Each time a city or state considers adopting or banning ranked-choice voting, its supporters rattle off the same list of talking points.
“It gives voters more options.” “It’s fairer.” “We’ll have more consensus candidates.”
A new report from the Foundation for Government Accountability exposes five of the most worn-out talking points the Left uses to push ranked-choice voting. As it turns out, they’re all just myths, and the reality of ranked-choice voting is much worse than advocates would like you to know. Here’s a sneak peek:
Myth: Ranked-choice voting ensures majority support.
Reality: Ranked-choice voting does nothing to ensure a winning candidate receives a true majority of votes cast. Instead, valid ballots are tossed in the trash to create a fake majority. Need some evidence? A 2010 Board of Supervisors race in San Francisco led to the trashing of more ballots than were actually counted. The winner received about 20 percent of the total vote—and was only declared winner after 20 rounds of counting.
Myth: Ranked-choice voting helps the most popular candidate win.
Reality: The simplest way to ensure the most popular candidate wins is with traditional election rules where the candidate with the most votes wins. Ranked-choice voting has already resulted in less-popular candidates being declared the winner. A majority of voters selected a Republican candidate as their first choice in Alaska’s 2022 congressional special election, but two weeks later—after counting finally ceased—the Democrat candidate was declared the winner.
Interested in seeing the reality of ranked-choice voting? See the other common myths peddled by the Left.
Americans generally accept the unsavory truth that lawmaking can be a bit like sausage-making, but voters should never be forced to stomach an electoral process that turns “one person, one vote” into a game. Voting should never be as convoluted and gut-wrenching as ranked-choice voting makes it. Instead, voters should be confident in their ability to cast a vote for their preferred candidate and expect that the winner received the most votes. Separating the myths around ranked-choice voting from the facts, it’s clear that ranked-choice voting is a danger to our Republic and states should reject it before it takes hold.
