Rank-Choice Voting: Is it the Future of US Elections?

As the national election approaches, debates around voting are becoming increasingly prioritized. The value of our current methods of voting is being reconsidered, as criticisms of the system arise. Alternative methods of voting are being brought to the forefront of political conversations. One such idea is ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice is a system of voting where voters rank all of the candidates in order of preference (or they select their top three candidates and rank them). Once the ballots are counted, the candidate who receives more than half of first choice votes wins the election. If none of the candidates receives the majority of votes then rank-choice voting is utilized. In this system, the candidate with the least amount of votes is discarded and the voters who selected this candidate as their top choice have their second choice vote counted. This process continues until one candidate has the majority of votes.

Multiple states have already considered enacting rank-choice voting. In Maine, citizens have voted on the issue and the Maine Supreme Court has approved it. This year, Maine will be the first state to use rank-choice voting in the federal election, barring any involvement from a higher court. Additionally, in the 2020 ballot in Massachusetts, rank-choice voting is question two. If Massachusetts votes yes on this issue, rank-choice voting will be enacted in 2022 so long as the courts do not intervene. If approved, this new system of voting will be used in Massachusetts for the primary and general elections of statewide offices, and federal congressional offices. Other states are looking to these two states among a couple others to organize this system before attempting to utilize it themselves.

As the use of ranked-choice voting in the US is relatively new, there is limited precedent to look at in order to analyze the good it has the capacity to do. However, it is possible to recognize some attributes and flaws to the system with the current information.   

Rank-choice voting has the ability to be beneficial to the country’s voting system in multiple ways. The purpose of the system is to have a candidate win by a majority. Candidates will no longer be able to simply collect the plurality to assume office. By forcing candidates to win the majority, extremism is discouraged. In the past four to eight years, both of the major parties have claimed the other is growing more extreme. However with ranked-choice voting, the candidates will have to gather the moderate vote more than before. The race for the second choice votes will incentivize candidates to reevaluate their stances and limit their ability to pander to one group of people exclusively. Additionally, the system will allow third-party candidates more of an opportunity to run. With the current voting system, voting for a third party candidate in most elections is equivalent to not voting at all. The United States’ two-party system has forced the majority of people to vote for a candidate from either the Democrat or the Republican party. Because third-party candidates have an extremely limited chance of winning, a vote for them does not affect the outcome of the election. However with rank-choice voting, if the third-party candidate has the least amount of support, the voters who ranked them number one will simply have their vote carry over to their second choice candidate. As a result, more people will be able to support the candidate of their choosing without splitting the vote within the two major parties. 

While the benefits to rank-choice voting are numerous, there are still some flaws in the system. Firstly, the system is a new one in the US. The limited precedent makes it more difficult to predict issues that will arise and forces the US to simply wait for them to appear before correcting them. Additionally, the ballots will be more complicated and thus will take more time and money to count and declare a winner. Cities with older voting machines will face a period of struggle and adjustment if they implement this new form of voting. The delays in releasing results may also cause confusion among voters and perpetuate speculation concerning voter fraud (although rank-choice voting itself does not make voter fraud any more likely).  

So what does this mean for the future of rank-choice in America? To answer this question, we can look to Australia. Australia uses a system similar to rank-choice voting. When electing members of their House of Representatives, Australian voters rank every candidate on the ballot. If they do not rank every candidate, their vote is not counted. For the Senate, voters can choose to either vote “above the line,” which entails marking a one in the box of the party that they support. By doing so they give their party the ability to decide the rest of the ranking for them. They can also choose to vote “below the line,” which is when voters rank every candidate. The Australian system has allowed for competition between the liberal parties and separate competition between the conservative parties without putting traditionally liberal and traditional conservative seats at risk. Two conservative parties are able to compete with less concern for whether a liberal party will take the conservative seat they are fighting over. This system allows for more diversity of opinion within the conservative and liberal schools of thought. 

If the United States chose to enact this system, we could similarly see a rise of a multi-party system, allowing for liberal and conservative views to expand beyond the views advocated by the Democrat and Republican party.