by Ken Reid
A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an alternative electoral process that allows people to vote for multiple candidates on a ballot in order of the voter’s preference. RCV has been adopted in at least 60 jurisdictions across the nation, including statewide and federal elections in Maine and Alaska.
Should Virginia counties and cities adopt RCV for upcoming November elections, or should this newfangled system of voting be used only in primaries?
My answer to that question is “no” — but RCV may have some benefit in open primaries where both Democrats and Republicans select a nominee. It is definitely not suitable for local races.
I’ll go into more detail later, but my main concern is that it would be unwise to introduce RCV at a time when polls show some four in 10 voters already do not trust our elections. The majority of those skeptics are pro-Donald Trump Republicans who believe the 2020 election was stolen from him. However, in addition to former President Trump’s bellyaching about his 2020 loss, there are also activists on the left who believe there is ongoing voter suppression. Ranked-choice voting could feed into that belief.
Ranked choice voting (which was also used by the Republican Party of Virginia in its last two statewide drive-thru conventions and by the 10th District’s congressional convention last spring) means the candidates are ranked in order of the voters’ choice. It is being touted for use in primaries to ensure nominees are confirmed by a majority; by states that have runoff elections to obviate people voting twice (as happened in Georgia); and in town and city council “multiple candidate” races where voters are asked to vote for up to three nominees for council and one for mayor.
In 2020, Virginia’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed legislation allowing ranked-choice voting and requiring the State Board of Elections to issue regulations on its implementation. The law presently allows ranked-choice voting only for “elections of members of a county board of supervisors or city council.” It cannot be used in elections for constitutional offices, school boards, or mayoral and town council races. So far, Arlington is the only Virginia county to approve ranked-choice voting for its primaries in 2023. It has not approved the method for general elections.
Today, there is a campaign afoot by the non-partisan group, UpVote Virginia (formerly known as OneVirginia), that pushed to pass the 2021 state constitutional referendum for nonpartisan redistricting. In an email last week, UpVote Virginia said it had secured support for ranked-choice voting from former Republican Governor and Senator George Allen and Democratic Representative Don Beyer at a launching event. In an August article in the Virginia Mercury, Executive Director Liz White of UpVote Viginia said the main goal of ranked-choice voting is “to build on recent reforms that have made it easier for Virginians to vote.” According to White, “democracy is failing voters. There’s extreme polarization, legislative gridlock, and no incentive at all for our elected officials to come together to solve the problems that face us.”
The Mercury added that ranked-choice voting “is often touted as a way to reduce negative campaigning and incentivize candidates to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters instead of the most fervent partisans.”
A national group, Fair Vote, based in Takoma Park, Md., is currently working with UpVote Virginia to implement ranked choice voting across our state. I am suspicious of this group’s aims on ranked-choice voting because the organization is funded largely by liberal foundations. Fair Vote also is sponsoring an initiative to double the size of the U.S. House of Representatives and allow “multiple member” House districts.
I have been involved with Virginia political campaigns for 20 years. I won election to the Leesburg Town Council three times in multiple-candidate races, as well as to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. I also was very involved with the 2021 Virginia Republican unassembled convention. I can assure you that it was not a good example of using RCV in state-run primaries and elections, as only 32,000 delegates voted and it took several days to hand-count the paper ballots.
But even with electronic scanning and tabulating of each voter’s rankings, I cannot imagine how we would get results any sooner. Alaska’s Senate election had no declared winner until November 19, 2022. While RCV may have some benefit in primaries, Virginia has open primaries and there is no party registration requirement. Because of that, Republican county, city, and district GOP units generally use conventions or firehouse primaries to ensure Democrats don’t vote. As a result, most of the time it’s the more conservative candidates who win GOP party-run conventions, mass meetings, and firehouse primaries. And, for the Democrats, the most left-wing candidates usually win these kinds of contests.
So, the idea that ranked-choice voting will help nominate more centrists is unfounded. Whatever the voting method, candidates and their respective political parties will get their bases to vote the party sample ballot, which means voters might not be doing any ranking of other candidates.
A second issue I have with RCV is that I don’t see how it benefits local races. Thanks to Democrats in the General Assembly who in 2021 eliminated the May election option for local races so they are non-partisan, all town and city elections are now co-located on the November ballot, when there are far more people voting. Ranked-choice voting may actually lead to more under-voting (i.e., people voting for president, governor, and other up-ballot races and ignoring the local municipal races). However, if voters get their party’s sample ballot, they will just rank those candidates.
Additionally, a complicated ranked-choice ballot will consume more time at the polls, even in low-turnout primaries. Many voters will vote by mail and it’s the inordinate mail-in and early ballots that have led to a negative perception of election integrity in the U.S. It could take weeks to determine a winner, particularly if there are provisional ballots that could be disputed.
By and large, whatever the voting method, you can be assured the best-financed candidates and the political parties will figure out a way to game ranked-choice voting to their benefit – and that means independent and third-party candidates won’t get ranked. I do not see RCV limiting or ending the extremes being taken to get candidates nominated and elected. That is more the result of the nature of political campaigns, social media, and the blue and red divide. Given the current climate wherein election integrity is viewed as being low, it’s a bad idea to try to expand the use of ranked choice voting in Virginia at this time.
For a congressional analysis of RCV legal issues as it affects federal races, the Congressional Research Service has prepared an in depth look at the system’s legal challenges and considerations.
Ken Reid, lives in McLean. He has served on the Leesburg Town Council and Loudoun Board of Supervisors (2006-2017). He has attended numerous Republican county and state elections and was a Trump delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Convention. He is the author of “The Six Secrets to Winning Any Local Election – and Navigating Elected Office Once You Win.”
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