Republicans Aim To Send Ranked-Choice Voting Into Extinction

After voters successfully defeated pro-ranked-choice voting (RCV) ballot initiatives in the 2024 elections, several Republican legislators are gearing up to prohibit the practice in numerous states across the country.

On Tuesday, the GOP-controlled Kansas Senate passed legislation (SB 6) that seeks to bar the use of RCV in elections throughout the Sunflower State. The measure will now head to the state House for consideration.

Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers, which they’ve previously used to override vetoes issued by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly.

Often referred to as “rigged-choice voting” by its critics, RCV is a system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

RCV has largely been pushed by Democrats and has led to the Democrat victory of seats for which Republican candidates ultimately received the majority vote. It has also been shown to produce inaccurate election results as well as high rates of discarded ballots.

Responding to the Kansas Senate’s passage of SB 6, Election Transparency Initiative Chair Ken Cuccinelli noted how “[l]eft-wing megadonors are financing a nationwide campaign to promote the disastrous voting scheme,” which he argued is “intended to dramatically push our politics to the Left, to elevate Left-leaning politicians, and to weaken political parties to their benefit by disenfranchising voters.”

Leading up to the 2024 elections, leftist and pro-RCV organizations collectively poured tens of millions of dollars into campaigns backing ballot initiatives that sought to enshrine or keep the practice in various state codes and constitutions. Much to proponents’ dismay, voters defeated every one of these measures, with the exceptions of Washington, D.C. and Alaska, where an initiative repealing the state’s RCV system was narrowly defeated.

(Voters also passed an initiative making Missouri the 11th state to prohibit ranked-choice voting).

“Now more than ever we need to protect the right to vote in free and fair elections voters can trust, but the Ranked-Choice Voting scheme does precisely the opposite,” Cuccinelli said. “It is an Election Integrity wrecking ball, is never workable and should always be prohibited.”

Kansas isn’t the only state where GOP legislators are using their 2024 victories to jettison RCV into extinction, however.

Republicans in Iowa, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming have filed bills prohibiting the practice in their respective states. A bill was also filed in Minnesota that seeks to bar local governments from adopting RCV for municipal races.

Meanwhile, GOP legislators in Alaska and Maine have put forward measures aiming to repeal their states’ use of ranked-choice voting. Passage of repeal legislation in these states in recent years has proven difficult, however.

Despite having secured majorities in both chambers of the state legislature during the 2024 election, Alaska Republicans entered into a power-sharing arrangement with Democrats. Embraced in years prior, this agreement has stymied past legislative efforts to repeal the Last Frontier State’s use of RCV.

Unlike Alaska, Republicans are in the minority in Maine’s legislature, where Democrats have previously blocked GOP-led legislation aimed at repealing the state’s RCV system.