RCV’s signature promise is to deliver candidates that win true electoral majorities. But RCV’s version of “majority rule” is a mirage rendered by throwing out ballots and redistributing votes between candidates. In fact, so many ballots can be thrown out that winners sometimes do not secure a majority of the total votes cast in an election.
"A guinea pig.” That is what Sandy, Utah Mayor Monica Zoltanski said that “ranked-choice voting” (RCV) made of her hometown. The town opted into Utah’s controversial RCV pilot program, but the experiment has not gone well. The cost-saving promised by proponents never materialized, but the real alarm bells should have sounded when the experiment produced voter confusion and voter disengagement.Yet instead of ending this failed pilot program, Utah legislators are now considering a bill to expand ranked-choice voting to primary elections for state and federal office.
Despite disastrous outcomes in Alaska, Maine, and multiple U.S. municipalities due to ranked-choice voting, Utah is considering legislation to follow their steps.
The head of the NAACP in New York slammed the new ranked-choice voting system as “voter suppression” while calling for an overhaul of the bumbling New York City Board of Elections.“Ranked choice voting is not beneficial to minorities. It’s voter suppression,” Hazel Dukes, president of the NYS chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Thursday in a phone interview.
Alaska and Maine have implemented “ranked choice voting,” a confusing, chaotic method of voting. Georgia should not follow suit. “Ranked choice” really should be referred to as “rigged choice,” since it effectively disenfranchises voters and allows marginal candidates not supported by a majority of voters to win elections.
8/23: ACRU Policy Board Member Hans von Spakovsky and ACRU Policy Board Member J. Christian Adams explain why ranked-choice voting creates false majorities and unfair election outcomes.
