Ranked-Choice Voting Education Slush Funds

I often write about the decline of the ranked-choice voting (RCV) movement, which seems to have stalled out on the state level. Advocates are having trouble convincing voters and state legislatures to adopt it. In fact, the last state to adopt the system was Alaska via a 2020 ballot measure. The state is now on its second repeal attempt, after the first attempt fell short by 743 votes. Where the RCV movement has continued to find some successes is on the local level.

Over the years, RCV advocates have supported successful ballot initiatives in cities and counties around the country, the largest being New York City. When NYC voters approved the system in 2019 for primaries and special elections for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough president, and City Council, most of the voting public was still unfamiliar with it.

To prepare voters for the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, the de Blasio administration launched a last-minute $15 million voter education campaign. While most of that was spent on television, digital, and radio ads, around $2 million to $3 million went to advocacy organizations like Rank the Vote, labor unions, and other left-leaning interest groups.

What appeared on the surface to be a last-minute attempt to educate voters ahead of the city’s first RCV election became in part a slush fund for left-wing groups and allies of the administration. Unfortunately, New York City was not an isolated case.

Portland, Oregon, had a much smaller voter education campaign ahead of its first RCV election in 2024 (Portland voters approved the system in 2022), allocating $210,000 to eleven left-wing organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Portland, Future Prairie and the Pacific Northwest Museum of Queer Art, and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization.

In San Francisco, a city that first adopted ranked-choice voting in 2002, the government still allocates money for RCV voter education every election cycle. The most recent allocation came in 2024, when the city gave $100,000 to community-based nonprofits. San Francisco did not publish a public list of the organizations, but one could assume that it consisted mostly of left-wing organizations aligned with the city government.

Advocates market ranked-choice voting as a fix for political polarization that bypasses the two-party system, but the system’s loudest supporters come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the same side that successfully pressured the DNC to drop its proposed RCV ban for the 2028 presidential primary. These taxpayer-funded “education” campaigns regularly act as slush funds that channel public money to political allies with minimal oversight or accountability. And in the case of San Francisco, the slush fund is never-ending.