The Deception of Ranked Choice Voting

In the early 2000’s, several political activist and voting reform groups introduced the American public to a new voting methodology called Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) or Instant Runoff Voting.  The basic premise of RCV is that the voter (elector) picks multiple candidates on his or her ballot by ranking them first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on.    Use of RCV in the United States is growing and currently employed in municipal, state, and federal elections in nearly two dozen locations across the country. 

How Does RCV Work?

RCV is a complicated process.  When the elector enters the voting booth, the ballot presented to him or her contains side-by-side columns with all the candidates for a particular office listed.  Unless restricted by law to a limited number of candidates for an office, the total number of columns equals the total number of candidates running for that office.  The elector marks their ballot in each column indicating their first choice in column 1, their second choice in column 2, their third choice in column 3, etc., until all columns show a candidate choice.  For example, if five people are running for a particular office, there are five columns listing all the candidates in each and there would be five candidates marked by preference of first through fifth choice, one is each column.

Once voting is complete and the votes counted, if a candidate receives more than 50% (50% plus 1) first choice votes, that candidate wins the election.  However, if no candidate wins a majority of first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated and all the second choice candidates on those elector ballots are counted and added as appropriate to the four remaining candidates on the ballot.

Now, using the four remaining candidates, a new vote tally is calculated.  If there still is no majority winner, vote counters eliminate all fourth choice candidates from every elector ballot and calculate a new tally by adding in the third choice elector votes.  This process continues until a candidate reaches a majority (more than 50%) of the votes and thereby wins the election.     

Why Change How We Vote Now?

For over 200 years, Americans voted using the plurality voting process where the candidate who won the most votes after a single round of ballots won the election.  Why change now?  The old way is relatively simple and counting votes is presumably a straightforward process.  What is the rationale used by “reformers” that justifies changing the methodology for electing our officials?   What is behind their movement? Keeping this question in context, we must never forget our brokenness and the proclivity for evil found in the human heart.  One biblical foundations our Forefathers used when establishing our government is Jeremiah 17:9, which reads:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
    and desperately sick;
    who can understand it? (ESV)

We must recognize deceit when it confronts us and push back to defeat it.

The Reformer’s Rationale

Proponents of RCV often argue that this method of selection removes the possibility of required or mandated runoff elections when a candidate does not acquire a majority of votes.  They maintain that runoffs are expensive and many electors will not return to the voting booth a second time to participate in a run-off.  Proponents also claim that RCV creates a more pleasant atmosphere during election season because candidates are less likely to attack other candidates, which could result in appearing as unpleasant or unlikeable.  After all, asking electors to choose the candidates by first, second or third preference resembles a beauty contest more than an issue-based selection for representation.  Finally, the familiar leftist battle cries surface as proponents assert that RCV offers a greater chance of achieving diversity in the pool of winners or it is a more democratic process because winners must win a majority. That last argument, of course, ignores the fact that the United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

I do not believe the justifications for change listed above truly embody the whole truth in the reformers’ support for RCV.  RCV explanations sound nice but they cover the reformers’ deception for changing rules and definitions in the voting process to ensure control of the process and, hence, who wins. 

Taking a Deeper Look at RCV

In his article entitled “What’s Wrong with Ranked Choice Voting,” scholar and writer Adrian Kuzminski explained the outcome of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses as a case study identifying problems with RCV. Mr. Kuzminski explained that by using RCV in the caucus process, the winner was not actually the first choice of the largest percentage of electors.  Bernie Sanders actually won the plurality of votes, however, Pete Buttigieg picked up more second place votes than Bernie, which gave Mayor Pete more votes in the combined total.  Second place votes carried the day for Buttigieg so he won more caucus delegates¹.      

