Ranked Choice Voting: It’s Time
HB-728 is a bill that I’m cosponsoring with Rep. Ellen Read and other legislators that would bring ranked choice voting to our New Hampshire elections.
Why ranked choice voting? Simply because it’s the best way to avoid “spoilers” in our elections and to increase the level of satisfaction—and ownership—of the results.
Here’s an excerpt from the testimony in support of HB-728 that I’ll deliver Wedneday, January 30th at 10 a.m. before the House Election Law Committee.
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Ranking our available options in order of preference is something that’s part of the fabric of our every day lives. We create lists of our favorite restaurant choices, places to go on vacation, the top players in our favorite sports, and—last but not least—our favorite presidential candidates.
Just over a month ago, members of the legislature went through our own ranking exercise when we requested our committee assignments. Although not all of us got our first choice, by choosing our top four options in order of preference, the assignment we received was generally one that suited our interests and our talents. As a result, we may not have all felt like winners—but very few of us felt like losers.
Unfortunately this is not always the case in our current electoral system. In a contested primary, the winning candidate often finishes with a fraction of the overall vote—as Congresswoman Laurie Trahan did in Massachusetts when she won her primary with only 24% of the vote. Two strong candidates who appeal to the same type of voter can effectively cancel each other out, opening the door to victory for a candidate who gets more votes than the other two—but who doesn’t represent the desires of a majority of the electorate that clearly wanted a different approach, only to see two similar candidates fail to get enough votes to win when together their vote totals would have been more than enough.
I’m a cosponsor of HB-728 because I firmly believe that it’s up to all of us to chip away at the disfunction and polarization of our politics. Ranked choice voting makes it possible for people to vote for the candidates they truly believe in, including third-party alternatives without fear of “wasting their vote” or worse—having two good candidates cancel each other out in a three way election, opening the door for a third candidate to win election with a small plurality and nothing close to an actual majority.
Ranked choice voting reduces the influence of “spoiler” candidates. For example, in the case of a three way election where no candidate receives 50% of the vote, the candidate finishing last is eliminated. Votes are then retabulated. If you voted for the eliminated candidate, your second choice becomes a “preference vote” for your second choice candidate. These preference votes are then added to the tallies of the top two finishers. The candidate finishing with over 50% of the retabulated vote count wins the election.
Ranked choice voting may be complex to explain, but it’s an easy concept for voters to understand.
A 2009 survey in Minneapolis found that 95 percent of voters there thought the system was easy to understand. In the most extensive study to date, David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, found that places using ranked-choice systems also see higher voter turnout than under the primary and runoff systems they replaced.
Something else to consider during these deeply divided times is that to win an election with more than two people on the ballot, candidates will need to convince supporters of other candidates they they’d be a good second choice. The need to reach out beyond your base serves as a good reminder for candidates that they represent ALL of the people who voted—not just their loudest supporters.