Tide is turning against ranked choice voting

OPINION:

Election tampering isn’t always obvious. Sometimes, it’s hiding in plain sight.

Such is the case with ranked choice voting, an innocuous-sounding scheme that left-wing billionaires have been installing around the country to enhance democracy. In truth, ranked choice voting, or RCV, replaces our cherished “one person, one vote” system with a distorted voting method that gives an edge to extremist candidates who would not otherwise prevail in an honest, straightforward election.

We can be thankful for the leadership of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who just last week signed a bill prohibiting RCV in any local, state or federal elections in his state. Mr. Landry is part of a principled vanguard of state officials working to face down RCV and roll it back. Louisiana joins nine other states that have acted to defend its residents’ right to fair elections in which every vote counts. Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma have banned RCV this year alone.

The tide is turning against RCV. The reason is simple: Everywhere RCV is tried, it leaves a trail of discarded ballots, extensive voting errors, delayed election results, interminably slow polling place lines, and diminished voter confidence.

The basic mechanics of RCV are daunting. For each election, voters must rank candidates in order of their preference. In federal elections, wading through the numerous races and candidates can be a lengthy, if not overwhelming, task. It can be worse in some local elections with dozens of little-known candidates.

Suppose no candidate emerges with a majority at first. In that case, tabulation machines eliminate the candidate with the fewest first-place votes and redistribute his or her ballots to each voter’s next-highest choice. The process is repeated until a candidate garners the majority of the remaining votes.

Ranked choice voting is cumbersome, explaining why many voters skip the ranking part and just vote once for their preferred candidate. But if that candidate is eliminated, their ballot gets tossed out, effectively disenfranchising those voters. It’s as if they never went through the trouble of turning out to vote.

Studies confirm that the number of ballots routinely thrown out is substantial. Even the George Soros–funded RCV advocacy group FairVote concedes that, on average, nearly 1 in 3 voters do not rank multiple candidates in RCV elections.

The fact that a candidate who initially polled the second- or third-most ballots can win a majority of the final votes is a key feature explaining the far left’s enthusiasm for ranked choice voting. It gives their candidates a fighting chance to circumvent the true majority of voters’ will, pushing American politics to the left.

For example, in a 2022 special election for a U.S. House seat in Alaska, Republican candidates initially garnered 60% of the vote. Yet after earning just 40.2% of first-place votes cast, Democrat Mary Peltola was ultimately declared the winner. After the first-round tabulation, 11,222 ballots that didn’t indicate their second-most preferred candidate were tossed out. Of those who voted for third-place candidate Nick Begic, 21% didn’t list a second-place pick, effectively placing their ballots in the trash before the final round of tabulation.

With those ballots eliminated, Ms. Peltola claimed a majority of 51.5% even though she was preferred by only a minority of voters. The process was so confusing that state officials concealed the election results for 15 days while trying to gather and tabulate votes.

Alaska’s experience is not an aberration. In Maine, the only other state conducting federal elections under RCV, a Democratic candidate won a congressional race in 2018 despite the Republican receiving more votes in the first round of voting.

Fortunately, disenfranchised Alaskans will get a shot at righting a wrong. A citizen-led initiative has placed the repeal of ranked choice voting on this fall’s ballot. If it succeeds, Alaska will junk the scheme responsible for trashing so many citizens’ votes. And Missouri voters will consider a constitutional amendment proposal that would shield them from RCV ballot tampering.

If they succeed, they will follow Aspen, Colorado, and other municipalities that have had miserable experiences with RCV and ultimately walked away from it. In Utah, half of the cities that participated in an RCV pilot program have already tossed it on the proverbial ash heap of history.

The tide is starting to turn against ranked choice voting. However, given the mass of dark money behind it, more states should follow the lead of Louisiana and the other nine states that have banned RCV to protect ballot integrity from this latest threat.

• Jason Snead and Trent England are chairmen of the Stop Ranked Choice Voting Coalition and authors of “The Case Against Ranked-Choice Voting.”