Robert Lipps Lipps 1

Professor Freeland

English 1201

7 April 2022

Ranked-Choice Voting – Savior of American Elections?

Do votes really matter? Every year, elections are held across the United States to

determine the next leaders and elected officials of our cities, counties, states, and our nation. It is

expected that our elected officials are to be elected with a majority of votes, but this is becoming

rarer and rarer in the 21st century. Without a majority of votes, voters are becoming dissatisfied

with the results of elections and have demanded that there should be better options for selecting

our leaders. Ranked-choice voting would satisfy the outcries of the American people by allowing

voters to select their candidates by their preference, and if no candidate receives a majority, the

candidate with the least number of votes is removed, and their voters get moved to their second

preferences. This process keeps repeating until a candidate receives a majority of votes. Ranked-

choice voting would increase voter participation and satisfaction in American elections by

reducing the cost of current elections, allowing voters to select multiple candidates on the ballot,

and requiring the winner of the election to be elected with a majority of votes.
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Figure 1 This figure shows how, in theory, ranked-choice voting would work. If no candidate
receives 50% of the vote, the candidate is eliminated, and the votes are redistributed based on
the second choice of the voter. This election type will create a winner with a majority of votes.
(City of Heber).
From the start of the 21st century, George W. Bush was elected the President of the

United States by the electoral college in 2000, however, neither Bush nor his opponent Gore won

a majority of votes nationwide. (Glass). The election was decided by a single state, Florida. As

the votes trickled in on election day, it was clear the election was going to be close and that it

was going to take weeks to find out the winner. When the counting stopped, George W. Bush

was declared the winner by 537 votes, and therefore won the electoral college, however, this

winning total was just 48.847% of the vote of 48.838% for Al Gore. The independent Green

party candidate, Ralph Nader, had won 1.64% of the vote. Ralph Nader led a very liberal

campaign and competed for many of the same voters as Al Gore and if ranked-choice voting was

in effect, it is probably safe to assume that Al Gore would have been the winner of Florida and

the President of the United States.

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Since 2000, two out of six elections for President left the winner of the election without a

majority of votes, and both times the electoral college winner was not the candidate with the

most votes in the national popular vote. November 2016, Businessman Donald J. Trump was

elected the 45th President after winning the electoral college despite losing the popular vote to his

Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, thanks to the states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

In all three, Donald Trump’s victory margin was smaller than the votes of third-party candidates.

These candidates were Green party nominee, Jill Stein, and Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson.

(Thompson). Whether the election was determined by angry Liberal voters determined to

undermine a Clinton victory, or groups of Conservatives held their noses and voted for Donald

Trump, it does not matter. What matters is the fact the winner of the elections in these states was

not selected by a majority of voters and in fact, it means a majority voting against the winner in

the current system.

The election system the United States currently uses is called plurality voting. This means

the winner of an election is selected by the most votes, but it is not always a majority. Examples

of this can be seen in local, state, and federal elections. Several states have attempted to fix this

problem such as the states of Texas and Georgia. In these states, the winners are determined by a

second-round election, held on a different day, with the top two candidates of the original

election. Although this style will produce a winner with a majority of votes, it creates several

other issues including the increased costs of holding a second election. On election day in 2020,

Georgia was having a hotly contested election for the United States Senate. Incumbent

Republican Senator David Perdue was facing a reelection campaign against Democrat challenger

Jon Ossoff. When the votes were being counted in the first round, it was determined that Senator

Perdue was just 0.3% shy of winning the election with 49.7% of the vote, which means the
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election would be headed to a top-two runoff election. Mr. Jon Ossoff had won 47.9% of the vote

and the Libertarian candidate received 2.4%. Weeks later, the campaign set a record-breaking

campaign spending amount of “$468 million spent” over the two elections (Evers). By removing

the second round, a winner could have been determined sooner and millions of dollars could

have been saved. David de la Fuente, a writer for Thirdway, suggests that in Texas “If we

extrapolate these costs to every runoff voter in Texas, assuming the median cost of $7 per voter

applies statewide, the 2018 and 2020 runoffs could have cost as much as $6M and $11M

statewide.” This is a huge amount of money coming from the government to pay for these

second elections and it is costing voters millions that could be spent on other issues.

