How we might vote differently

 

Voters line up outside an early voting site last month at the Warren County Muniipal Center in Queensbury, N.Y. Joan K. Lentini photo.

 

By MAURY THOMPSON
Contributing writer

 

Green Party activist Matt Funiciello of Glens Falls has been championing the merits of ranked-choice voting for more than 20 years.

“It is grassroots democracy injected into our voting system,” said Funiciello, who was the Green Party candidate in New York’s 21st Congressional District in 2014 and 2016.

For Funiciello and other minor-party candidates across the ideological spectrum, ranked-choice voting — a system in which voters rank the various candidates in order of preference, rather than simply selecting a single candidate for each office — has long been seen as a way to level the playing field with the two major political parties.

But in the past few years, ranked-choice voting has been gaining more mainstream interest, with supporters arguing that this new way of voting might also serve as a moderating influence in the selection of major-party candidates.

Maine voters approved a citizen-initiated ballot question in 2016 requiring the use of ranked-choice voting for congressional and most statewide offices, and voters in Alaska adopted the system in a 2020 referendum. Local governments now used ranked-choice ballots in Burlington, New York City and several dozen other jurisdictions around the country.

This year, ranked-choice voting is on the November ballot in six more states and the District of Columbia, while Alaska voters are debating a proposal to repeal that state’s new system. (Maine voters rejected a repeal effort in 2018.)

The state-level push for ranked-choice voting has been attracting attention in Congress. In September, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., introduced legislation to require ranked-choice voting in House and Senate elections across the nation beginning in 2028. The legislation also would provide funding for states to adapt their voting systems to ranked-choice voting.

“Ranked-choice voting is having a political moment, as supporters see it as a way to address the partisan polarization afflicting American politics,” said Matt Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College. “Welch and his co-signers are trying to capitalize on this sentiment.”

Welch’s proposal is significant because it is the first time ranked-choice voting legislation has been introduced in the Senate, said Rachel Hutchinson, senior policy analyst for FairVote, an election reform advocacy organization.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced companion legislation in the House. The House version had eight co-sponsors, all Democrats, as of Oct. 11.

But the idea is drawing some pushback. In the House, U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Hudson Valley Republican, introduced legislation last year to prohibit states from using ranked-choice voting in House and Senate races. So far Lawler’s bill has no companion legislation in the Senate.

 

More choices, more consensus?
Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, typically requires that a candidate garner 50 percent of the vote to win an election. Voters rank the candidates in each race in order of preference, choosing their favorite, second favorite and so on. At that point, the voter’s job is done.

If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes, that candidate wins the election. But if no candidate receives more than 50 percent in the initial count, the candidate with the lowest number of first-choice votes is dropped from the tallying, and the voters who picked that candidate have their ballots re-allocated to their second-choice candidate. This process continues, with additional candidates dropped from the tallying if necessary, until one candidate achieves a majority.

Supporters say ranked-choice voting eliminates concerns about the so-called “spoiler” effect, in which third-party and independent candidates are blamed for siphoning votes from major-party candidates.

Hutchinson, of FairVote, explained that ranked-choice voting instead allows independent and minor-party candidates to compete equally for votes and draw attention to particular issues.
And voters who want to support these candidates can do so without fearing that their vote might throw the election to a major-party candidate whose views they abhor.

Dickinson, the Middlebury College professor, said a ranked-choice system could give voters more choices while also rewarding candidates who adopt a moderate tone.

“In theory, it allows voters to select a more moderate candidate from a broader candidate pool, rather than the current system in which votes for third-party candidates are considered wasted,” Dickinson said.

Under the traditional balloting system, he added, many voters “feel compelled to vote for one of the two major-party candidates, no matter how much they are disliked.”

Supporters say ranked-choice voting would draw more candidates — and voters — into the electoral process.

“Our democracy is at its strongest when everyone is heard and represented,” Welch said in a news release issued when he introduced his Senate legislation. “This pro-democracy bill will make our elections more equitable, more civil and more representative.”

Scott Langley file photo

 

Ballots on the ballot
Many of the ranked-choice voting proposals on state ballots this year are coupled with proposals to eliminate or reform party primary elections.

Ballot proposals in Colorado, Idaho and Nevada, for example, would do away with Democratic and Republican primaries and instead have a single statewide primary open to candidates of all parties. The top four vote-getters in the open primary (or in Nevada, the top five) would then advance to the general election, which would be conducted using ranked-choice voting.
A proposal in Oregon would continue party primaries but would apply ranked-choice voting to both the primary and general elections. The ranked-choice voting proposal in the District of Columbia would open party primaries to unaffiliated voters.

