RANKED CHOICE VOTING - WHY IT'S SUCH A BAD IDEA - Clark County Republican Party

RANKED CHOICE VOTING - WHY IT'S SUCH A BAD IDEA

When the word salad begins, you know there isn’t a sound principle in sight.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the absurd, newly reintroduced Congressional bill called the “Ranked Choice Voting Act”. This proposed law would require that all Congressional elections (primary and general) throughout our country be conduced using ranked choice voting (RCV) starting in 2028.

The clowns who are pushing for this to become law are all Democrat members of Congress, and in true self-promoting, politicianesque fashion, they have been tooting their own horns about the legislation since they reintroduced it the other day. You know, the standard “We are saving democracy” battle cry. What’s telling is the fact that what they are saying about the proposed law makes no sense, tells you nothing about what the law would actually do, and leaves you with a strong sense of confusion (or a burning desire to take a shower once you see through the scam). In other words, ranked choice voting is not what the proponents of this voting system say it is. To those nefarious players who want to forever shift our society from a vivacious and prosperous meritocracy to a weak and wholly reliant on government giveaways equity fest, RCV is a great way for them to do so.

In short, RCV is nothing more than a sleight of hand. For those of us who know what it is and how it works to undermine the will of the people, the name ranked choice voting brings to mind the image of a magician standing behind his makeshift, wooden table, expeditiously shuffling around three identical coconut shells, cleverly asking his unsuspecting audience which shell is housing the elusive white ball beneath it.

Here’s how RCV works:

Instead of our standard election system, where the candidate who gets the most votes wins, ranked choice voting allows voters to vote for multiple candidates who are running for the same office, by ranking them in order of preference. If no candidate achieves more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the candidate that receives the fewest first place votes is eliminated, and that candidate’s second place votes are allocated to the remaining candidates. So just to be clear, the votes of the other voters whose first choice candidate that was eliminated are re-allocated. These rounds of re-allocating second, third or fourth place votes from the bottom-up will continue on and on until one candidate finally gets a “majority” of the votes. Well, a majority of the remaining votes that haven’t been thrown out yet. Sound confusing? Don’t worry if you are scratching your head. I was too when I first read about it.

Think it will cause errors in the voting process due to confusion? Definitely.

Think it will deter people from voting since the process is too confusing or intimidating? No doubt.

Here’s a sample RCV ballot. The complexity is clear:

Unfortunately, it gets even more suspect. As you move through each round of the ranked choice voting tabulation, some ballots are declared “exhausted,” (read thrown out), as some voters’ remaining choices do not include candidates who are still in the race as voters’ other (2nd, 3rd, 4th) choices are being re-allocated to the candidates who are still standing. This absolutely disenfranchises “exhausted” voters, excluding them from having their vote counted in final rounds of the process. It also makes hand re-counts and audits virtually impossible.

Sound unfair? Dare I borrow a term from the left and call it “inequitable”… It is! With this system of voting, not all voters’ are having their vote weighted equally. Plus, some voters are literally having their votes tossed, whereby lowering the “total” number of ballots, whereby opening the door for someone who hardly anybody voted for to swoop in and win the race. Think I am exaggerating? Sadly, I am not.

For Example:

Maine and Alaska are the only two states currently using this system of voting, though there are dozens of cities (like NYC and San Francisco) that also use it. Here is a real-life example of ranked choice voting causing the candidate who should have won, to lose:

The 2018 Maine 2nd Congressional election had 4 candidates running in it. After the initial vote, Bruce Poliquin was leading with a plurality of votes (45.6%) amongst the four candidates. However, since he didn’t have a majority, ranked-choice eliminations took place. The system determined that the candidates who “weren’t viable” had garnered 8.1% of the total votes. When those candidates were eliminated and votes shifted to next ranked-choices, Poliquin ended up with 49.5% of the vote, just short of the majority needed to win, and his opponent, Jared Golden, ended up winning with 50.5%. But Golden would have lost if the equitable (normal) voting system had been employed.

Voters Reject Ranked Choice Voting:

Of great note, we can clearly learn from others’ mistakes. Some jurisdictions previously adopted ranked choice voting laws but then repealed them following negative experiences. For example, after a rather unpopular mayor of Burlington was re-elected with only 29% of the first place votes, they then repealed the system and went back to the regular voting methods. In Washington state, Pierce County repealed ranked choice voting by a whopping 71%, and in Aspen, Colorado, it was rescinded by 65%.

North Carolina legislature got rid of ranked choice voting back in 2013. And believe it or not, in California, after the state legislature passed a ranked choice voting system, the long-time governor at the time, Jerry Brown, vetoed the bill. He felt it was overly complicated and confusing, and that it would deprive voters of “genuinely informed choice.”

The Word Salad

Where there is word salad, there is trouble.

If a politician cannot clearly annunciate how a proposed law will make your life better, then it won’t. And when a politician uses word salad to tap dance around the truth, you can be sure there is deceit or corruption lurking in the crevices of whatever they are trying to sell you.

Here’s what one of the bill sponsors, Senator Welch, said about the legislation:

Ranked choice voting offers an opportunity to break through polarization and strengthen our democracy by ensuring that our elected candidates have received the broad support of the folks they’ll represent.

I’m proud to join my friends and former colleagues Representatives Raskin and Beyer on this pro-democracy bill to make our elections more equitable, more civil, and more representative.

How on earth does RCV make an election less polarizing? Everyone still votes for their candidate of choice, and if you aren’t going to ever vote Republican (or vice versa), RCV will never change that. Moreover, how does RCV make elections “more civil”?! And what does it even mean to make an election “more equitable”? Funny enough, the legislation only permits a voter to rank up to 5 candidates. So if there are more than 5 people running, those other names aren’t even allowed to earn votes. Is that “more equitable”?

This is what another one of the co-sponsors, Senator Kim, is saying about the proposed law:

Empowering voters couldn’t be more important at a moment when so many people feel detached and disillusioned with our politics. With so much that is broken, ranked choice voting can help reinforce the American people as the drivers of our democracy and make sure that everyone’s voice is heard equally at the ballot box, and by those they chose to represent them in Congress.

Honestly, I have no idea what he just said there. How exactly does RCV make your voice heard equally at the ballot box any better than regular voting does? If anything, RCV does the opposite - as it disqualifies the lowest 1st place ranked candidate, and it potentially throws out your ballot if your choices get eliminated by others not voting the same way as you. It also disqualifies your ballot altogether if you “undervote” (which means you don’t rank candidates), or if you rank 2 or more candidates at the same level and your higher ranked choice candidate has been eliminated.

Another co-sponsor of the bill, Representative Raskin, went so far as to say that RCV actually gives a voter “more power” when they go vote. What? Raskin apparently believes voting should be about DEI. He claims RCV will make politics “more inclusive” and that it will make candidates connect with more voters than they would have if they were running in an election that used regular voting…

Ranked choice voting is a great advance in democracy. It gives voters more power at the ballot box and makes our politics more positive and inclusive, encouraging candidates to connect with more voters.

You can read their full press releases about the bill on their websites, a couple of which are here and here.

The gaslighting the bill sponsors are spewing about this proposed law is so disappointing. My guess is that they know that RCV is not going to result in free and fair elections, so they smother the facts with fluffy feel-good phrases to deceive the public into supporting the bill. Their propaganda doesn’t make me want to support them at all. Quite the opposite. I’d rather ask them…

Would you like some dressing on your salad?