Ranked-Choice Voting Keeps Rigging Elections

As different states and municipalities across the country adopt ranked-choice voting, it’s become obvious this mind-boggling election system deserves a new name: rigged-choice voting.

After nearly two months of tabulation, Alameda County, California, — one such ranked-choice voting (RCV) adoptee — announced it got the count wrong for its Nov. 8 election. As The Wall Street Journal reportedThe California county acknowledged that it made systemic mistakes while tabulating the ballots. A result of this snafu, the Oakland School Board race was flipped. The top vote-getter (and certified winner), must now give his seat to the third-place finisher.

While gross negligence on the part of some Alameda County election officials is not only probable but likely, RCV’s Byzantine election system must also take the blame. Voters rank candidates according to preference. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his voters are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This continues until one candidate has received a majority vote. For the Oakland mayor’s race, it took nine baffling rounds of RCV for one candidate to receive the narrow majority. The local NAACP chapter Requirements Manual recounts were attempted but abandoned due to cost.

Officials blamed a software configuration error for the Oakland School Board election. Even the machines got confused about how to count RCV-way. Is it fair for a candidate receiving a majority of votes in the first round to lose to one who finishes last? Many times, the ranked-choice winners are not those that a majority vote favors. Mary Peltola (Democrat) is a good example. It is possible to win Alaska’s lone congressional seat despite nearly 60 percent of voters casting their ballots for a Republican.

What’s behind the RCV takeover? As The Federalist previously reported reportedRCV is being promoted by moderate Republicans and Democratic activists to promote more populist candidates over establishment-backed ones. As Project Veritas has Documented, the moderate, nominal Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was behind the campaign to change Alaska’s primary to an RCV system, ensuring the defeat of her Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. Tshibaka could have easily defeated Murkowski had Alaskan not implemented RCV.

RCV has many problems, as evidenced by the Alameda County scandal. Foundation for Government Accountability Notes Ranked-choice voting can cause ballot exhaustion, which is when a ballot is not counted towards the final election result. It also lowers voter confidence and delays election results. A ranked-choice race can take up to a few months to be counted. This poses a threat to the security of the process.

Rigged-choice voting is not the best way to ensure democracy and integrity in elections for Americans.

Victoria Marshall is a staff journalist at The Federalist. Her writing has appeared in The New York Post, National Review and Townhall. Hillsdale College is where she graduated.

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