Honolulu misleads voters about RCV

Voters in Honolulu will decide twenty charter amendments this November. It is a strange kind of election, where city elites concoct proposals and then lobby the voters to pass them. It’s no surprise then that official information provided to voters is thinly veiled campaigning. This is true of “Question 5 – Election Reform,” which would impose ranked-choice voting (RCV) on the city starting in 2032.

The official description is a model of deception. It does not tell voters that the law could still require a primary election, depending on how many candidates file for a city office. It does not tell voters that their ballots could be eliminated from the final count if they fail to rank a popular choice. And it says nothing about what the scheme will cost.

Hawaii is dominated by far-left Democrats. They have rapidly remade the state’s election laws, always promising to reverse a decades-long decline in voter participation. Instead, the state is a case study for the fact that election rules play a minor role in turnout, which remains dismal.

Honolulu’s current system has two rounds of elections, in August and November. The top two candidates in August go on to November—except a candidate who gets a majority in round one wins outright. This has led to frustration because fewer voters choose to participate in August, and RCV is sold as a solution. Yet the real solution is so much simpler: require all candidates to win in November.

The RCV description makes it sound like there will be just one election, “a single November election,” yet the new law would still require voting in August anytime more than five candidates file for the same office. Because that first election would determine which candidates proceed to November, it would remain critical to the eventual outcome. 

The description similarly ignores the risk of “exhausted ballots,” which has plagued RCV systems in other cities. This happens when voters rank candidates who are eliminated. A normal election protects your right to vote for unpopular candidates—your vote is included in the results, even when your candidate loses. With RCV, you lose that right. Your ballot can be set aside, as if you never voted at all, if your candidates are eliminated before the final round.

Finally, the official description mentions new election rules and “a public education program.” What will all this cost? They’re not telling. The price tag was $15 million just for the education program when New York City adopted RCV.

Nestled between a proposal for an “LGBTQIA+ Commission” that feels very Woke 1.0 and a new law that would block local police from cooperating with immigration authorities, Honolulu’s proposal to implement RCV seeks to hide the realities of this strange election system. In fact, RCV is unnecessarily complex and puts valid votes at risk of being discarded. A better solution for the city is simple: use a normal election process but require all candidates to win in November.