And voters in Montana are considering a proposal to require that general-election candidates garner at least 50 percent of the vote to be elected. If the proposal passes, it would be up to state lawmakers to decide whether to achieve that outcome by using ranked-choice ballots or holding separate runoff elections.

The Washington Post endorsed ranked-choice voting for D.C. and other jurisdictions in early October, while a Wall Street Journal editorial urged voters around the nation to reject the idea.
Although supporters of ranked-choice voting say its rules and potential benefits would apply equally to both major political parties, much of the opposition to the current batch of proposals has come from Republicans.

In Missouri, a proposed amendment to the state constitution, placed on this month’s ballot by Republican state lawmakers, would ban voting by non-citizens, which is already illegal, and also prohibit the use of ranked-choice voting in the state.

Opponents locally and around the country say ranked-choice voting would be too confusing and time consuming.

“Ranked choice voting leads to distorted outcomes and produces results that do not accurately reflect the majority’s will,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican whose district covers much of the Finger Lakes region of New York, in a news release. “It also creates chaos and confusion amongst voters, undermining the people’s faith in the democratic process and distorting their choices at the ballot box.”

Tenney, a co-sponsor of Lawler’s legislation, is a founder and co-chair of the House Election Integrity Caucus, a group of Republican representatives who have continued to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. A hard-line conservative, Tenney first won election to Congress in 2016 in a three-way race in which she garnered only 44 percent of the vote – the kind of race in which ranked-choice voting might have made it more difficult for her to prevail.

 

Benefits, risks of change
For this year’s election at least, Alaska and Maine remain the only two states using ranked-choice voting in statewide and congressional races.

Supporters say the system increases civility and encourages candidates to build broad coalitions.
“Candidates must attract people’s second- and third-choice votes, giving them strong incentive to make broad-based appeals,” FairVote maintains. “For the same reason, ranked choice encourages everyone to campaign not on smears against their opponents or other negative angles but on a more positive message.”

But opponents say this feature may punish candidates who stake out strong positions on issues while rewarding those who take bland or vague positions.

“Ranked-choice voting is a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win,” Hans von Spakovsky and J. Adams wrote in an essay for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “It obscures true debates and issue-driven dialogues and eliminates genuine choices between two top-tiered candidates.”

Supporters say most voters are happier with the outcome of ranked-choice races. FairVote says that when a candidate must either win a majority of first-choice votes or assemble a coalition by becoming the second or third choice of some voters, “the public is more likely to be assured the victor has widespread support.”

But opponents say strongly ideological voters may feel that their votes don’t count. Spakovsky and Adams wrote in their essay that eliminating the candidates with the lowest vote tallies effectively disenfranchises voters “because ballots that do not include the ultimate finalists are cast aside to manufacture a faux majority for the winner.”

Some states already require candidates to win a majority, not just a plurality of votes cast, to be elected. In these states, supporters say ranked-choice voting can serve as an instant runoff, thereby saving the cost of staging a separate runoff election.

Opponents, however, say the instant-runoff feature of ranked-choice ballots delays having a clear winner on election night.

Lawler, the Hudson Valley congressman, pointed to the 2021 mayoral primary in New York City, which adopted ranked-choice voting for local elections beginning that year.

“Voters had to wait weeks in order to discover who won, sowing chaos, confusion, and undermining confidence in the result,” Lawler said.

(Many of the delays in counting the city’s vote that year were attributed to a huge increase of mail-in ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic.)

Opponents also point to a risk of “ballot exhaustion,” a term for when voters either rank only their top choice or rank their top choice multiple times.

Hutchinson, of FairVote, responded that voters may choose to rank only one candidate. Their decision not to rank other candidates does not represent a fault in the system, she said.

 

The experience in Maine
In 2018, Maine became the first state to use ranked-choice voting in statewide and congressional races. And in the state’s general election that November, the new system clearly led to a different result from what traditional plurality voting would have yielded in the race to represent the state’s sprawling 2nd Congressional District.

In the 2nd district, two-term incumbent Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican, led in the first-choice round of balloting in a four-way race against Democratic challenger Jared Golden and two independent candidates. But Poliquin failed to win 50 percent of the first-choice votes, and after ranked-choice tallying kicked in, Golden garnered enough second-choice votes from the independent candidates to cross the 50 percent threshold and win the election.