Although spending in the second round was high in Georgia, turnout fell overall. During

the first round of voting, Georgia saw a high turnout of 65.4% of voters, however, when voters

returned to the polls for the second round, voter turnout dropped to 61.5%. Even if all Libertarian

ballots were removed from the original turnout, there is about 2% of voters that did not turn out

for the election and most likely it decided the election. Jon Ossoff won with 50.6% of the vote

against Senator David Perdue (Georgia Secretary of State). It is very likely if ranked-choice

voting was enacted and used in Georgia, David Perdue would have won at least 0.3% of the

2.4% of the Libertarians and won the election. If ranked-choice voting was used in Georgia, the

winner could have been determined sooner and the election would not have lost turnout by

making voters return to vote.

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Figure 2 As of March 2022, a map created by FairVote shows where ranked-choice voting is
currently used. This includes states that will use ranked-choice voting for upcoming statewide
elections, use solely for party primaries, and states that use ranked-choice only for military
ballots. (FairVote).
Many states use ranked-choice voting for elections which currently such as Maine and

Alaska and had utilized ranked-choice voting in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries.

Also, as of March 2022, they plan to continue using this voting system for the presidential

elections in 2024. (FairVote). In Alaska, the Democrat presidential primary was split between

several factions such as the Progressive and Moderate wings of the party. Despite 8 candidates

being on the ballot, there were very few votes removed from voters who didn’t choose one of the

two final options as a preference. The Alaskan Democrat party has a slightly different rule about

ranked-choice voting and only stops the ballot redistribution after all remaining candidates have
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15%. After 8 rounds of redistributing ballots based on voters' choices, only two candidates

remain and Joe Biden is the winner with 55.3% of the vote. Some voters chose to not select

either one of the top two candidates or incorrectly filled out their preference, and after removing

these ballots, 99.1% remain. (Alaska Democrat Party). Less than 1% was removed and a

candidate was selected that a majority of voters wanted. This will incentives voters to vote for

their ideal candidates and increase turnout and satisfaction.

Ranked-choice voting was famously used in Maines congressional race in its second

congressional district in 2018 where it was put into action. After election day, Republican

Congressman Bruce Poliquin was leading the race with 46.3% of the vote and just 45.6% to his

Democrat opponent. If the old American election system of plurality voting was used, the

Republican Congressman would have secured a victory by having a 0.7% lead over his

opponent. After all the votes were tallied and no candidate secured a majority of voters, ranked-

choice voting kicked in and votes were retallied based on the removal of one independent

candidate. When the votes were counted again, no candidate received a majority and the second

and final independent was removed from the race and the votes were counted again. This time

there were only two candidates left in the race and after counting the votes, the Democrats were

declared the victors of the race. Despite winning the original vote, Congressman Bruce Poliquin,

who is not a supporter of ranked-choice voting, lost the retallied vote when using ranked-choice

voting. His Democrat opponent, Jared Golden, was elected and ran for reelection where he won a

majority in the first round. (Cummings).

In many places around the world, ranked-choice voting is currently being used. One of

the most popular examples of ranked-choice voting is in the country of Australia. Since 1918,

Australia has used ranked-choice voting in some form. Currently, they use ranked-choice voting
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when electing their members to the House of Representatives, electing state leaders, and in some

local regions, ranked-choice voting is used to elect local officials. Several other countries besides

Australia use ranked-choice voting. These include countries such as New Zealand, Ireland,

Malta, and some regions in the United Kingdom such as Northern Ireland and Scotland. They all

use ranked-choice voting in some form to elect leaders in different aspects of their governments.

When it comes to elections, costs are enormous. From campaign spending on TV ads,

political gear, staff, and events to state-run elections with poll workers, paper ballots, machines,

and locations, everything adds up. In the 2020 election, campaign spending alone was $14

billion. Ranked-choice voting allows for two things in an election. In states such as Georgia and

Texas, it prevents more campaign spending, and it does so by giving an instant result and

preventing a second election runoff. Neither the government nor the campaigns should have to

continue to spend money on the election as a winner would be decided quickly. This is why

ranked-choice is sometimes referred to as “instant runoff” elections.

