Depending on who you ask, ranked-choice voting could either benefit extreme, wealthy candidates in elections or it could result in a more publicly acceptable electoral process and encourage more voter engagement.
This practice has been widespread in recent elections, particularly in Alaska and Maine, and to some extent in Virginia, which involve a tiered approach to vote counting, where voters are asked to select candidates in order of preference at the polling place, and then multiple counts are conducted.
In the first round, each candidate’s totals are tallied, the candidate with the fewest “first votes” is eliminated, and the “second votes” of that candidate’s supporters are added to the remaining candidates’ totals to determine the winner.
A former Republican senatorial candidate in Alaska sided with critics of RCV, while a former Republican state legislator in Virginia credited RCV with revolutionizing the political landscape in his state. Democrats appear similarly divided.
Democratic lawmakers in Maine and New York praised the system, but one Democratic governor appeared to raise a potential roadblock to its adoption in his state, saying afterward he would support the will of the people in future ballot measures.
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Atlantic City ballot box (Associated Press)
Ballot measures to implement or ban RCV are pending in Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Missouri and Colorado. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Kentucky also have preventative RCV bans.
Chris Saxman, a Republican from Staunton who was a former Virginia state representative and now serves as executive director of the free enterprise nonprofit Virginia Free, told Fox News Digital that the RCV as implemented in the state worked in a selective way.
In the 2021 gubernatorial election, the Virginia Republican Party used RCV in its primary candidate selection process, and Glenn Youngkin won the nomination.
That year, Virginia Republicans voted to hold a convention rather than a primary.
Saxman told Fox News Digital that after Youngkin was elected, a consultant approached him at the party convention to complain that supporters of explicitly conservative candidates were being blocked from attacking him.
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“Without this dreaded ranked-choice voting system, we could have gone after Youngkin more, but we couldn’t alienate his voters,” the consultant complained, according to Saxman.
“I thought, ‘So the problem is, don’t attack Republicans?'” he said, referencing former President Ronald Reagan’s famous rule.
Saxman said the situation shows there is value in subtle reforms to elections, like the way the party has used RCV.
“Complex systems reward small changes,” he said, arguing that Virginia Republicans’ clever implementation of RCV led to political upheaval that November.
Saxman noted that Republicans had been out of power in Richmond since the Bush administration, and now suddenly, Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares have replaced them with Democrats.
Saxman said national fundraising groups had largely written off the Virginia gubernatorial race as a failure, but money poured in after the Youngkin, Sears and Miyares race was announced, thanks in part to RCV.
Meanwhile, in New York City, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed the 2021 election as “America’s largest ranked-choice election,” even as many battleground states remained indecisive in the Democratic primary.
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But on the other side of the country in Alaska, Republicans seem ready to repeal the recently implemented system, which many blame for the election of Rep. Mary Peltola (Democrat) to replace Don Young, a Republican mainstay for nearly 50 years, in the overwhelmingly Republican state.
In multiple reports, Alaska RCV advocates said the new system worked in the 2022 election, helping three candidates win in the same election: liberal Peltola, moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and conservative Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
But Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican who challenged Murkowski for her seat in a nonpartisan primary that year, told Fox News Digital that Alaskans were misled by RCV supporters who claimed they would eliminate dark money and extremism from elections.
She pointed to Peltola’s victory against Republican Nick Begich III, the scion of a prominent Alaska political family, and former Gov. Sarah Palin.
Tshibaka said that pending legal challenges to the bill, a statewide referendum on eliminating RCVs will be held in November, and that he fully supports efforts to end RCVs in the Last Frontier.
She pointed to the failure of Al Gross, a Democrat-turned-independent who led in the primary but then dropped out, arguing that Gross was removed from the ballot to make way for the left-leaning Peltola, and therefore that claims that RCV would quell extremism were unfounded.
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“It’s just too hard to run as an independent in this race,” Gross said at the time, adding that the country was “broken.”
Tshibaka also argued that the system results in a much smaller number of voters ultimately choosing a candidate because other votes are cancelled out during the counting stage.
“So the way they’re selling it to the public is very deceptive,” she said, adding that despite RCV being pitched to voters as a moderate force, 2022 is widely viewed as the most negative election in the state’s history.
“We’re spreading bait to evoke negativity. There may be one-off anecdotes here and there, but what we’ve seen in Maine and Alaska … is an increase in extreme negativity.”
Judy Elledge, a former teacher from Barrow (also known as Utqiagvik) on the Arctic coast who is active among Alaska conservatives, said the RCV system proved very confusing for voters.
“It basically gives people no first choice on who they want to win and allows them to win people who otherwise would never have won anything,” Elledge said. “It just gives them enough power to win and basically destroys the party system in the state when it comes to elections.”
Elledge also argued that it gives candidates with significant outside funding an advantage and artificially influences second- and third-place candidates.
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Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) addresses supporters at a viewing party on Nov. 8, 2022, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Getty Images)
In Maine, the introduction of RCV helped pave the way for Democrat Jared Golden’s surprise victory over Republican incumbent Rep. Bruce Poliquin in 2018, marking the first large-scale testing of RCV statewide.
Golden’s campaign told Fox News Digital that RCV is “not involved” in the race. “Just like in 2020, this will be a head-to-head contest,” a campaign spokesperson said.
Peltola responded to the criticism by saying that while RCV has garnered a lot of attention in Alaska, the real common ground is the open primary system.
“We need more people who are willing to work with other parties, and the Alaska system gives them a chance. For example, I wouldn’t have won the Democratic primary because I’m too conservative and I say things that only appeal to the Democratic base,” Peltola said.
“Open primaries and ranked choice voting give a voice to the 64 percent of Alaskans who are neither Democrats nor Republicans.”
