The Snohomish County chapter of Fair Vote Washington will hold a virtual meeting from 10-11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 10.
The group will share updates from ranked-choice voting activities across Washington state , as well as efforts to adopt ranked-choice voting in Everett. Register for the meeting here. You’ll receive a confirmation email with the Zoom link.
Hope this “New Way of Voting” does not become the new next flavor of the month. It is manipulative of our voting system.
If the original “one citizen, one vote” Show ID to prove who you are, had been left intact as well as “One voting day at the voting polling places” , then all of the recent election chaos would never have happened. All mail in voting is the biggest fraud and it was perfected here in Washington state during the Christine Gregoire / Dino Rossi debacle. Then exported to blue states across America.
FACT CHECK: A national analysis of mail-in voting systems concluded that the rate of fraud with mail-in voting nationally was 0.0025%. Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman, in 2018, calculated that the rate in Washington State, with 142 cases of fraud out of 3.2 million ballots cast, was 0.00044. These instances are nowhere near enough to change the outcome of any individual races.
All voting methods are subject to fraudulent activity. When hard evidence shows that ANY particular method has enough fraud to actually change the outcome of a race, we will ALL be in favor of making changes. But that is just not happening. Don’t we want as many legitimate, registered voters to vote as possible, since that is the mechanism of democracy? This is the purpose behind making voting convenient.
Statistics show that the more people who vote in any given election, the more likely a democrat will win that election. So, when I see people complaining about our convenient and reliable mail-in voting system here, while trying to make it less convenient for everyone to vote, I am always suspicious that they are simply trying to suppress the general vote for the benefit of their political tribe.
Ranked Choice Voting allows candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections. If four people were running for a position voters would rank them in order of preference, if no single candidate wins a first-round majority of the votes, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and another round of vote tallying commences. If a voter’s first choice is eliminated, then the vote goes to the second choice and so on. Eventually one candidate receives a majority (over 50%) and wins the election. If a voter did not rank all of the candidates, as they only wanted one, their vote would be thrown out. Former California Governor Jerry Brown in 2016 vetoed a bill to expand ranked choice voting in his state, saying it was “overly complicated and confusing” and “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.” A study published in 2015 that reviewed 600,000 votes cast using ranked choice voting in four local elections in Washington State and California found that “the winner in all four elections received less than a majority of the total votes cast”.
This is just a small bit of information on Ranked Choice Voting. Just say no!
Susan, I was following and knowing you to be right until this line, “If a voter did not rank all of the candidates, as they only wanted one, their vote would be thrown out”. Wouldn’t that one vote be cast in round one (and continue to be cast until that candidate was out)? Maybe one of the experts on the system from Fair Vote WA can weigh in.
Vivian, an example was the first ever federal office decided by rank choice voting in Maine 2018. There were four people running, two well known. The incumbent received more votes in the first round than the eventual winner, since the Maine Secretary of State “exhausted” or threw out a total of 14,076 ballots of voters who had not ranked all of the candidates. Or the mayor’s race in Oakland, California, in 2010 where the candidate that received the most first-place votes lost the election to a candidate on the strength of nearly 25,000 second and third place votes after nine rounds of redistribution of votes.
Susan, you fail to mention that in contests you mention, no candidate recieved a true majority in the first round tabulation. Ranked Choice Voting offers an improvement over plurality voting (current method here in WA) in that winners actually have a majority as opposed to < 50% voter support.
The MA SoS didn't "throw out" ballots, they tabulated ballots following the law. The notion of "exhausted" votes Ballot exhaustion occurs when a ballot is no longer countable in a tally as all of the candidates marked on the ballot are no longer in the contest. This can occur as part of ranked-choice voting when a voter has ranked only candidates that have been eliminated even though other candidates remain in the contest, as voters are not required to rank all candidates in an election. In cases where a voter has ranked only candidates that did not make it to the final round of counting, the voter's ballot is said to have been exhausted.
Your statement "RCV allows candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections" is not supported by data and in fact the opposite of what happens. I'd welcome a chance to discuss this with you further.
Eric, unfortunately since you are championing ranked choice voting you are only looking at the pros and not the cons. The cons far outweigh the pros. In 2006, voters in Pierce County adopted ranked-choice voting, three years later they repealed it, as it was a disaster. The Vancouver City Council studied ranked-choice voting, and found the negatives outweigh the positives. These are just a couple of many examples. Ranked choice voting is not straight forward or easy to understand. If a voters first choice receives little support in the election, their vote will move down to a second choice or beyond. Candidates that received fewer first place votes can still win the election. The Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2020 Sanders had the most first place votes but Buttigieg was declared the winner because his combination of first and second votes was greater. There are serious flaws in ranked-choice systems.
Ranked-choice is the flavor of the day, something akin to a game show method of selection. The result could be more like Family Feud than a decision about an important choice people can make.
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Susan, I’m actually well informed on RCV and many other voting methods. All methods have pros and cons, and my view is the pros outwigh the cons. I’ll offer evidence to counter your claims.
On Pierce county in 2008, calling RCV a disaster is both over simplistic and incorrect. I’ve analyzed and written on this in detail, please see https://eric-bidstrup.medium.com/ranked-choice-voting-in-washington-state-now-is-the-time-fb97b7fb5dea
In the 50+ cities and 2 states using RCV, surveys consistently show voters think RCV is both easy to understand and they like it. The RCV “problems” you cite I see as benefits: I believe electing canidates with a majority is preferable to electing with a minority plurality.
As to the “flavor of the day”, RCV is over 100 years old and used in 50+ cities and 2 states in the US, as well as internationally. RCV is on the ballot this November in Clark and San Juan counties, and the CIty of Seattle here in WA.
Is RCV perfect? No. Is it better? Yes IMHO. Do you think the current system is perfect and can’t be improved?
I welcome your constructive thoughts on how to improve, aside from rehasing points from Heritage Foundation
Eric, evidently you are not well informed on RCV otherwise you would be aware that the information I just posted was not from the Heritage Foundation. I posted information from The Columbian, the Vancouver newspaper, the Congressional Digest, and the CounterPunch, a left-leaning independent news. So yes I have done research and I have found that the cons outweigh the pros of RCV.
Your opinion is just that – your opinion, so you can state your opinion and I can state mine.