Ranked-Choice Voting News Roundup - December 2024
by Staff
Welcome to our weekly news roundup, where we highlight the top stories surrounding ranked-choice voting—both opposing and supporting—throughout the nation.
Week of December 15
Looking ahead at 2025 ranked-choice voting legislation
Ballotpedia News | December 18, 2024
More bills pre-filed or carried over to 2025 legislative sessions would adopt ranked-choice voting (RCV) than would ban it, but their path to becoming law remains uncertain.
Ranked-choice voting was one of the hottest election policy topics of 2024, both in state legislative sessions and on voters’ ballots. Six states banned RCV, more than in any other year. Five state legislatures passed bills to ban the electoral system and Missouri voters approved a legislatively referred constitutional amendment at the November election. Republicans controlled the state legislature in each of these states when the legislation passed. This doubled the number of bans passed in 2023 and brought the total number of states with bans to 11, ten of which had Republican trifectas at the time of adoption.
Maine and Oregon Prove the Failure of Ranked Choice Voting
Restoration News | December 18, 2024
Ranked-choice voting continues to prove itself a failed system of voting that depresses turnout and often elects candidates who come in second place or lower. The Taxpayers Association of Oregon recently noted that in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, thousands of voters didn’t use their RCV ballots correctly, and in one city council race in Portland, Oregon, a third place finisher leapt into first. In the Portland race, it took over 20 rounds of ranked-choice counting to determine the winners.
Six states rejected RCV this election via referendum, and a seventh voted to amend its constitution to ban it. Oregon was one of the six, voting it down 60-40, despite anti-RCV forces being outspent 10,000–1. In 2022, however, voters in Multnomah County—home to far-left Portland—overwhelmingly approved RCV for county chair, commissioners, auditor, and sheriff. Portland voters approved a separate measure, implementing RCV and changing the city’s governing structure. In the new structure, four city districts will each send three candidates to city council, requiring each candidate only to need 25 percent of the vote to make it.
Following Election Integrity Mandate, States Should Take These Steps To Secure Elections
The Daily Wire | December 16, 2024
The 2024 election is over, but the hard work of building trust in our elections is just beginning. Conservative states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas have made great strides in the last few years. The laws they passed helped deliver a high turnout, high confidence election. But election integrity faces ongoing challenges both new and old, which is why our conservative states must double down on robust election reforms in 2025.
One of the most urgent threats to election integrity comes from foreign interference. While existing laws prohibit foreign nationals from contributing to political candidates, loopholes allow them to fund campaigns to dramatically reshape state constitutions and even rewrite foundational voting laws through ballot initiatives.
Sponsor restarts process to repeal Alaska ranked-choice voting on 2026 ballot
Alaska's News Source | December 16, 2024
Ballot Measure 2, an initiative to repeal Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system, narrowly failed in the recent election cycle, but the sponsor of the measure is not ready to give up just yet.
After a recount revealed the ballot measure failed by 743 votes, instead of the 737 originally counted, sponsor Phil Izon submitted the paperwork on Monday to get back on the ballot for 2026.
Week of December 8
Alaska and Ranked-Choice Voting: It's Over—for Now
RedState | December 10, 2024
Aside from (obviously) the presidential contest, one of the big issues in the 2024 elections was ranked-choice voting (RCV.) It failed almost everywhere it was tried. But here in the Great Land, RCV was put in place by ballot in 2020, and while a repeal made it onto the 2024 ballot, that measure narrowly failed by a little over 700 votes. Tons of dark money flowed into the state from Outside to keep this system on the books, and now, with the recount concluded, it looks as though the repeal has failed. For now.
Still, Alaskans are nothing if not stubborn. Phil Izon, who was one of the driving forces behind the repeal effort, has vowed to put it on the ballot again in 2026.
Group appointed by Gov. Ned Lamont recommends allowing ranked-choice voting in some elections
CT Insider | December 10, 2024
A group commissioned by Gov. Ned Lamont to study the feasibility of ranked-choice voting in Connecticut has recommended that lawmakers start by giving municipalities and political parties the choice of adopting the system in a handful of elections.
