RTD: Deeds pulled his ranked choice voting bill from Senate committee
By Charlotte Renee Woods | January 31
Virginia will consider allowing parties to use ranked choice voting for presidential primaries — but not just yet.
Ranked choice voting allows people to rank multiple candidates in order of preference. Generally, under ranked choice voting, if a voter’s first choice is eliminated, the top vote is transferred to the voter’s second choice, and so on.
Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, pulled his bill from the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee Tuesday after he heard feedback from the Department of Elections, which said it had logistical concerns.
Deeds said that Department of Elections Commissioner Susan Beals dropped by his office and, when he asked her about his bill, she relayed that “the state board of elections did not feel like they could technologically do this right now.”
That is because Virginia only recently allowed elections for city council and boards of supervisors to be conducted through ranked choice voting.
Additionally, Virginia allows localities to use four different types of voting machines, which could complicate things should local registrars around the state coordinate ranked choice voting in a presidential election.
Deeds said he felt it was best to pull his bill for now and reintroduce it later, perhaps next year. He is confident the matter will be worked out in the future.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reached out to the Department of Elections to ask what the department would need to adjust in order to accommodate statewide ranked choice voting, but did not receive a response at the time of this publication.
Ranked choice voting has long been championed by Del. Sally Hudson, D-Charlottesville, who will face Deeds in a Democratic primary election this summer for the nomination Virginia’s 11th Senate District, based in Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville.
Ranked choice voting was a part of the platform of her 2019 campaign, and in 2020 the General Assembly passed her bill to allow ranked choice voting for certain local elections.
Though not yet law for all elections, ranked choice voting has already been implemented for other races. Gov. Glenn Youngkin won the GOP nomination for governor when the party utilized ranked choice voting in a 2021 convention. But because primary elections — which allow for more people to vote — are state-run and not party-run, the state has to pass laws allowing for its use in primaries.
Hudson called that a “legal limbo,” but added that collaborating with registrars and the department of elections will help Virginia eventually to ease into allowing ranked choice voting in more races.
Arlington County plans to use it during its primary this year, as state law shepherded by Hudson now allows it. Charlottesville is considering using it in November.
“There’s demand from the parties to use it. There’s demand from the voters to use it. And there’s demand from a solid hunk of legislators to use it in Richmond,” Hudson said.
Advocates say that ranked choice voting allows people to support their favorite candidate as well as their backup options.
“It truly gives voters a better voting experience. They get a more thorough and complete method of sharing their preferences and what they respond to in a candidate,” said UpVote director Liz White. “It lets voters truly just go in and say ‘I like this person the best, this person the second best and this person the third best.”
She added that she believes it benefits candidates as well, because they can garner more support based on their platforms rather than relying on party-line voting.
“A candidate succeeds by building consensus and building a coalition,” White said.
Deeds said he hopes to reintroduce the legislation next year, depending on what he hears from election officials. Hudson is eager for more widespread adoption of ranked choice voting, but noted that “continued incremental rollout” may be beneficial to voters and registrars.
