Commentary: Ranked Choice Voting is not complicated
May 3, 2024 - The Roanoke Times
By Larry Hincker
Recently, this paper published an op-ed (Trent England, April 23, 2024 “Virginia Averts Election Disaster”) because Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a very reasonable ranked choice voting bill.
Come on, what’s so hard about ranked choice voting? We do it all the time in real life. You go into the ice cream store and say “Give me a chocolate cone. If you don’t have that, I’ll take vanilla. And if you don’t have that, I’ll settle for blueberry rhubarb.” We make ranked choices every day.
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is just as simple: Jane is my first choice, Jerry is my second choice, and I don’t really care for Jim, so he’s my third choice. Those who want to make it sound complicated likely have other motives. The major political parties — the Democrats and Republicans — would be among the opposition. RCV would begin to chip away at their stranglehold on the political process at every level of government. (See my RT column on this topic, Nov. 5, 2017).
Yes, it’s theoretically possible that in elections with multiple candidates, someone could garner first place via plurality but ultimately lose the election once all the votes are tallied to see who got a majority. Under our current electoral process, the more candidates in the race, the higher the chance that someone could win with not very many votes. In a five-person race, just one vote more than 20% wins. That’s hardly representative of the people.
Many states currently use run-off elections — essentially running an RCV but across two separate elections. Why not make it simpler and combine the process through a single RCV ballot. In a rank order instant runoff process, voters cast only one ballot. The election is over if one candidate gets more than 50%. If no candidate gets a majority of first choice votes, the candidate with the lowest first place votes is eliminated. Then all votes for the eliminated candidate are recounted and added to totals of the remaining candidates based on the prioritization (ranking) of those voters. The process continues until one candidate gets a majority.
I find it ironic that Senate Bill 428 was vetoed by the governor, who himself was nominated via RCV. And why was that? There was a four-way race and the Virginia Republican Party was fearful that an extremist candidate might win the nomination with her small contingent of strong supporters.
And therein lies another advantage of RCV — as mentioned above, the larger the field, the easier it is to win with a small following. RCV tends to moderate the field. Why not require that a candidate win at least a majority of votes? In doing so, we know the candidate somewhat reflects the will of the people and not only a vocal “base.”
Another irony in Mr. England’s column — his support for the Electoral College. While I agree with him that House Bill 375 is a bad idea. It would have Virginia throw in their presidential votes with the so-called National Popular Vote — to whomever wins the national popular vote. But yet, it’s strange that people castigate the ranked choice voting process because a plurality winner might ultimately lose the election. Yet, the ultimate handicapped election is found in the way we elect a president through the Electoral College. In 2016 candidate Donald Trump lost by more than 2.9 million votes but still became president by the handicap afforded the loser in that byzantine process.
Countries around the world employ Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV), also known as Ranked Choice Voting. Australia uses it for its House of Representatives, Ireland and India for their presidential elections, and several jurisdictions in the U.S. use it for municipal elections.
I vote to have a Corvette. But I’ll settle for a Miata. And hey, if I’m honest with myself, I’ll probably buy an old MG Midget. Rank Choice Voting at work.
It is not difficult people.
Larry Hincker is a former public relations executive and is happily retired in Blacksburg.