Ranked-choice voting can produce a winner with a majority of votes every time, and it

does this by allowing voters to select multiple candidates based on their preference. No longer

will voters be forced to vote for a lesser of two evils over their preferred third-party candidate to

prevent a candidate from winning known as strategic voting, nor will voters be afraid to split the

vote between two candidates on the same side of the political spectrum. An example of splitting

the vote would be in the 2020 Democrat Presidential primary where Sen. Elizabeth Warren and

Sen. Bernie Sanders were all eying the same voter base which makes up a large portion of the

party, however, because the progressive base was split between several candidates and the

moderate candidate, Vice President Joe Biden, had a unified moderate base of voters, the

progressive candidates only won 8 primary races nationwide despite having higher combined
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total votes in states such as Texas. Some voters are leftwing liberals and would prefer to vote for

a Democratic Socialist. Their first vote may go to the Democratic Socialist party, then as a

second choice they may pick the Green party, and finally, they may select the Democrat party

last because although not their favorite option, the last thing they want is a Republican in office.

Selecting multiple candidates based on preference will allow voters to have higher satisfaction

with the winners and their votes. More voters will likely turn out as their voices are more likely

to be heard through their votes.

Another way satisfaction and participation are increased among voters in the United

States is by requiring the winner to have a 50% majority. Having multiple ranked preferences

moves votes from one candidate to another when candidates are removed from the election

allows for the winner to be elected with majority approval. In America’s current system in most

states, winners are selected with the most votes. If 10 candidates are running in an election, it is

possible that 10% plus one vote could win the election without the approval of 90% of the

electorate. This candidate could be radically different than the policies that most voters agree

with, but this candidate won the election due to plurality voting. By switching to ranked-choice

voting, Americans can use their preference votes to determine a winner that most Americans

approve of and prevent scenarios like the one mentioned above from happening. More

Americans will feel like their voices were heard in the election and will be more likely to

participate and be more satisfied with the results.

Despite having endorsements by members from both major political parties such as

Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat President Barack Obama, some people think

there are too many drawbacks to ranked-choice voting to be effective. (FairVote). One reason is

that ranked-choice voting is too complex, and this statement is partially true. Ranked-choice
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voting is a new way of looking at elections in the United States and it will require more thought

than before as most voters will now need to do more research about other candidates. An article

written by Joseph Coll suggests ranked-choice voting can be ineffective in some ways. Coll’s

studies from Iowa State University suggest as voters get older, they rate ranked-choice voting as

more difficult compared to younger voters, however, just like when voting for candidates now,

voters have to read the instructions to properly select the right amount of candidates and to fill in

the square or bubbles correctly (299). By educating voters about how to fill out their new ballots,

the system can be instated quickly and effectively.

Another argument made against ranked-choice voting is how effective is the system when

people do not correctly fill out the ballot to rank their vote. This is a valid argument; however, it

is not very effective considering how many invalid votes are cast every year due to not

understanding the instructions and incorrectly marking the ballot. Again, people argue how

effective is ranked-choice when people do not correctly select more than one candidate as

intended. This is a problem that occurs with ranked-choice voting, but it is something that would

commonly happen. Some voters will feel so strongly toward one major party such as Republican

or Democrat, and they will stick with them and them only. Most likely, these parties will not be

removed from the ballot and their votes are reshuffled. If there is no second option and their

candidate is removed, their votes are removed from the tally. Yes, this does seem a little unfair

considering the vote total shrinks and therefore more unsatisfied voters, but it is the choice of the

voters to select other candidates even if their candidate is removed. In the case of most voters,

however, they will opt into using ranked-choice voting and select their other preferences, and for

those who do not, it is their choice just as previously mentioned with Democrat Alaskan voters in

the Democrat Presidential primary with less than 1% being removed.

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An article published in Cogitatio Press written by Courtney Juelich and Joseph Coll, from

the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and Department of

Political Science at the University of Iowa respectively, directly suggests ranked-choice voting

will lead to higher turnout, especially among young people. In their article, Coll and Juelich

wrote “Can RCV elections be the uplifting and mobilizing force young individuals need to push

them into voting? The evidence presented here suggests so “(329). This was concluded from a

joint study conducted that recorded turnout with younger and older generations in two scenarios

of ranked-choice or plurality. Young voters had their probability of voting increase by 10%

while older voters increased by <5%. This conflicts with Coll’s original theory that older

generations would be less likely to turnout, but once again, a common suggestion found is that

ranked-choice voting leads to a more uplifting and satisfying political climate and will increase

turnout.

