Ranked-choice voting’s worst week ever
by Harry Roth
Leading up to November 5, FairVote, one of the major organizations pushing RCV, declared that ranked-choice voting was headed for its biggest election day yet. But to their dismay and our delight, they were flat out wrong.
Six states had measures to implement RCV on the ballot, and they were all soundly rejected by the voters. Even voters in blue states like Colorado and Oregon refused to adopt it. On top of that, Missouri became the eleventh state to ban ranked-choice voting, and Alaska is on track to become the first state ever to repeal it—cutting the number of states using RCV back down to one.
Election day wasn’t just a loss for the pro-RCV movement; it was a complete bloodbath. Backers of the system spent millions of dollars to accomplish virtually nothing. The worst return on investment possible.
The election result in DC was the only bright spot for the so-called election reformers. The district voted overwhelmingly to adopt RCV even after the DC Democratic Party came out against the measure. But advocates for the system shouldn’t celebrate for too long. DC residents will learn about the problems with ranked-choice voting the hard way and may eventually have to follow in Alaska’s footsteps and try to repeal it.
This victory belongs to the people and was years in the making. Before the Stop RCV movement took off, RCV’s success seemed inevitable, mostly thanks to its big money backers and cheerleaders in the press. But not anymore.