This 2020 Iowa caucus is just one example of the serious flaws and the deception inherent with RCV. In the same article¹, Kuzminski continues to list additional drawbacks to RCV.  These include:  

1. Any elector vote subsequent to his or her first choice carries the same weight as their first choice.  All choices are identical.
2. Electors that choose a weak candidate as first choice actually vote more than once.  Elimination of their first choice makes their second choice viable but everyone else stands pat.  Therefore, some people only vote once, but other people vote more than once.  I do not call that “democracy.”    
3. The RCV process invites “ballot exhaustion.”  Because of the complexity of the ranking process, many electors may choose not to rank the entire list of candidates.  In doing so, their ballot is cast aside, or exhausted, and the elector becomes disenfranchised.  For example, in the 2010 Board of Supervisors election in San Francisco, the winner received 4,321 votes; however, there were 9,608 ballots exhausted in the process or 9,608 electors disenfranchised². 
4. It is conceivable that the winning candidate could be someone no elector voted high in their rankings but, by using the synthesized counting process, a poorly ranked candidate could garner the winning total of votes.  In the 2010 Oakland, CA mayor’s race, the candidate with the most first place votes lost the election to a candidates who received 25,000 second and third place votes after nine rounds of vote redistribution². 

Additional Deceptions Cloaked in RCV Theory

The list of problems associated with RCV is actually quite extensive.  In addition to the flaws Adrian Kuzminski listed in his article, RCV also requires municipalities, counties, and states to invest in new voting machines.  Their current machines are not sophisticated enough to count and tally the complex rating structure required for RCV.  This would be a large expenditure at the expense of the taxpayers and would render the current voting machinery obsolete.

There is also the problem of confusion.  Picking one candidate on a ballot is very straightforward and neither difficult to understand nor accomplish.  Understanding the ranked choice ballot and voting for the same position several times is very complicated and the follow up vote counting also becomes a major ordeal with a substantial potential for fraud.

Proponents say that RCV offers a more pleasant election season because the candidates want to appear congenial and likeable to the elector, however, it absolutely stifles the custom of open debate to discuss the issues.  RCV eliminates issue-driven dialogs.   Ultimately, RCV can lead to the election of milquetoast or moderate candidates who are too timid and non-assertive to take a position on issues the electorate deems important. 

Finally, the electorate must be informed.  Now, I do agree with an informed electorate.  I believe before any person enters a voting booth, they should be prepared by studying the candidates and / or issues and determine their choices in advance.  In essence, the act of marking a ballot should merely become the last step in the voting process. In a RCV situation, the elector’s research must be much more extensive in order to make an informed ranked choice decision for all the candidates involved in the election.  Unfortunately, many electors enter the booth without completing any research now.  RCV only intensifies that problem.    

Final Thoughts

Pursuing RCV is not a new tactic used by those who want to “fundamentally change” the United States of America.  Along with RCV, there are groups advocating for a national popular vote and for the elimination of the Electoral College.  These tactics only camouflage their real desire to change the voting rules enough to give them the ability to win most, if not all elections.  One only has to consider the original intent behind the US Constitution to recognize that our Forefathers were nothing less than genius. They understood the human heart and they designed a system to protect our inalienable rights, not diminish them, or take them away. 

It is imperative that we address any actions by any group attempting to remove those protections. Actions such as disenfranchisement through ballot exhaustion or empowering the majority over the minority through elimination of the Electoral College must not succeed.  Those of us against such changes must know our rights and willingly assert our rights to prevent these unconstitutional changes from becoming reality.  We must pay close attention to any scheme designed to tinker with long-standing, revered, and constitutionally established conventions in attempts to solidify political power in the hands of a few.  That outcome defines tyranny and we won that war 238 years ago.

RCV is not an option for America and if we desire to keep our Republic, we cannot let it sneak in through deception and find ourselves without recourse to retain our liberty. 

¹ Adrian Kuzminski, Counterpunch.org/2020/03/30/whats-wrong-with-ranked-choice-voting, March 30, 2020

² Hans von Spakovsky and J. Adams, Heritage.org/election-integrity/ranked-choice-voting-bad-choice, August 23, 2019