Ranked Choice Voting could take your vote away.
Ranked choice voting (RCV) is an electoral scheme that adds more confusion to the voting system while threatening our democracy and failing to ensure that every vote counts.
Ranked choice voting (RCV), also known as instant run-off voting, is an electoral scheme that adds more confusion to the voting system while threatening our democracy and failing to ensure that every vote counts.
Each citizen should have one vote, and every vote should count. But with a system like RCV, voters could lose their say.
How does RCV work?
All candidates appear on one ballot. Voters then rank each candidate from “1” (their first choice) to “4” (or “5”, etc.–their last choice). Voters are not required to rank each candidate; however, this could result in their ballot being discarded by the end of the election.
A candidate with 50 percent or more of first-preference votes wins the election. If no one person claims the majority in the first round, those with the fewest votes are eliminated. The process repeats with the elimination of many candidates (if needed) until one candidate receives a majority of the leftover votes and is declared the winner.
But with RCV, sometimes your vote doesn’t count at the end of the election due to “ballot exhaustion.” It occurs when voters make ballot marking mistakes due to RCV confusion or by only ranking candidates that are eventually eliminated from contention. In these instances, your ballot is discarded and your vote no longer counts.
Example of Successfully Filled Out RCV Ballot
Example of Exhausted RCV Ballot
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Under ranked-choice voting, the city of San Francisco has seen a depressed voter turnout in communities of color.
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[Ranked Choice Voting] is not for us and we will vote no.
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Now that our black and brown communities have found electoral success, the powerful special interests want to change the rules on us.
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I stand with a bipartisan group of politicians, advocates, and academics in opposing Ranked Choice Voting because when it comes to elections, every vote cast in our state should count. The evidence and experience from around the country suggests that Ranked Choice Voting will work against this goal, adding unnecessary confusion and potentially reducing voter turnout. We need to be spending our time and resources to make it easier for all Alaskans to speak up at the ballot box, not harder.
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The promise that ranked-choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.
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When you go to the voting machine, you want to think of your vote as counted, not having it counted among four people.
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Every vote should count, and every vote should be as simple as ‘I picked my top candidate.’
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[W]e need to remove barriers to voting, and I think ranked-choice voting is counter to that. My research shows that when you make things more complicated, which this does, there’s going to be lower turnout.
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Many organizations, think tanks, and individuals have researched the negative effects Ranked Choice Voting has on the democratic process. Below are detailed reports on how RCV harms your vote.