We should not be surprised that the Washington State Democrats in the legislature want to try again to implement Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) with HB 1448 and SB 5035. Be forewarned: RCV aka Alternate Choice Voting, Instant Runoff Voting, Preferential Voting, Rigged Choice Voting and Racist Choice Voting are just more ways to manipulate election results!
How ranked-choice voting works:
With RCV voters must rank candidates in order of preference, rather than choosing just one candidate. Voters choose their first, second, and third choice, sometimes even more…
RCV elections go through a complex, multistage process. If no single candidate receives over 50% of the total votes in the first round, those who voted for the least popular candidates have their votes reassigned to their second and subsequent choices until someone reaches 50% of the remaining votes.
There are many variations of RCV. Some more complicated than others. Broadly speaking, the most common ranked-choice voting process used is as follows:
Voters rank the candidates for a given office by preference on their ballots.
If a candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes (i.e., 50% plus one), he or she will be declared the winner - this is difficult with several candidates.
If no candidate wins an outright majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated.
All first-preference votes for the failed candidate are eliminated, and second-preference choices on these ballots are then counted as first-preference.
A new tally is conducted via a machine algorithm to determine a winner.
Problems with RCV:
Disenfranchises the voter! If there are five names on a ballot, and you only ranked three who are eliminated, your now-blank ballot wouldn’t be counted in the final vote at all. You will not have expressed any choice about the two leading candidates.
Expensive! Switching to a different election system invokes multiple costs, from spending money on voter education, to redesigning longer more complicated ballots.
Difficult to audit! Many county auditors have reported that RCV is a nightmare to administer and virtually impossible to audit.
Very confusing! RCV is NOT easily understood by the average voter. With RCV there is always a steep new learning curve that come with its adoption.
Harms minority groups! Many voters, including those in the African American and Hispanic communities, have complained that they do not understand the confusing ballots and RCV rules. Also, Nolan McCarty, a public affairs professor at Princeton University, found that RCV "disproportionately decreases the representation and electoral influence of minority voters." In his study, McCarty wrote that "minority electorates may be negatively impacted by the adoption of ranked-choice voting," as it "may dilute minority voter influence to the extent to which those voters exhaust their ballots by failing to rank the majority-group candidates."
Easy to rig: In Alaska’s 2022 RCV special election, despite Republicans receiving nearly 59% of the vote in a known long-time Republican Congressional district, a Democrat somehow won the AK At-large Congressional seat. Republican Nick Begich was eliminated in the 1st round with 27.8% of the votes. Republican Sarah Palin had 30.9%, and Democrat Mary Peltola had 39.7%. After 2nd place votes were tallied, Peltola got 51.5% of the votes, and Palin had 48.5%. Most voters wanted to support a Republican, but got a Democrat representing them because of RCV!
Suppresses the voter! In another example, Loren Taylor lost the 2022 Oakland, CA mayoral election after 9 rounds of eliminations using RCV. Taylor had the most first-choice votes of the 10 candidates, but it only netted him 33% of the total. Ultimately, Sheng Thao won in the following 8 rounds of counting, eventually putting her over 50%. During his concession speech, Taylor criticized ranked-choice voting, saying “it isn’t working, and it is a form of voter suppression because there were thousands of exhausted ballots”—cases where voters didn’t select either of the final two mayoral candidates as one of their choices, and so were not included in the final runoff tabulations.
Banned! RCV is so bad it has been prohibited in eleven states that have adopted laws not allowing the use of RCV in any manner in any elections!
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