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Dear John,
This morning, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott launched an exploratory committee to run for president. Scott joins former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina and Arkansas governors Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson, and two businessmen as candidates – with Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem and Mike Pence among others exploring bids. With each new entry, the chances soar that the nomination goes to whichever candidate can muster a core vote of 35% even if most Republican voters prefer somebody else.
With ranked choice voting (RCV) in presidential primaries, all voters would have the peace of mind to freely rank their favorite choices without “wasting” their vote. Each party would likely experience a less divisive primary, and enter the general election more united behind a candidate with proven broad appeal within the party. The value of this use of RCV was featured in a highly recommended viewing: a March 24 forum on RCV at the Gary R. Herbert Institute for Public Policy at Utah Valley University.
In single-choice primaries, if any candidate drops out before Primary Day, early voters who picked them may not see their vote count for any active candidate! That was especially problematic in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, when more than three million voters cast their vote for a candidate who dropped out before the vote was counted. RCV would ensure those votes count, too.
With such obvious benefits of RCV in presidential primaries, it’s no wonder so many states are considering it. Maine will use it in 2024 and the Vermont State Senate just passed legislation to do so in 2028, with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group and other state allies working to move this bill across the finish line. We're thrilled to see pro-RCV bills this year in more than 25 states, including several on RCV for presidential primaries. In 2020, four states used RCV for their party-run presidential primaries (which don’t require supporting legislation); we expect several state parties to go this route next year as well.
Winner-take-all mindset takes a disturbing turn
In a sign of the deep polarization consuming the country, Tennessee’s Republican-dominated State House expelled two Democratic lawmakers for participating in a protest over gun laws on the House floor. Both of those expelled were African American and among the youngest members in the chamber.
Expulsions rarely happen in state legislatures, and are almost always bipartisan votes where the lawmakers in question are found guilty of criminal activity. The Tennessee expulsions represent a shift towards politicization of this process. The fact that one of those expelled already has been re-seated until a special election by a unanimous vote of the Nashville Metropolitan Council (with the Memphis council likely to return the other expelled member in a vote later today) underscores the growing gulf between the parties in many states.
This dangerous division would not be possible without the polarization and toxic use of gerrymandering enabled by winner-take-all elections. Given today’s political divides are increasingly reflected in where we live, most districts are heavily weighted in favor of one major party. Yet with the “spoiler effect” dominant in single-choice elections, the rise of an alternative party is nearly impossible. With only the primary election competitive in nearly all districts, representatives seeking re-election only have to pay attention to the concerns of the relatively few voters who vote in their party primary – and those primary voters increasingly fear and loathe the other major party.
The best long-term solution for the United States to escape zero-sum, winner-take-all politics is proportional ranked choice voting. It would ensure nearly every district would be represented by members of both major parties while also allowing independent and minor parties to hold the major parties accountable. General elections would always matter in every corner of every state.
Thankfully, proportional RCV is already taking hold in communities across the nation. Just last year, the largest cities in Oregon and Maine voted to adopt it, with Portland, Oregon on track to implement it for city council elections in 2024. It was also approved for primary elections by the county board of Arlington, Virginia – meaning that on June 20, proportional RCV will be used just across the Potomac River from our nation’s capital. FairVote’s north-star legislation, the Fair Representation Act, would implement this system for U.S. House elections.
It’s almost Tax Day! How much of your bill is wasted on runoffs?
Tax Day is just around the corner, and millions of us are rushing to get our returns in before the deadline.
We all want to know that our hard-earned money is going to something important, like schools or public safety. Yet in hundreds of jurisdictions across the nation with runoff elections, much of our money is wasted on unnecessary, low-turnout elections instead.
FairVote and Third Way’s research shows that a single runoff election can cost a local jurisdiction hundreds of thousands of dollars, with costs pushing into the millions for states and larger cities and counties. Remarkably, the 2020 Georgia U.S. Senate runoffs cost the Peach State’s taxpayers $75 million – with another $500 million or so in campaign spending. Of course, with runoffs, we pay more to get less – elections that almost always have lower turnout than the initial ones in November!
With RCV, “runoffs” would be conducted instantly as part of the election where turnout is naturally the highest. There would be no need to pay for an extra day of voting and vote-counting. The money our governments spend on runoffs could be redirected to a better cause, or put back in our pockets with a tax cut.
Thank you for your continued support. The RCV movement wouldn’t be possible without you.
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Sincerely,
Rob Richie
President and CEO
P.S. After about five years, FairVote is saying goodbye to our ranking app, RankIt.vote.
We first developed RankIt five years ago to ensure that the RCV movement always had access to a free tool for running RCV elections. However, since then the movement has grown beyond our wildest expectations, and so has the number of other free, high-quality RCV polling tools. For that reason, we no longer feel a need to maintain RankIt. You can read more about our decision here, as well as about alternatives to RankIt that you can use. |
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