Why Ranked Choice Voting Only Gives the Illusion of Choice

Ranked choice voting is the latest craze shaking up our electoral system, or so the enthusiasts would have us believe.

Proponents of such reforms are on a mission, advocating for ballot measures across states.

They promise voters a political utopia if passed, one where they will have a multitude of choices that result in moderation.

But peel away the layers of this onion, and the tears start to flow — not from an abundance of choice, but from the realization that this system is less about giving voters more choices and more about muddling the waters of democracy.

In ranked choice voting, casting your ballot turns into a game of preference ping-pong.

Voters are asked to rank candidates in order of favoritism — first choice, second choice and so on.

If a candidate manages to snag more than half the votes in round one, they’re the winner, case closed.

But should no one reach that magic 50% mark, the race turns into a game of electoral musical chairs.

The candidate with the fewest votes gets the boot, and their votes are redirected to the voters’ second choice, and so on, until there’s one person left standing.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Think again.

Ranked choice voting is a straight-up contradiction to America’s "one person, one vote" system. Instead of voting for just one candidate and calling it a day, ranked choice voting forces voters to vote for all candidates, regardless of how opposed one is to the policies of a candidate, or risk their vote being thrown away.

In states that have adopted such schemes, like Maine and Alaska, thousands of votes are tossed each election cycle because voters don’t bother ranking each candidate.

So much for the promise of enhancing democracy.

Not to mention the confusion this process can create among voters.

Think back to the 2000 election, when "hanging chads" were all anyone could talk about after the close contest in Florida.

Democratic operatives were all over the airwaves, criticizing the design of Florida’s ballot, claiming it was too confusing for seniors and first-time voters, who might not have realized who they were voting for because of the design.

Now imagine a ballot with seven or eight candidates for each position, all demanding to be ranked. What was once a swift and easy act of civic duty becomes a prolonged and confusing ordeal.

Forget voting on your lunch hour — you’ll need to set aside half the day!

And if you thought winners were slow to come by in the current first-past-the-post system, brace yourself for the snail’s pace of ranked choice voting.

In the last Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, voters were forced to wait over a month for a winner to be declared, thanks to the city adopting ranked choice voting for their primaries.

In the so-called "Arsenal of Democracy," that’s an absolute joke.

Delays like these not only test the patience of the electorate but undermine the process, leaving the door wide open for allegations of fraud and corruption.

Dig deeper into ranked choice voting’s largest supporters, and you’ll find that it is nothing more than a pet project of the left.

Take FairVote, for instance, one of the national organizations pushing for ranked choice voting. Then there’s Unite America, another player in the ranked choice voting push.

The organization is funded almost exclusively by those perecevied as being left leaning, including Kathryn Murdoch, who has given millions to Democratic candidates.

And don’t forget that Unite America’s founder, Charles Wheelan, unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat.

So much for the claim of bipartisanship.

But if you’re still on the fence about the true intentions behind ranked choice voting, look no further than the two members of Congress whose victories were facilitated by this system.

Reps. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, and Jared Golden, D-Maine, owe their seats to ranked choice voting.

In both cases, they replaced Republican incumbents who would have emerged victorious under a traditional election system.

Peltola has stuck with the Biden administration’s agenda 95% of the time during her tenure, while Golden has followed suit 88% of the time.

Where’s the moderation voters were promised?

Ultimately, ranked choice voting is just another attempt by the left to favor Democrats.

What makes it so dangerous is the lengths its supporters will go to hype this system as a solution for partisanship in America’s electoral system.

It’s understandable why so many voters are open to the idea.

Who wouldn’t want a more functional government?

However, ranked choice voting is not the answer.

As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

Or, in the case of ranked choice voting, slap a nonpartisan sticker on a partisan Trojan horse and hope nobody notices the Democrats inside.

Jacob Lane is a Republican strategist and school choice activist. He has worked for GOP campaigns at the federal, state and local levels, as well as with various PACs and nonprofits. Read Jacob Lane's Reports — More Here.