The 2024 blame game has already begun

Without ranked choice voting, a large field of presidential candidates could split the vote and spoil each other, frustrating voters as well as majority rule

Will the 2024 presidential election be “spoiled”? Voting won’t begin for another year, but the accusations are already flying.

Take No Labels, an organization laying the groundwork in states across the country for an alternative to major-party nominees like Donald Trump and Joe Biden. As the well-financed campaign has drawn attention in recent days, center-left think tank Third Way circulated a memo arguing the ticket would help Donald Trump win a new term by taking away more votes from Joe Biden. No Labels’ social media mentions have recently been flooded with claims that it is secretly a pro-Republican organization.

On the flipside, consider former GOP Representative Liz Cheney who was a House leader in the impeachment vote against Donald Trump. She is rumored to be thinking about an independent run for president. It isn’t clear which party she would take away more votes from, but Republicans and Democrats alike are afraid it will be theirs.

And just like in the past, you can be sure that the usual finger-pointing will be directed to the Green Party nominee for cutting into the Democratic vote, and the Libertarian Party nominee for undermining Republicans.

In a well-functioning democracy, candidates would be evaluated on the quality of their ideas, not dismissed over strategic considerations about spoiler candidates and split votes. The major parties wouldn’t feel so vulnerable to decisions of other candidates they can’t control. But because of our broken, single-choice election system, the US isn’t a well-functioning democracy.

We have a proven solution to the problem: ranked choice voting (RCV). RCV will be used in the presidential election in Maine and Alaska in 2024 and would let all voters, from anywhere on the political spectrum, cast their vote for their favorite candidate without fear of “playing spoiler.” RCV would let all candidates, no matter their party, to receive a fair shake and a chance to share their ideas.

Surprise, surprise: Runoffs are still terrible

Across the country, dozens of major cities and states have tried to solve the “vote-splitting problem” with two-round runoff elections. A first round is held in which a large field of candidates run against each other, followed by a second round with the top two candidates facing off. It sounds simple, yet runoffs come with their own major drawbacks – all of which ranked choice voting would solve.

First, many voters still feel “left out” of the results. Just look at Denver’s recent mayoral election where the leading two candidates garnered just 25% and 22% of the vote. The race was wide open, with a whopping seventeen candidates making the ballot. Voters were faced with an impossible challenge of whether to vote honestly or try to throw their support behind a candidate who might make the top two. Votes were bound to be split between so many candidates, making a runoff election inevitable. When Denverites return to the polls in June for the final runoff, a majority of them won’t see their favorite candidate on the runoff ballot.

Second, voters are asked to return to the polls a second time to vote on the same candidates – and many of them don’t bother. In its city council runoffs just last month, Phoenix, AZ experienced a nearly 50% decline in turnout from the initial round of voting. In fact, one of the winning candidates had fewer votes in the runoff than her rival did in the general election!  One open seat race in Phoenix had eight candidates and the top two finishers advanced with just 19.6% and 17.1% respectively. This means the majority of voters did not see their favorite candidate on the final runoff ballot. 

Third, runoffs lead to additional weeks of toxic, negative campaigns, none of which is necessary. Chicago just completed its runoff elections, fully five weeks after the first round. Such a long runoff period meant five extra weeks of increasingly nasty campaigning after the initial election. Chicago’s police union leader even warned of “blood in the streets” if candidate Brandon Johnson was elected mayor (Johnson was indeed elected). Not surprisingly, FairVote’s research has shown a pattern in runoff elections — the longer the wait between the initial race and the runoff, the larger the dropoff in turnout.

Finally, runoffs are very, very expensive. According to research by FairVote and Third Way, runoff elections frequently cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to local communities – and that can grow to millions in large cities. In cases like New York City’s 2013 Public Advocate primary, the runoff cost more than the office’s entire budget! (New York City has since adopted RCV to conduct its runoffs instantly and at a lower cost.)

With all that in mind, it’s no wonder Chicago’s newly elected mayor, his runoff opponent and both leading mayoral candidates in Denver are supportive of RCV. RCV would allow voters to rank their first, second, third and so on candidates, and the ranked ballots would be used to simulate a series of runoffs until a majority winner is determined. Denver wouldn’t be the first city in Colorado to use RCV, and Chicago wouldn’t be the first in Illinois. In Colorado, RCV has been adopted in Basalt, Carbondale, Telluride, Boulder, Broomfield, and Fort Collins. In 2022, Evanston became the first community in Illinois to adopt RCV.

The biggest cities in seven states already have adopted RCV. Chicago and Denver should be next, as it would allow them to avoid the complications and hassles of a second round runoff election, and give voters more choice by liberating them to rank as many candidates as they like. That’s how US democracy in the 21st century should work everywhere.

Rob Richie @Rob_Richie