The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Primaries would benefit from RCV
The 2024 Republican primaries are underway — six candidates, including former president Donald Trump, have already announced, and more than a dozen other Republicans have their eyes on the nomination.
As former state Republican Party chairs in Michigan and Utah, we’re excited about this competitive field — representing a strong, diverse party that can bring together many backgrounds, generations and conservative philosophies. But under our traditional primary voting system, a crowded primary can backfire, with “spoiled” votes, nasty infighting and frustrated voters.
The simple truth is that we’d have a better chance of capturing the presidency if we selected our nominee using ranked-choice voting (RCV). And a new Citizen Data poll shows that voters are on board — 61 percent of Republicans are interested in ranking candidates in such a crowded field.
Our traditional primaries seem to hurt Republican candidates again and again. Look at the Senate primaries in Arizona, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania last year. Republicans squandered tens of millions running negative ads against each other, Democrats meddled by donating to the least electable candidates, and the “winners” in these contests earned only a third of the GOP primary vote. We lost badly in each state, and Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate.
In primaries, ranked-choice voting — also known as instant runoff voting — gives us the best chance of coming together around the strongest candidate. RCV allows voters to rank their favorite candidates one, two, three. If a voter’s first choice can’t win, their vote counts for their highest-ranked candidate who has a shot.
RCV is helpful in any race with three or more choices because voters can support the candidates they like the most without worrying that they’ll spoil the race and help someone they like the least. In line with President Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”), candidates are rewarded for running issues-focused campaigns that might earn them voters’ second or third choices — instead of scorched-earth mudslinging. In “winner-take-all” contests, RCV ensures a majority nominee who represents consensus — instead of someone winning with just 30 percent of the vote.
In the 2024 primaries, Republican state parties should have the option to use various methods that fit their state’s needs. That includes RCV, which would help identify the best candidate to unite our party.
The Republican base may have heard some negative things about RCV after a Democrat defeated Sarah Palin for the U.S. House seat in Alaska. But that race swapped primaries for a free-for-all “top four” election — where the leading Republican encouraged supporters not to support the other Republican. Trump, frustrated with the loss, soured on RCV. This election was a classic example of how campaigns should not be run, but we shouldn’t shoot ourselves in the foot because of one election in Alaska.
Most important, we know that RCV works because Republicans used it in Virginia to select a conservative nominee for governor in 2021. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe was thought to be unbeatable and that the deep GOP primary would produce an unelectable candidate. They were wrong. Republicans used RCV to nominate Glenn Youngkin — the most electable conservative. The party went into November more unified than ever. We won back a governor’s mansion (and also the lieutenant governor and attorney general’s offices) in a state previously trending blue. Republicans in Utah and Indiana have used RCV with similarly successful results — RCV was even used for the presidential straw poll at April’s Utah GOP convention.
If we adopted RCV for our presidential nominating process, it would lift the party’s nominee without favoring any candidate. An RCV primary requires candidates to appeal for second-place votes: Trump and everyone else will need them. They might talk to each other rather than scream past each other. And no matter the nominee — whether it is a former president, a governor or a senator or someone we can’t yet imagine — they’d head into the fall campaign with most Republicans behind them.
The only way Republicans lose to Biden is by beating ourselves. That’s much more likely to happen after a circular firing squad of a traditional primary. Let’s stop repeating the mistakes of the past. Rankedchoice voting is a good option for our presidential primaries — and better still for setting us up for a win in 2024.
If we adopted RCV for our presidential nominating process, it would lift the party's nominee without favoring any candidate.