Ranked Choice Voting in the USA

An essay for Bradley Tusk's new book "Vote With Your Phone"

Today is the release date for Bradley Tusk’s latest book “Vote With Your Phone.” Tusk is both a philanthropist and experienced campaign operative who knows politics inside and out -and makes the case that mobile voting is the quickest way to boost voter turnout in local and primary elections and how mobile voting can be administered securely. I’ve been intrigued by mobile voting since it was far and away the most popular reform solution offered back in 2000 by young people who contributed nearly 9,000 essays to FairVote’s “Why Don’t We Vote” essay contest and have seen its use explode in non-governmental and campus elections. It’s also valuable that mobile voting interfaces work great with ranked choice voting and invite use of tools to help voters learn more their choices. While not ready to say mobile voting is ready for wide use in our elections until we can definitively address questions involving election security and voter trust in results, I was pleased Bradley invited me to contribute this essay on the case for ranked choice voting for inclusion in his book. Please check out Bradley’s organization Mobile Voting and join me in purchasing a copy of Vote With Your Phone to engage with his arguments.

It’s time to rank the vote. To reverse our republic’s downward spiral, we must stop limiting voters to a single preference in elections that under our traditional voting rules self-destruct with more than two candidates.

However tempting, blaming our politicians for our current failures isn’t enough. Rules always matter, and our voting rules have constantly evolved as each new generation of politicians learns how to make existing rules work for their partisan goals.

American democracy is most threatened when we allow our rules to become static. In our ongoing quest to achieve a more perfect union, who votes and how we vote have regularly changed – and despite disturbing regressions along the way, usually for the better. That evolution results in an ongoing dance between politicians seeking to serve their interests and democracy champions seeking a more perfect union. It sometimes puts them fiercely at odds, but at other times they can work together to expand suffrage to more Americans, directly elect more offices, modernize election administration, and improve tools to enable more informed voters.

No single reform is ever enough on its own. But ranked choice voting (RCV) is eminently winnable across our states – and nicely complements other changes like bringing more voters in and providing simple ballot interfaces with mobile voting, erasing the gerrymandered lines that strangle voter choice, and ensuring voters have access to more accurate information about their choices.

Ranked choice voting has become the nation’s fastest-growing electoral reform for good reasons. It’s improving the biggest elections in Alaska, Maine, and more than 50 local governments, from New York City to conservative towns in suburban Utah - and is on the ballot for adoption in four states, Washington, D.C, and several cities this November. Longer-term, it has time on its side: Young Americans typically approve ranked choice voting by margins of three-to-one in ballot measures and have enacted it for student government elections at some 100 colleges and universities.

What explains RCV’s appeal? Voters are hungry to be free to express what they think. We seek elections that bring representatives closer to the people. We want elected leaders to hear our voices and collectively capture our nuanced views that fill out the growing gaps in representation that have sent American democracy into a “doom loop” of binary action and reaction that threatens our deepest values. We want to hold elected leaders accountable for delivering on the promise of timely policy and effective governance.

Through the simple change of allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference – starting with a first choice and continuing with an optional second choice, third choice and so on-- ranked choice voting is a lynchpin toward achieving better elections.

Your ballot becomes a straightforward tool to ensure your voice is heard. Your vote initially counts only for your first choice – just as now. But suppose your first choice loses due to being in last place. Rather than your vote being set aside and not affecting the outcome among the remaining candidates, you’ve already shared how you want your vote to count in the second: for the candidate ranked next on your ballot choice. After three rounds of counting, the three weakest candidates in a five-candidate race would be eliminated. The contest then becomes an “instant runoff” between the two strongest candidates where all voters have had a chance with their ranking to indicate their choice between them without having to return to the polls.

RCV means a lot more votes count – underscoring its appeal to any group concerned about voter turnout and voting rights. No more primaries won with a quarter of the vote over the opposition of 75% of voters. No more delayed, expensive, and deeply negative runoffs. No more “spoilers” and shaming of third party and independent candidates – rather, we can have an entirely new choice to the same tired old candidates who would never run in today’s rules. With RCV, we can have majority rule while giving everyone a better chance to be heard and rewarding candidates for building bridges rather than destroying them.

