Ranked Choice Voting would have improved mayoral elections

Richmond is unique in the way it elects its mayor. There are 9 voting districts (or wards) in the city, and a candidate must win a plurality in at least 5 of them to win outright. Otherwise, the top 2 go on to a runoff. Axios describes the system as the city’s “own kind of electoral college.”

Though Mayor-Elect Danny Avula won 6 out of 9 wards, he still did not win the majority of the votes cast. He was close - 46% is impressive in a crowded field - but more voters still voted for someone other than Avula. It’s important to note that ranked choice voting would likely not have changed these decisive results, but both the candidates and the voters themselves would have gotten more information about who else voters support and whose message resonated where. Candidates would also have been motivated to campaign across the entire city and not take the electoral college-type approach that is encouraged by the 5/9 ward system.

This pattern of a candidate winning enough districts but not the majority of voters has been the norm since this election structure was adopted over 20 years ago. Only Doug Wilder, the first mayor elected this way, won with over 50% of the vote. Since then, every race but one has had 4+ candidates, and Avula’s 46% is by far the closest to a majority any winner has reached. 

And yet, there has never been a run-off. So even when a candidate has hit the 5/9 threshold, this has almost never translated into majority voter support. Ranked Choice Voting would be a simple way to give voters more say and still hear from voters in every district. It makes sense, then, that the The Richmond City Charter Review Commission recently recommended using RCV to elect their mayor.

But Richmond was by no means alone in electing mayors with less than 50% of the vote this year. Let’s look at some numbers.

In Virginia, 17 independent cities elected mayors this year. Of those, 7 races had 3 or more candidates. Of those, only Kenny Alexander of Norfolk was elected with over 50% of the vote. That means SIX mayors were elected just this year without a majority of the vote.

A couple winners got very close to 50% - including Danny Avula. Portsmouth’s Shannon Glover and Winchester’s Les Veach both cleared 49% of the vote. But let’s look at Roanoke, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach.

In Virginia Beach, incumbent Bobby Dyer had four challengers and ultimately won with just under 41% of the vote. We’re accustomed to thinking of this as an impressive showing in a crowded field, but the reality is that almost 60% of voters did not vote for the winner. Without RCV, we do not have any information beyond that, which can leave voters feeling left out and unrepresented. (BTW, this is not a judgment about Mayor Dyer. We have no idea how those other voters feel about him because, without RCV, we have no way of gleaning that information.)

Roanoke and Suffolk both had incredibly close mayoral elections. Both were 3 candidate races, where the top two candidates were separated very few votes. In Roanoke, 59 votes put Joe Cobb in the lead, and in Suffolk, Mike Duman leads Clint Jenkins by 164 votes.

The most remarkable numbers in these races are the vote counts for the third candidates. The Suffolk race, and to a lesser extent, the Roanoke race essentially divided the voters into thirds. No candidate has a clear mandate to lead and voters were not able to fully express their preference. Ranking multiple candidates would have prevented over 25-30% of the voters in these contests from being excluded from the final decision.

In a time when many Americans are losing faith in democracy, we need a system that makes them feel more heard, not less. Ranked Choice Voting is a simple step, and one already allowed for other local races.

Legislators in Richmond have the opportunity this coming General Assembly session to allow localities to extend this option to mayors and school boards. Localities could look at their election patterns and their own needs and decide for themselves how and when to use this tool. We encourage lawmakers to allow local officials to make this decisions.