Rank Choice Voting in the U.S.

By Ella Johnson

Source: PBSWisconsin.org

American elections are drama. Even The Bachelorette cannot compare to the pure chaos every time presidential candidates are unleashed on the debate stage on live television.

Checking my Twitter notifications to see Donald Trump calling Thailand “thighland” was pure gold. Needless to say, I was drawn into politics before I knew the three branches of government. 

Every election cycle of the last eight years has been rife with drama. Mail-in ballots are evil, Donald Trump was close friends with Jeffery Epstein, Dominion voting machines are democratic robots, Russia meddled, the 2020 election was faked – every day something new. It doesn’t necessarily matter how true any of it was; I was enthralled. I scoured every ballot my parents were sent, asking anyone who would listen what each elected official did, what each politician was promising, and especially about the ballot itself. 

In all except six democracies around the globe, when voters enter the voting booth, they pick one single candidate for whom they cast their ballot. However, in those six countries, national and local elections are conducted via ranked choice voting (RCV). Instead of choosing a single candidate, constituents rank contenders on the basis of who they would rather be in office. Depending on the country or jurisdiction, election winners are determined by either the amount of first-place votes they received or the amount of points they collected when each rank is assigned a point value. 

Currently, RCV is conducted for statewide elections on some level in twelve states, and for local elections in US jurisdictions across fourteen states, including Berkeley, San Francisco, and Oakland. Beyond that, the use is far from widespread, though it provides numerous benefits without many drawbacks. Off the bat, RCV compensates for a growing issue in local, state, and national elections – partisan hostility. For decades, political party alignment has been a point of identity. Democrats live around Democrats, consume progressive media, and only vote blue. It’s arguably even more prevalent for Republicans. 

The system simultaneously separates people of different political ideologies and fosters hostility between parties. As proven by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Arizona State University, actions taken across the aisle have drastically decreased since the mid 1990s. 

The lack of cooperation and compromise in Congress has reflected a similar – and growing – chasm in the general public. Gaps between party beliefs are growing and fewer people hold the ability to make nice with those who do not share their views. Holding an opinion that does not align politically with the group is a social suicide I’ve personally experienced many a time. 

This systemic dichotomy is only made more prominent by the fact that our ballots force us to choose one candidate and intentionally exclude any third parties that could cover the middle ground (or simply different ground). With the ability to rank candidates, one can express far more nuance in their voting preferences. 

Instead of simply voting for one party or another, a moderate can rank one party’s candidates 1st and 4th, while giving the second party 3rd and a third party 2nd. One can not only express interests that go beyond (sometimes arbitrary) party lines, but also give their vote to third-party candidates without fear that their vote will be “wasted.” 

As was the case in the 2020 election, many of those who wanted to vote for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders were scared off by the idea that sending their vote towards him would simply “waste” it and take from the chances of their second choice – one of the runners from the main two political parties. These worries are not unfounded – in 1912, Democrat Woodrow Wilson only won the presidency after Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican Party’s vote with a third-party run. However, these concerns would have been nonexistent with RCV, as in places it’s been implemented it's been proven to reduce “wasted” votes by three times. The ability to cross party lines frees thousands from the constraints of choosing a party over a candidate and has the great potential for decreasing partisan hostility as a result. 

There have been a great many reasons why RCV is only prominent in six countries and twelve states. The primary argument most cite when negating a debate of RCV is that of money. In most cases, the vote-counting machines those jurisdictions currently have are incapable of processing ballots that use ranked-choice strategies. A change necessitates new or updated vote-counting machines and costs money that many are not willing to shell out. 

New evidence, however, proves that the numbers given by opponents are often overexaggerated. In a survey conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the mean cost of the system transition (excluding extreme outliers) was only $39,000 and the median cost was even lower – $17,000. Taking into account the city of Berkeley’s spending on elections through the City Clerk’s Office, this makes up just 1.6% of the estimated 2023 expenditure and just 1.1% of the actual 2021 expenditure. 

When faced with such widespread benefits, an argument that depends on a city spending just 43 cents per citizen is simply outweighed. According to that same study, jurisdictions that made the transition net saved money, as ranked choice voting alleviates the need for special run-off elections that often end up being costly. 

The reality of implementation, though, is truthfully quite complicated – especially when faced with the American political scene. It should be established that RCV has been proven to, 1) increase voter turnout by approximately 10%, 2) increase the involvement of third parties, and 3) enfranchise voters to cross the political divide in either direction. AKA, the benefits are undeniably immense. 

However, it is also true that we, as a nation, blew a gasket when one candidate accused an electronic ballot counter of having political bias in the 2020 presidential election. In the theoretical situation in which national elections are being done in a widespread manner by RCV, the number of candidates that could and likely would accuse the system of fraud would be staggering, and it may not survive the onslaught. Florida has already banned RCV in a 2022 law under an unsubstantiated accusation of voter fraud. 

America does not like drastic change. A change in the system so substantial, though it would be beneficial, in our current political climate would be unsustainable and chaotic. In looking on the smaller side, though, RCV has a vast future. Currently, 40 US jurisdictions use RCV in fourteen states, and eight further jurisdictions have plans to implement it in this year’s elections. 

On the local level, RCV is thriving, and doing its part to better the American political scene, spreading ever so slightly each year since the first implementation in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1941. Though an RCV revolution isn’t imminent, it is growing. So, while my hometown hasn’t implemented RCV, I’ll continue to watch the political drama unfold, and, for the time being, I’ll be mailing in my ballot.