ELECTIONSRanked Choice Voting Faces Cloudy Future After Election Setbacks
Voters in 5 states rejected the voting system, while DC voters approved it. The rejection clouds the future of an idea that had seen strong momentum in recent years.
Voters in several states last week delivered a stinging rebuke to ranked choice voting, clouding the future of an idea that had seen strong momentum in recent years.
Ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank political candidates by preference, is used statewide in Alaska and Maine and in major U.S. localities such as New York City and San Francisco.
But voters in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon rejected ballot measures that would have adopted ranked choice voting for packed races. In Missouri, voters approved a ballot measure banning the approach statewide and locally, except for a grandfather clause for St. Louis municipal elections.
Results are still too close to call on a measure to scrap Alaska’s existing use of ranked choice voting. With 94% of results reported, the measure was up by about 2,400 votes.
“Voters this year were reluctant to make dramatic changes to the way they vote,” said Chandler James, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon. “But I don’t think that it spells the end for ranked choice voting in the future.”
In the system, voters rank candidates on their ballots by preference — first, second, third choice, and so on.
If no candidate gets the majority of first-preference votes, the rest of the rankings kick in. The candidate with the fewest first-preference votes gets eliminated, while those voters’ secondary choices are allocated to the rest of the field. The counting continues until one candidate gets majority support.
Critics often blast ranked choice voting as being complicated and undemocratic, saying it violates the “one person, one vote” principle of American elections. But proponents argue that it forces candidates to appeal to a wider audience, leading to less toxic campaigning, and saves money on costly runoff elections.
While it was a tough year for statewide ballot measures, the system had better success at the local level, including in the District of Columbia; Bloomington, Minnesota; Oak Park and Peoria, Illinois; and Richmond, California.
“Overall, we see that ranked choice voting is still growing,” said Deb Otis, director of research and policy at FairVote, the nonpartisan organization leading the fight to adopt ranked choice voting. “I’m still really optimistic for how it will continue to grow.”
And though it lost in Oregon, she pointed out that the measure had majority support in jurisdictions that currently use ranked choice voting, such as Multnomah (home to Portland) and Benton counties.
