Ranked-choice voting creates confusion in Santa Fe
by Harry Roth
Santa Fe, New Mexico, held its municipal elections earlier this month. Since 2018, the city has used ranked-choice voting (RCV) to elect its mayor and city council, and since then confusion has been a staple in Santa Fe elections.
Supporters often claim the system is easy to use and saves locales money, but the city has been conducting voter education campaigns with help from FairVote New Mexico and the League of Women Voters since introducing the system. This runs counter to the RCV advocate-backed research that claims voters find the system easy to use.
Santa Fe’s own County Clerk effectively admits that the easy-to-use claim doesn’t match reality. Clerk Katharine Clark explained:
“If you’re going to implement ranked-choice voting, you have to spend money on educating voters, and you have to have a long runway to do that so that voters don’t feel that the rug is being pulled out from underneath them, that they feel empowered, and that they feel prepared.”
The first part of her statement is spot on—you can’t implement ranked-choice voting without spending money on voter education campaigns. But it isn’t a one-time deal, and there is no guarantee that the campaign will be successful.
San Francisco has used RCV since 2004, and every election since then, the San Francisco Department of Elections has conducted voter education campaigns to remind residents how to use it. New York City first used RCV during the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary and spent $15 million on its education campaign in the runup to the election.
Voter confusion is a big problem, but besides that, has RCV had any positive effects on Santa Fe politics? Not really.
Like many cities that have adopted ranked-choice voting, Santa Fe has moved further to the left. Since RCV was introduced, the City Council has passed a real estate transfer tax, a $17.50 minimum wage, the creation of an office for Equity and Inclusion, and protection for "gender-affirming" healthcare.
Ranked-choice voting hasn’t delivered simplicity or moderation. The best thing Santa Fe residents could do is work on a ballot proposal to repeal RCV and bring back simple and fair elections to the city and end its failed experiment.