Voters Reject Attempts To Put Ranked Choice Voting In Place In Several States

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Ranked choice voting, the controversial balloting method in which voters select candidates in the order of their preference, was rejected resoundingly in four states while a repeal effort was tied after Tuesday’s elections.

Advocates of the system, used statewide now only in Alaska and Maine, had hoped wins in Western states would give the issue momentum for further expansion.

Instead, ranked choice voting lost in Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and Idaho. While some tallies may change as additional votes arrive, the best it did was in Nevada, where it had passed once before but needed to pass again to take effect. There, it got 46% of the vote.

It did the worst in Idaho, the most heavily Republican of the states where it was on the ballot, garnering only 30%.

The loss in Colorado particularly stung proponents, who had vastly outspent the opposition there.

“Reforms of this magnitude take time and effort,” said Kent Thiry, the co-chair and a big financial backer of the pro-ranked choice campaign.

“Time and public sentiment are on the side of our reforms, as support was highest among voters under the age of 50, because they have the biggest stake in the future.”

A similar note was struck by Meredith Sumpter, CEO of FairVote, a pro-ranked choice group.

“Changing the status quo is never easy. Entrenched interests – including several state parties and an increasingly well-organized national opposition – pushed back hard on this year’s statewide ballot measures,” she said.

In Alaska, a move to repeal the ranked choice system was virtually tied with support for it in early results. Alaska voters had approved ranked choice in 2020, but Republicans led an effort to repeal it, blaming it for the victory of Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, to the state’s sole House seat in 2022.

Language prohibiting the use of ranked choice voting was also included in a Missouri constitutional amendment that passed successfully Tuesday.

In ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates in the order in which they would like to see them win, starting with their first choice and working their way down, instead of only choosing one candidate to vote for.

The ranked choice ballot measures would have also fully or partially opened up party primaries in several of the places they were considered. In Colorado and Idaho, the top four vote-getters in a conventional primary, of any party, would have advanced to a ranked choice vote in the general election. In Nevada, five candidates would have advanced.

However, the idea did win support in one high-profile place: Washington, D.C.

Voters in the nation’s capital, where the registration is overwhelmingly Democratic, gave it more than 72% of the vote in unofficial results.

In D.C., the measure would allow independents, about one-sixth of the registered voters, to vote in taxpayer-funded party primaries, something that’s currently banned.

The proposed changes in Washington and the states drew the ire of local parties, who say they will be disruptive. The D.C. Democratic Party said the change would “cause our Party’s values and goals to be diluted.”

But ranked choice advocates say the current system of selecting just one candidate per race often leaves voters with no good choice, thanks to gerrymandering and polarization. They say it will deal with the “spoiler” role played by third-party candidates, who can split the vote and allow a candidate to be elected with only a plurality, not a majority, of votes.

FairVote identified 70 such plurality-only winners in statewide primaries for U.S. House, Senate and state offices earlier this year.

Deb Otis, research and policy director FairVote, likened the process to ordering at a restaurant in an interview with HuffPost in October.

“I have a list of my favorite foods, and if the item I want is sold out, I will order my second choice. I won’t go home hungry. I know what my second choice is,” she said.

Some critics of ranked choice voting object to the way it has been pushed. In Oregon, state lawmakers put it on the ballot, but in the other states and D.C., it was added after paid signature-gathering efforts.

In Colorado, Thiry gave more than $1.4 million to the campaign and is co-chair of the board of Unite America, a group that advocates for open primaries, ranked choice general elections and ending gerrymandering and has backed FairVote.

According to Colorado Public Radio, Thiry and a group of other wealthy donors such as Kathryn Murdoch, daughter-in-law of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Ken Griffin, founder the Citadel hedge fund, have spent tens of millions of dollars on ranked choice efforts in several states.

When Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) announced his opposition to the ranked choice measure, he said the campaign in his state showed the dangers that it could lead to in the form of an increased role for big money in politics.

“Coloradans have had no opportunity to debate meaningfully this transformation of our elections or the chance to think through the unintended consequences of these far-reaching changes. Instead, we have been battered by a one-sided barrage of millions of dollars of TV advertisements to persuade us to abandon our current, world-class election system for an untested experiment,” Bennet said in a statement.

FairVote pointed to the number of signatures the ranked choice voting measure gathered in Colorado and the fact that elected officials from both parties supported it as evidence the idea has broad public support.

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