Mark Thiessen/AP Photo
Phil Izon poses for a photo outside his home in Wasilla, Alaska, May 14, 2024. Izon is one of the backers of a ballot initiative that would repeal ranked-choice voting in Alaska.
What do Colorado, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have in common this election season? Govs. Kay Ivey (R-AL), Tate Reeves (R-MS), Jeff Landry (R-LA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) have all signed bills that would ban or seriously impede the implementation of ranked-choice voting. In the past two months, these states have frowned on RCV, a small-d democratic reform hailed by its supporters as a way to increase candidate choice, jump-start higher voter turnout, and generate more overall enthusiasm in campaigns and elections in a country where staying home and not voting might as well be its own political party.
Kentucky and Oklahoma have also recently banned RCV, and Florida, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee have nixed the reform as well.
There are various ranked-choice voting frameworks, but the general premise is that voters can better express their interests by indicating first, second, third, or more choices. The candidate who secures a majority of votes wins. But if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the voters’ first choices, the person with the least number of votes drops out of contention. That candidate’s votes are then distributed to those voters’ second choices for a second round of counting. Votes will continue to be redistributed to the remaining candidates until there is a winner.
In an era warped by extreme partisan discord, ranked-choice voting has managed to unsettle Republican and Democratic politicians alike. Long fearful of African American voter strength and cross-racial coalitions that sometimes spring up, many white Republican political power brokers in the South have been strategizing to eliminate an option like RCV before it can garner an iota of interest or support.
Republicans can point to losses from the RCV system. Only Alaska and Maine use RCV in state and federal elections (Hawaii also uses RCV in certain statewide races). In Maine, Jared Golden earned his 2018 swing-seat victory in Congress after an instant runoff put him over the top against Republican Bruce Poliquin, the incumbent congressman, who led after the first round.
RCV opponents in Alaska have launched a repeal campaign after Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola fended off 12 candidates, including former Republican governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, after three rounds of balloting in 2022 for the state’s sole congressional seat. The 2024 initiative proposes a return to a traditional partisan primary system and will appear on the November ballot.
A Rolling Stone/Documented investigation found that far-right groups have poured millions into a coordinated campaign to destabilize RCV, principally because the mechanism gives voters more choices—and when they have choices, they have the opportunity to select less polarizing candidates. The Republican National Committee officially declared its opposition to ranked-choice voting in 2023. The party claimed that the mechanism makes voting too complex and time-consuming, leading to “ballot exhaustion” and other euphemisms that would make George Orwell seize up.
In an era warped by extreme partisan discord, ranked-choice voting has managed to unsettle Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
Some longtime Democratic incumbents are also keen to shut down threats to their power. The District of Columbia Democratic Party has opposed a ballot initiative, currently in the signature-gathering phase, that would institute RCV for the city elections. Now in her third term, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has called RCV “a bad idea.”
Interestingly, many of the Southern states that have gone on the offensive against RCV have a history of runoff voting in partisan primaries (which have their roots in Jim Crow voter suppression tactics designed to maintain white political power), whereby a candidate for office must hit some percentage threshold, rather than just win a plurality, or otherwise be subject to a runoff. To save money for the runoffs, these states have also extended a form of RCV to military and overseas voters, without controversy, so they can participate in both rounds of the primary.
“There’s absolutely no reason that convenience should not be extended to other voters,” said Deb Otis, research director for FairVote, a national voting reform group. “Voting in runoffs is time-consuming and inconvenient: That’s why we see huge turnout declines and it’s expensive for states to hold these runoffs.”
In Alabama, Ivey expressed her unambiguous support for a ranked-choice vote ban. Declaring RCV “complicated and confusing,” she echoed comments made by Alabama secretary of state Wes Allen. “Ranked choice voting,” Allen has said, “makes winners out of losers.”
Mississippi state lawmakers initially declined to pass a stand-alone anti-RCV bill. But after a bill designed to update the state’s election runoff procedures wound its way through legislative conference committees, the ranked-choice voting ban reappeared. The runoff fixes effectively shielded the RCV development that few people knew that they didn’t want. The governor’s office did not issue any public statements on the ban.
Republicans also criticize RCV as a threat to the principle of “one man, one vote.” Otis says that the courts have rejected that premise. “You don’t see the same individuals opposing two-round runoffs, where if your first choice doesn’t make it to the final round, you still get to weigh in between the two finalists,” she says. “Ranked-choice voting is sometimes known as instant runoff because it’s exactly the same principle.”
Like Mississippi, Colorado also engaged in legislative subterfuge designed to blunt the impact of a proposed constitutional amendment headed for the November ballot. That measure, which is in its signature-gathering phase, would eliminate partisan primaries in favor of four-winner open primaries and general-election contests for its state legislative, gubernatorial, and congressional races. But state Rep. Emily Sirota (D-Denver) inserted a complex mechanism into a bill that dealt with broader elections issues, which would require 12 different cities with specific demographics to implement RCV before it could be used statewide.
According to The Colorado Sun, which first reported on the legislative maneuver, the amendment did not mention the words “ranked-choice voting” or indicate how it needed to be implemented before the state could use it for federal or statewide elections. Polis acknowledged the flaws but ended up signing the bill, which had other key elections provisions. He expressed the hope that RCV could debut by 2028 or be adjusted through new legislation.
The proposed measure wouldn’t just add RCV but eliminate partisan primaries, as California, Louisiana, and Washington state have done. Democrats have an interest in maintaining control for their rank-and-file voters to determine their candidates for office in a state that has trended blue over the past 20 years.
The primary sponsor of the proposed ballot measure, a wealthy former CEO of dialysis company DaVita named Kent Thiry, has long been suspected of wanting to run for governor someday on a post-partisan platform. (Thiry’s spokespeople have thus far denied this.) Thiry has already put half a million dollars into the ballot initiative, and is expected to contribute millions more. This has Democrats concerned that the election will be purchased, and potentially a future gubernatorial campaign as well.
Rick Hasen, a UCLA professor of law and political science who specializes in election law, told the Prospect that RCV is “better understood as a fear of moderate candidates being elected to office.” He adds, “If you think about places like Alabama and Mississippi, they’ve got Republican majorities, but they’ve got a fairly sizable Black population that hasn’t been able to get its fair share of political power. Maybe moving toward ranked-choice voting could [create] coalitions that could produce some more moderate Republicans.”
Peltola’s victory in Alaska convinced Rodger Painter, a former journalist, on the merits of RCV. “Like many other Alaskans, I was initially skeptical of RCV, but I now am fully onboard,” Painter wrote in a June Alaska Beacon commentary. “The election of the first Native Alaskan, and first woman, to represent Alaska in Congress was a deciding moment. Rep. Mary Peltola came out of nowhere and it’s only because of RCV.” He concluded, “RCV has already helped Alaskans elect more moderate legislators and will do more to change the face of politics in Alaska if the petition to repeal it is rejected.”
This post has been updated.