Lamont, a Democrat, formed the working group last year after declaring his support for ranked-choice voting during his most recent re-election campaign — when he won the endorsement of the pro-election-reform Griebel-Frank for CT Party.
In a New Kind of Election, Voter Turnout Still Lagged in East Portland
Willamette Week | December 9, 2024
Multnomah County released a report on Monday about the city of Portland’s first election to use ranked-choice voting to select 12 City Council members and a new mayor.
The county’s Elections Division reported that 71% of Portland voters returned a ranked-choice ballot, compared to 75% of Portlanders who returned the standard ballot. (The ranked-choice contests were printed on a separate slip of a paper than the regular contests, but both ballots were mailed together.)
Why Voters Rejected Election Reform
The Atlantic | December 8, 2024
This was supposed to be the year that political reform took off. A nearly $100 million campaign gave voters in seven states the opportunity to scrap party primaries, enact ranked-choice balloting, or both. Advocates of overhauling elections had billed the proposals as a fix for two of the most hated problems in politics: gridlock and polarization. And they promised nothing short of a transformation across state capitols and Congress—more compromise, less partisanship, and better governance.
Voters said “No, thanks.” Election-reform measures failed nearly everywhere they were on the ballot in November—in blue states such as Colorado and Oregon, in the battlegrounds of Nevada and Arizona, and in the Republican strongholds of Montana, Idaho, and South Dakota. Alaska was the only state where reformers prevailed: By a margin of just 737 votes, the state rejected an effort to repeal a recently adopted system that combined nonpartisan primaries with ranked-choice voting.
Week of December 1
Election Integrity gets a historic mandate
The Washington Times | December 4, 2024
The 2024 election was a resounding victory for election integrity. Not only did red state voting laws again deliver smooth, high-turnout elections in places such as Georgia and Florida, voters overwhelmingly embraced election integrity ballot measures and rejected proposed left-wing voting reforms. Across the country, Americans turned out in support of laws that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
In eight states — Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin — voters passed ballot measures to ban noncitizen voting, most garnering 70% support or more. This landslide victory sends a clear message that Americans believe voting is a right reserved for citizens.
Poll finds east Portland residents, voters of color less likely to know about city’s switch to ranked-choice voting
The Oregonian | December 3, 2024
Portland voters of color as well as those who live east of Interstate 205 were far less likely to know about the city’s new ranked-choice voting system prior to casting ballots in last month’s election than voters who identify as white or live in other parts of the city.
Overall, 85% of Portland voters were at least partially aware of the city’s election reforms that allowed them to choose up to six candidates each for mayor and City Council in order of preference for the first time.
Despite election-day losses, ranked-choice voting advocates aren’t giving up
The Florida Phoenix | December 3, 2024
Citizens in Florida and around the world have seen their email inboxes flooded with requests by nonprofit organizations (including the Florida Phoenix) in recent days asking for financial contributions as part of “Giving Tuesday,” a global event that has taken place for the past 12 years on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Nonprofits soliciting donations in the Sunshine State include Rank My Vote Florida, the advocacy group fighting to have Florida adopt a ranked-choice voting (RCV) system for elections. Ranked-choice voting allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference. If no one receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidates who receive the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes redistributed to people’s next choices.
The ranked choice failure
The Washington Examiner | December 3, 2024
By a margin of just 737 votes out of 340,078 cast, Alaska voters chose to keep their ranked choice voting system this year. This was the lone victory for a movement that saw losses in eight other states despite heavily outspending opponents. The empty promises of the ranked choice voting movement are being exposed, its costs are mounting, and voters are wisely choosing to reject this fundamentally undemocratic premise.
Advocates of ranked choice voting claim the system makes it easier for more centrist candidates with broader support to win over more “extreme” candidates who they claim benefit from low-turnout primaries. Ranked choice voting advocates, who happen to be almost entirely composed of Democrats, also claim that ranked choice voting discourages negative campaigning since candidates are forced to appeal to a wider spectrum of voters.