Elections are about choices and the ability to choose who the voters really want. A record

number of 62% of Americans say America needs a third-party option, some party other than the

Republicans and Democrats. (Jones). Ranked-choice voting gives Americans the opportunity to

reach out to other parties such as the Libertarians, Greens, Constitutionalists, and so many others

by allowing them to pick their most preferred party without the fear of a candidate they did not

want to win because they split the vote. There is no vote splitting in ranked-choice voting

because if hypothetically most of the country is conservative with five conservative candidates

running and just one liberal candidate, there should be a conservative candidate winning because

the votes of the majority will over time be redistributed to other conservative candidates until

there is only one or someone gets 50%.

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Overall, American voters want change and ranked-choice voting will provide that

change. Although currently used for Democrat party primaries, ranked-choice voting is

bipartisan and supported by many people on both sides including local officials, state officials,

Representatives, Senators, candidates, and even a President. By swapping to ranked-choice

voting, American voters will be more satisfied because the winners are selected by a majority

and American elections will now cost less by preventing a second election run-off in several

states. Ranked-choice voting also will increase voter participation by allowing voters to select

more than one candidate based on their preferences from most to least. By switching to ranked-

choice voting in the United States from plurality voting, votes will now truly matter.
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Works Cited

Alaskan Democrat Party. AK+PRP+RCV+Display. 11 April 2020. Alaska Democrats,

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bee0c9e4b0441ce96c4681/t/

5e9275be2121991619e69679/1586656703552/AK+PRP+RCV+Display.pdf. Accessed 7

April 2022.

City of Heber. “Ranked Choice Voting.” Heber City, 2020,

https://www.heberut.gov/304/Ranked-Choice-Voting. Accessed 7 April 2022.

Coll, Joseph A. “Demographic Disparities Using Ranked‐Choice Voting? Ranking Difficulty,

Under‐Voting, and the 2020 Democratic Primary.” Politics & Governance, vol. 9, no. 2,

2021, pp. 293-305. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i2.3913. Accessed 20

March 2022.

Cummings, William. “Election 2018: Rep. Bruce Poliquin loses Maine race to Jared Golden.”

USA Today, 15 November 2018,

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/15/election-2018-rep-

bruce-poliquin-loses-maine-race-jared-golden/2014423002/. Accessed 7 April 2022.

de la Fuente, David. “High Costs and Low Turnout for US Runoff Elections – Third Way.”

Third Way, 21 July 2021, https://www.thirdway.org/memo/high-costs-and-low-turnout-

for-u-s-runoff-elections. Accessed 13 April 2022.

Evers, Karl. “Georgia Senate races shatter spending records • OpenSecrets.” OpenSecrets, 4

January 2021, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/01/georgia-senate-races-shatter-

records/. Accessed 13 April 2022.

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FairVote. “Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff.” FairVote, 2022,

https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used. Accessed 7 April

2022.

Georgia Secretary of State. “Election Night Reporting.” Election Night Reporting, 20 November

2020, https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/105369/web.264614/#/detail/10000.

Accessed 13 April 2022.

Glass, Andrew, et al. “Bush declared electoral victor over Gore, Dec. 12, 2000.” Politico, 12

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electoral-victor-dec-12-2000-1054202. Accessed 7 April 2022.

Jones, Jeffrey M. “Support for Third US Political Party at High Point.” Gallup News, 15

February 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/329639/support-third-political-party-high-

point.aspx. Accessed 7 April 2022.

Juelich, Courtney L., and Joseph A. Coll. “Ranked Choice Voting and Youth Voter Turnout: The

Roles of Campaign Civility and Candidate Contact.” Politics & Governance, vol. 9, no. 2,

2021, pp. 319-31. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i2.3914. Accessed 20

March 2022.

Thompson, Alex, and Holly Otterbein. “Jill Stein cost Hillary dearly in 2016. Democrats are still

writing off her successor.” Politico, 20 June 2020,

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/20/democrats-shrug-off-potential-green-party-

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