Action | Ranked Choice Voting Regulations and Ballot Standards |
Stage | Proposed |
Comment Period | Ended on 8/9/2021 |
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As a voter in Arlington, we are looking at whether RCV (along with STV) might help the competitiveness of our elections, increase voter turnout, reduce character attacks, save tax-payer's money, improve diversity and quality of representation. If, after public deliberation, some of these improvements are deemed possible and Arlington or any other polity in Virginia chooses to use RCV, then we really need to make sure the regulations are top notch. I found the comments by G. Michael Parsons of FairVote, David O'Brien from RepresentUS, the Campaign Legal Center, and Chris Hughes of the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center, to be extremely helpful and clear. I hope their comments will be substantially incorporated into the regulations so that if RCV is implemented anywhere in Virginia, it will be done as well as possible. RCV is not new. It has been around more than 100 years and was used efficiently long before computers made this even easier. Let us please learn from RCV experience elsewhere to ensure success if any polity chooses to use it in Virginia.