Ranked choice voting is a proven system dating back more than 150 years. Australia and Ireland have elected their top leaders with it for more than a century, and countless private organizations use it at the recommendation of parliamentary guides like Robert’s Rules of Order

Ranked choice voting’s reform moment has come in the United States. As shown in dozens of cities, it’s more efficient and less costly than traditional runoff elections that become harder to run well with today’s expensive elections and campaign finance system run amok. It’s more representative than plurality voting rules that allow majorities to split their vote and elect leaders who aren’t even trying to represent most Americans.

Sick of primary elections with crowded fields that generate weak and unrepresentative nominees? Then turn to RCV. Find it ridiculous that a 49% to 48% result in Georgia will trigger statewide runoffs – ones coming with hundreds of millions of dollars in new ads and taxpayers having to shoulder 75 million dollars in costs -- to find out who was the second choice of the handful of voters who backed the Libertarian candidate? RCV is your answer, as already used by all overseas military voters in Georgia who today return a RCV ballot to count in any race that might go to a runoff.

Do you wish politicians spent less time attacking their opponents? RCV rewards candidates who find connections with their opponents, promoting more civility on the campaign trail and often electing candidates who have earned a positive ranking from more than two-thirds of voters.

What makes its expansion so urgent is that it offers a deeply American response to our nation’s unique challenges – ones tied to our nation’s unique combination of constitutional structures and political traditions. Given the destructive, but effective tactics of our 21^st century politicians, we need ranked choice voting up and down our ballots because we urgently need more than two choices on our ballots across all 50 states.

Fundamentally, binary politics is broken. Those who think that limiting Americans to the same  two parties is essential to our republic are unaware of how our party system in the 19^th century regularly evolved – and blind to the underlying reasons for our accelerating slide into an era of deeply polarized parties who whip up their parties’ bases through hatred and fear of the other party.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Australia has elected its national leaders with RCV for more than a century, and some seven candidates on average run for every seat. The two biggest parties usually win, but they always face competition, and their candidates always have to reach out to backers of independents and emerging parties to compete for their backup preferences. And they’ll lose when they refuse to adapt – as the “teal independents” showed in 2022 when defeating a string of major party incumbents who refused to adapt to greater voter interest in tackling political corruption, gender equality, and climate change.

Given disenchantment with the major parties and their deepening polarization, it’s only a matter of time before more Americans turn to new parties and independents. Shaming potential new parties will stop working. Before that happens, we’ll want to build on ranked choice voting’s progress to accommodate greater voter choice.

Looking to ranked choice voting over time, it’s particularly impactful when twinned with multi-member districts – as proposed in the Fair Representation Act in Congress that by statute can “save American democracy” in the words of columnist David Brooks. It would effectively end gerrymandering, give every voters a meaningful choice in every election, open representation for both major parties in every district, and provide a direct solution to binary polarization and how best to sustain a multi-racial democracy that brings in more women, people of color and people with different views into Congress, state legislatures and local elections. (The RCV component of the Fair Representation Act in 2024 last week was introduced in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in the form of the Ranked Choice Voting Act.)

As I look back on my three decades of increasingly impactful advocacy for RCV, I would say that the single biggest barrier to progress has been our antiquated election administration regime –one tied to limited funding, private voting equipment companies that struggle to turn profits, and cautious election administrators who focus more on delivering basic services than on innovation. Fortunately, we’re gradually removing those barriers so that we can have transparent, fast, effective, secure and affordable ranked choice voting elections anywhere they’re passed.

As mobile voting addresses security concerns and gains a foothold, it’s a particularly strong fit for the ranked choice voting ballot -- as already demonstrated by many colleges and organizations. The mobile voting interface makes it easy for voters to rank their ballots without error and to show results that are intuitive and clear. Elections that combine these changes would liberate voters to more fully realize the promise of government of, by and for the people.

Note: that I made minor changes to my essay written last year for Vote With Your Phone in order to reference recent advocacy developments.

Rob Richie @Rob_Richie