Ranked Chaos Voting

Regarding the March 15 op-ed, “A New Type of Democracy,” the writer toots his horn over Ranked Choice Voting. Please, ignore the man behind the curtain! RCV, also known as IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), is designed to enable an election winner to achieve not just the plurality of the votes, but the majority as well, 50 percentplus one, through a system where you don’t just vote for your desired choice but instead rank all candidates in preference order, thus avoiding a future runoff election between the top two vote-getters.

The part where he attempts to explain the process is a great example of one of the primary criticisms of RCV, that it’s overly confusing. Also, it requires voters to be knowledgeable on all the candidates, all the more taxing when there are multiple choices for many races. It also forces voters to rank all the candidates, even those that might repulse them, with the penalty for not doing so being that their vote might be discarded.

Here’s the simplest example: 100 voters choose between three candidates, with the goal being the winner getting 50 percent-plus one of the votes, at least 51. A gets 40, B gets 32 and C gets 28. Under RCV, in the runoff round, the bottom vote-getter, C, is dropped from the race. The voters were given the option to rank their choices in order of preference or simply only vote for their top choice. Votes given to C now go the second choice on the ballot, A or B. Those who do not pick a second choice will have their ballots discarded. Let’s say five C voters don’t pick a second choice but seven pick A and 16 pick B. B defeats A, 48-47. A majority winner, 50 percent-plus one in our example, at least 51 votes, isn’t achieved. Another flaw is exposed here: the candidate with the most first-place votes lost. This brief video supports my example: https://vimeo.com/272422513.

Keep in mind, with three candidates, this is as simple as it gets, one runoff round. When there are many candidates per office, the voter is being asked to rank them all, in all races. Ballots can be multiple pages, leading to ballot exhaustion and roll-off, where the voter doesn’t complete the ballot. As my example showed, this leads to their ballot being discarded, causing election disenfranchisement. Upward of double-digit runoff rounds per race have happened in states that have this chaos. In a New York City 2021 primary, eight rounds of counting for 10 candidates took three weeks, resulting in 140,000 ballots being thrown out.

At a time when the percentage of Americans who don’t trust election results is growing, the least sensible next step is to add confusion, complexity and secrecy to the process. Unfortunately, RCV is being considered by the Connecticut legislature. It’s only suited for employees to pick the lunch for the company picnic, not for an election. Please, reach out to your representatives to voice your opposition to this nonsense. If they tell you that they support it, ask them to explain to you how it works! That should be interesting …