallocation of ranked-choice votes. The ranked-choice system was so complex that none of the election officials or candidates even noticed.
If RCV actually led to the kind of elections promised by its advocates, it might be worth experimenting with. That's what states are best at; they are the laboratories of democracy.
But RCV has never lived up to its billing as a superior way to choose our political leaders. For that, it should be rejected wherever it comes to a vote.
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