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

Dec 14

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.

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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?

SCOTUS to decide if states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day

Educate. Advocate. Mitigate. Activate!

Bill Bruch

Nov 10

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Today, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether federal law prohibits states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day. Judges are being asked to define the true meaning of “ELECTION DAY.”

A half-lowered US flag waves in front of the US Supreme Court.

As part of the list of orders last Friday, the court took up Watson v. Republican National Committee, a challenge by the Republican National Committee and others to a Mississippi law (as well as similar laws in 30 other states and the District of Columbia) that allow mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are received within five business days after Election Day.

The dispute began in 2024, when the RNC, along with the Mississippi GOP and two individuals, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. Their case was later joined with a similar case brought by the Libertarian Party of MS.

A federal judge in Gulfport, MS, upheld the law, rejecting the challengers’ contention that it conflicted with federal law.

The challengers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which reversed the decision. On Oct 25, 2024, the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the date elections officials receive the ballot is all that matters. The mailing date and postmark date are irrelevant. If a ballot hasn’t been received by election day, it’s too late. “Federal law requires voters to take timely steps to vote by Election Day,”Judge Oldham wrote. “And federal law does not permit the State of Mississippi to extend the period for voting by one day, five days, or 100 days.”

Mississippi appealed to SCOTUS in June, arguing “an ‘election’ is the conclusive choice of an officer” – which occurs by the deadline as long as voters cast their ballots by then, even if election officials do not receive them by that day.

In July, a group of 19 Democrat aligned states and DC filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting MS, saying the 5th Circuit’s ruling is “both wrong and destabilizing.”

The Republican National Committee responded that:

Federal law (2 U.S.C. § 7, 3 U.S.C. § 1) defines Election Day as the single day on which ballots must be cast and received.
Allowing post-Election Day receipt risks post-election manipulation and undermines the constitutional need for one Election Day (citing Foster v. Love, 522 U.S. 67 (1997)).

SCOTUS will likely hear oral arguments sometime next year, with a decision to follow by late June or early July.

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of the case. One way cheating in elections can occur is because in many states, ‘election season’ is now so long that anyone can monitor the “matchback” reports and know if registered voters’ ballots have been voted.

It is easy for nefarious actors to vote for registered voters who did not actually vote by forging signatures, get their ballots through via lax signature verification policies, and then be counted after election day.

After ‘Election Day’ - under the guise of Mail-in Voting - Anonymous ballots, upon separation from their outer envelopes, are thus co-mingled with the ballots of legitimate voters. With these policies, thieves know it’s too late to find their fraudulent ballots.

Of note: One of the groups that stepped in to defend the ‘election season’ concept of having the ability to accept and process ballots well after election day was the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans, an affiliate of the Washington-based AFL-CIO union-created front group that successfully sued in Washington State to obtain a court ruling that trampled the WA Constitution provision that a voter must be a WA resident for at least 30 days in order to be able to become registered to vote in WA.

Bill Bruch

Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Committee Chairman (5th year), WAGOP Executive Board Member (5th Year), Skagit County GOP Chairman (9th year), Citizen Journalist, Olympic Conference 2021 Activist of the Year Award Winner, Business Owner, 2020 WA State House Representative Candidate, Former Council Member, and WA State 2016 and 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.