Washington Post Opinion: Ranked-choice voting might be Virginia’s future

By Mark J. Rozell | September 26

Imagine that instead of settling for one candidate in an election — perhaps the lesser of evils — you could rank multiple candidates according to your preference.

It’s called “ranked-choice voting” (RCV), and it is slowly gaining traction as an alternative way to conduct elections. Some states are making limited use of it, including Maryland and Virginia.

Takoma Park has used RCV for 15 years. In Virginia, the 2020 General Assembly approved a pilot program allowing its use for local elections, though no locality has yet adopted it.

In traditional voting, voters choose just one candidate. In most states, including Maryland and Virginia, a candidate can prevail with a simple plurality. Other states require a majority of votes to win, and if no candidate tops the 50 percent threshold, the top two vote-getters meet again weeks later in a “runoff” election.

In ranked-choice balloting, also known as “instant-runoff voting,” if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes in the initial round of counting, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. Candidates who were second choices to the eliminated candidate are then apportioned to the remaining candidates and the results are retabulated. The process is repeated until one candidate achieves a majority.

RCV has its champions. FairVote is a national nonprofit that does research and advocacy for ranked-choice voting among other electoral reforms, and it is active in Virginia. OneVirginia2021, which pushed for decades to end partisan redistricting by the General Assembly in favor of an independent redistricting commission, is back as UpVote Virginia, now pushing for broad adoption of RCV in the commonwealth. Del. Sally Hudson (D-Charlottesville) has established Ranked Choice Virginia to advance RCV.

Among the advantages supporters tout are that voters using RCV report that they feel free to cast their ballots for a truly favored candidate — without regard to whether polls or pundits say the candidacy is doomed — because they know that their second and subsequent choices will also matter. In some elections, it has made it difficult for candidates on the far left or right, who could muster a plurality, to win a majority.

That played out last year in Virginia. The state Republican Party, forced by the pandemic to hold an “unassembled convention” to nominate its statewide slate, opted for ranked-choice voting in part to avoid forcing more than 50,000 delegates who were congregated in 39 locations to cast multiple ballots until one candidate won a majority. A few days later, after the lengthy rounds of retabulation, the process yielded a ticket led by former hedge fund executive Glenn Youngkin that swept all three statewide offices.

Notably, the most far-right of the seven GOP candidates, state Sen. Amanda F. Chase of Chesterfield, never got more than 25 percent of the delegate votes. Her outspoken solidarity with former president Trump and her defense of his discredited stolen-election claims could have given her enough support from Trump loyalists to win a primary with a plurality. It’s not unimaginable that she might have won a traditional single-location convention dominated by far-right activists.

In a ranked-choice special election in Alaska last month, Republican Sarah Palin, that state’s Trump-endorsed former governor, lost a special election for a U.S. House seat to Democrat Mary Peltola.

Because of RCV’s reputation for rewarding moderates, it has few adherents on the partisan fringes, particularly on the right. They deride them as “jungle primaries.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blasted RCV as “a scam” in a tweet after Palin’s defeat. Republican legislatures in Tennessee and Arkansas forbid localities from using any form of RCV.

In Virginia, however, it has some notable bipartisan backing. Republican George Allen, a former governor and U.S. senator, and Rep. Don Beyer (D), a former lieutenant governor and U.S. ambassador, both praised RCV in UpVote Virginia’s launch video. “What it benefits is the people, the voters,” Allen said. Beyer added, “it brings people together, no matter their leanings.”

With the Republican Party’s success in last year’s state elections, RCV is starting to catch on more broadly with the Virginia GOP. The party used RCV on its own in three congressional primaries this year.

Heavily Democratic Richmond was poised to become Virginia’s first locality to adopt a form of RCV, but the proposal failed on a 3-6 vote earlier this month amid City Council uncertainty about it. Arlington is considering using RCV only for its primaries, similar to how it is done in New York City.

Advancing such a system without thoroughly educating the public though could be problematic. In an era fraught with false claims of voter fraud and stolen elections, it is critical that voters have a clear understanding of how the RCV process works to ensure its widespread accepted legitimacy.

Ranked-choice voting might be the future in Virginia, but it will take time to build public understanding and acceptance of this approach to conducting party nominations and elections.