How Ranked Choice Voting Works

RCV adds a twist.  In a nutshell, here’s the concept.

Today when you cast a ballot, you vote for one person for an office.  (For the moment let’s put aside some elections where multiple people are elected.)  Generally, whoever wins the plurality of votes wins the election.  In some situations, a majority vote is required to win.  If no one gets a majority in the first round of voting, a second runoff election is held among the top two finishers.

With RCV that second round is unnecessary.  Under a ranked choice voting system, a ballot would have multiple columns representing a 1^st choice, 2^nd choice, and 3^rd choice.  The voter selects candidates for the various choice levels.  For example, I might select Cynthia as my 1^st choice, Sam as my 2^nd choice, and Pat as my 3^rd choice.

Let’s say the vote totals in percentages are:

• Sam: 42%
• Pat: 37%
• Cynthia: 21%

In today’s typical voting process, either Sam wins or there’s a runoff between Sam and Pat.  But under RCV, ballots that voted for Cynthia, who got the lowest 1^st choice vote total, would be examined for their 2^nd choice votes.  For example, let’s say:

• Sam: 42% + 5% 2^nd choice votes from Cynthia’s ballots = 47%
• Pat: 37% + 16% 2^nd choice votes from Cynthia’s ballots = 53%

Pat would be the winner, which presumably is how the runoff would have gone.  Maybe.  That presumes that voters seriously thought about their 2^nd choice votes and that Cynthia’s voters would have shown up for the final election.

Elections force people to make choices, trading off the benefits of one candidate over the others.  But is rank choice the best method to engage in trade-off analysis?  That’s debatable.

You will not believe what “reformers” have devised to tinker with and manipulate our elections. It is called ranked choice voting (or “instant runoff voting”)—but it is really a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections. Some jurisdictions in the U.S. have already replaced traditional elections with the ranked choice scheme.

Here is how it works. In 2008, instead of choosing to cast your ballot for John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, or Cynthia McKinney, all of whom were running for president, you would vote for all of them and rank your choice. In other words, you would list all five candidates on your ballot from one to five, with one being your first choice for president and five being your last choice.

If none of the candidates were chosen as the number one pick by a majority of voters in Round One, then the presidential candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated from the ballot. People who selected that candidate as their top pick—let us say it was McKinney—would automatically have their votes changed to their second choice. Then the scores would be recalculated, over and over again, until one of the candidates finally won a majority as the second, third, or even fourth choice of voters.

In the end, a voter’s ballot might wind up being cast for the candidate he ranked far below his first choice—a candidate to whom he may have strong political objections and for whom he would not vote in a traditional voting system.