RTD Commentary: On ranked-choice voting, Arlington sets a new standard
Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 7, 2023
JOAN PORTE AND LIZ WHITE
It isn’t often you can say you were the first to do something in Virginia. But thanks to the Arlington County Board taking advantage of recently passed state laws, voters in that locality began writing a new chapter in making the commonwealth’s elections more representative by utilizing ranked-choice voting in a publicly run election.
For those unfamiliar, ranked-choice voting is a simple change to a ballot that has been proven to elect candidates with broader appeal, diminish negative campaigning and provide for a better voter experience. Instead of the traditional “winner-take-all” format, voters participate in a series of “instant runoffs,” in which they rank their preferred candidates: first, second, third and so on.
First-place votes are tabulated to determine if a candidate has passed the necessary threshold to win. If not, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated, and there’s a runoff in which those voters who supported the now-eliminated candidate have their vote counted for their next choice. The process is repeated until a winner (or winners) is mathematically certain.
As leaders of two of the organizations leading this grassroots movement in Virginia, we are thrilled to report that now that the votes have been counted and the winners have been declared in Arlington’s June 20 County Board primaries, this pilot program was a success — for the election officials who administered it, the champions of good government who fought for it and (most importantly) the voters who participated in it.
We also believe there are several lessons that other nonpartisan democracy reform advocates can learn from Arlington’s willingness to move forward with ranked-choice voting.
First, this has shown that our representative democracy must be willing to adapt to the times. This ranked-choice voting pilot program is the latest in a long line of modern electoral reforms Virginia has adopted in recent years — from expanding access to absentee and overseas ballots, to instituting same-day voter registration, to establishing what experts agree are among the fairest legislative maps in the country.
Second, we saw firsthand that it is possible to have election results that truly reflect the will of the voters. The recent Arlington board primary fielded six candidates, and in a traditional plurality election, a winner could have conceivably been declared with only 17% of the vote. Such a narrow, unrepresentative victory is impossible in a ranked-choice voting election.
By ranking their ballots, voters are virtually guaranteed to elect candidates who build broad voter coalitions through outreach, nuance and consensus. The victories by Susan Cunningham and Maureen Coffey as the Democratic board nominees exemplify this phenomenon.
According to a recent nonpartisan analysis, 84% of Arlington voters ranked at least one of the two winners in their top three. This reflects findings in localities in California, Michigan, Minnesota and Utah that have also administered multi-winner ranked-choice voting elections in the past five years. In each of these datasets, results reflect the will of the greatest number of voters in a crowded field, even if one’s top choice does not win.
Further, exit polling in municipalities across America clearly shows that voters understand their ballots, enjoy the overall experience and want to use ranked-choice voting again — including 94% of voters in New Mexico, 77% in New York and 62% in Utah. All indications show that Arlingtonians feel the same way.
Finally, Arlington’s pilot program proves that local registrars are more than capable of administering ranked-choice voting seamlessly from start to finish. In the months since the County Board unanimously supported utilizing ranked-choice voting, Director of Elections Gretchen Reinemeyer and her team worked tirelessly to provide educational outreach in conjunction with a broad coalition of groups that included our organizations as well as the Arlington County Civic Federation, the Arlington NAACP, FairVote Virginia, RepresentUs, UU the Vote, and Veterans for Political Innovation.
In addition, Arlington’s elections administrators deserve particular appreciation for collecting valuable data before, during and after the June 20 primaries that will undoubtedly be welcome news to other local registrars if they need to prepare for ranked-choice voting elections in the future.
Looking forward, we feel that it’s time for other Virginia localities to follow Arlington’s example and adopt their own ranked-choice voting programs. There is a clear roadmap to follow, which is why there have been preliminary conversations to continue this positive momentum in places such as Albemarle and Loudoun counties and the cities of Charlottesville, Fredericksburg and Norfolk (among others).
The future of modernizing Virginia’s democracy is bright. And while Arlington may have been the first locality in Virginia to use ranked-choice voting, we are confident it won’t be the last.
