Ranked-Choice Voting

Your vote should never work against you. In plurality voting, backing your favorite can help elect the person you like least, so people vote for "the lesser of two evils." RCV removes that fear. As the reform group FairVote puts it, with RCV "voters don't need to worry about 'spoilers,' or feel forced to vote for the lesser of two evils." You rank your true favorite first and add a safe backup second -- if your favorite cannot win, your ballot still counts for your next choice. RCV also aims to give winners real majority support: FairVote argues that RCV winners hold majority support and better represent the people they serve, and that RCV lets more candidates run without splitting the vote among allies. RCV may even calm nasty campaigns: candidates also want to be your second choice, so they have less reason to attack rivals. FairVote argues this pushes them to campaign in a more positive way, and neutral research backs this up -- one review found voters in RCV cities were "nearly twice as likely to say local campaigns were 'a lot less negative.'" Turnout can rise too: FairVote Minnesota reports that "RCV contributed to a 10% increase in turnout in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area." Rank your heart, and keep your voice.

A vote should be simple and clear: you study the candidates, you pick the one you want, and the top vote-getter wins. Critics say RCV trades that clarity for confusion. Even some Democrats agree -- California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown vetoed an RCV expansion in 2016, writing: "Ranked choice voting is overly complicated and confusing. I believe it deprives voters of genuinely informed choice." Their biggest worry is ballot exhaustion: when it happens, critics say, it builds a fake majority. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, says RCV "disenfranchises voters" to "manufacture a faux majority for the winner." The numbers can be striking -- a peer-reviewed study of four California and Washington elections found "the winner in all four of our cases receives less than a majority of the total votes cast," and the Alaska Policy Forum, studying RCV races nationwide, found "the eventual winner failed to receive a true majority 61 percent of the time." A regular runoff, critics argue, is cleaner: the top two candidates face off, voters choose again, and the winner has a true majority and a clear final choice.