Poliquin had urged his supporters to rank him as their first choice and not rank any other candidates, and nearly one in four Poliquin voters followed this suggestion, according to an analysis by FairVote.

The district had been hotly contested in the previous two election cycles, and the 2018 race became the most expensive congressional race in the state’s history up to that point, with the candidates and political action committees pouring a combined $23 million into the contest, according to Maine Public.

Poliquin challenged the 2018 results in court but lost his effort to have the ranked-choice voting system ruled unconstitutional and himself declared the winner.

In 2022, Poliquin ran again for the seat in a three-way race against Golden and one of the independent candidates from 2018. This time he recommended that supporters rank him as their first, second and third choices. Golden led in the first-choice voting and won the election in the second-choice round.

Although the results of the 2018 race in Maine made some Republicans particularly skeptical of ranked-choice voting, Hutchinson said the system does not favor Democrats.

She pointed to the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Alaska, where incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski won re-election in a ranked-choice, four-way contest with three Republicans and one Democrat. The race went through three rounds of tabulation before Murkowski defeated second-place finisher Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican who had been endorsed by Donald Trump.

 

Mixed views locally
Funiciello, the local Green Party activist, said he is encouraged that Welch has introduced ranked choice voting legislation, though he wondered about the senator’s motivation.
“I hope that it moves forward,” he said. “I’m always wary and cynical.”

A sampling of opinion among local elected officials shows support for the idea breaking along party lines.

Area Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, and Marcus Molinaro, R-Catskill, both said they oppose using ranked choice voting in congressional elections, with Stefanik casting it as a partisan issue.

“Voters do not support ranked-choice voting, a process that adds chaos and confusion to our election process,” Stefanik said in a statement. “This is yet another attempt by the far-left Democrats to disenfranchise American voters and delay election results.”

Molinaro spokesman Dan Kranz said the congressman “thinks ranked choice has a lot of flaws and isn’t ready to embrace a change in the way New Yorkers vote.”

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., “is supportive of ranked-choice voting and is reviewing relevant federal legislation,” spokeswoman Sophie Pollock said.

Dickinson, the Middlebury professor, noted that the idea of ranked-choice voting has attracted more support from Democrats so far.

“My sense is that right now this is something being pushed more by Democrats than by Republicans nationally, although there is no reason it should be favored by one party over the other in practice,” Dickinson said.

Ranked-choice voting now is used for local elections in 50 cities around the nation.
“In Vermont, Burlington used this system for city elections, dropped it after a couple of elections in which the top initial vote-getter didn’t win, then reinstated it recently,” Dickinson said.

In Vermont, the Legislature will consider a proposal in the coming session to adopt ranked-choice voting for the state’s 2028 presidential primaries, said state Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, who in May held two virtual public forums on the topic in collaboration with the League of Women Voters of Vermont.

In presidential primaries, candidates who drop out of the race after early primaries often have their names on ballots in the rest of the states. Ranked-choice voting would allow a voter to express agreement with the policies of a candidate who has dropped out while still identifying a preference among the remaining contenders, said Ryan Harby, the director of public policy for the Ranked Choice Voting Research Center, a nonpartisan educational organization, in comments at one of the virtual forums.

Burlington first adopted ranked-choice voting for mayoral elections in 2006, Assistant City Clerk Sarah Montgomery said at one of the virtual forums. But voters repealed the system in a 2010 referendum.

Ranked choice voting was brought back for City Council races in 2022 after Burlington revised its city charter, and the city expanded the system in 2023 to cover races for mayor, school commissioner and ward election officer.

Montgomery said that since Burlington resumed using ranked-choice voting, all of the winning candidates so far have received more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round of tabulation.
In Massachusetts, voters rejected ranked-choice voting by a 10-percentage-point margin in a 2020 referendum campaign. But the idea has resurfaced in Boston, where the City Council recently held the first in a series of public hearings as officials consider changing to ranked-choice voting in city elections.

Besides FairVote, a number of other public interest groups have endorsed Welch’s proposal to use ranked-choice voting nationwide, including Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the Campaign Legal Center.

Internationally, ranked-choice voting has been used in Australia and Ireland for many years.
This year’s mayoral race in Portland, Ore., used ranked-choice voting and attracted 19 candidates. The Oregonian, the city’s largest daily newspaper, endorsed both a first choice and a second choice in the race.