Ranked Choice voting is a terrible idea which make voting more complicated – the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

Advocates pushing for RCV constitute a small sliver of voters (frankly elitists) who, as Jay Reddy pointed out “want another bite at the apple” when they vote.  Those advocates say: “what can be complicated about ranking your choice of candidates?”  The answer is that there are a lot of complications, but the most important is the total lack of transparency since such a miniscule portion of the electorate would ever understand how the results were tabulated. 

Why would we want a voting system where a voter practically needs to be a mathematician to understand the consequences of their vote?  Everyone understands the concept of “whoever gets the most votes wins.”  Only a miniscule sliver of the electorate understands all the aspects of the algorithm that selects the winner in RCV. 

RCV has been repealed in jurisdictions when the electorate was surprised at the result and realized that it did not always operate as advertised.  RCV is also more complicated at the voting stage than advocates suggest as evidenced by the high number of spoiled ballots.  Those voters are disenfranchised - along with voters who choose not even to show up due to confusion over the system.

The irony is even most of the advocates don’t really understand how it works, they just believe they get to rank their candidates and that is all they care about.  They also seem to believe that RCV ensures a majority winner – even though it doesn’t unless it is mandatory that people rank all candidates, but mandatory ranking sends the number of spoiled ballots through the roof. 

But when it is not mandatory to rank all candidates, the system does not work as advertised and is subject to manipulation.  Furthermore, voters tend to vote randomly on many of the candidates using the “eenie meenie miney mo” method, which is no way to run an election.  With mandatory ranking, the system actually forces voters to randomly vote.

RCV does not take into the intensity of support, so it is not really possible to do an accurate ranking.  If there are three candidates and on a scale of 1 to 10, one is a 10, one is a 4 and one is a 1, RCV cannot accurately record those voter preferences.  In that case, depending on the choice of the voter, their vote could actually elect the one they rank #1.

The average voter (actually nearly all voters) would never understand that voting for their ideal candidate could actually make their least favorite candidate win in RCV – after all, it is advertised to do the exact opposite.  Of course, that fact is hidden in a complex non-transparent algorithm, so this fact isn’t widely known.

If someone votes for their most favorite candidate every time in a plurality system, they may be helping their least favorite candidate by “throwing away” their vote, but everyone understands that they get one vote and need to vote responsibly.  That is not the case with RCV.

It appears that the staff does not even fully understand the Gregory method or chose not to explain it detail because of its complexity.  Contrast that with how simple it is to describe how a winner is elected in a normal plurality election.  If you need a majority, hold a runoff.  A runoff is also simple to understand – and in a runoff you are actually assured to get a majority winner, something you don’t with RCV.

 The only way one can even attempt to make the case that RCV is easy to understand is if you don’t believe voters need to understand how the results are tabulated – but they must if we are going to have a transparent voting system.

Also, the idea that education on the process needs to start 60 days before the election is also not realistic.  It would take at least a year to publicize and even attempt to educate people on the system.  Even then, probably at least 25% of the electorate would have some degree of confusion at the polls.  Of the ones who do understand how to rank the candidates, possibly 99% of them would still not completely understand how their votes will be tabulated nor the implications of their vote.  Conversely, 99% of them WOULD understand how their vote would be tabulated in a plurality system.

The complexity inherent in RCV makes it fundamentally non-transparent and make it a very bad voting system.  We should not be introducing more complexity into the voting process.  We also should not adopt a system where few people understand the implications of their vote as is the case with RCV.  Even advocates don’t really understand how it is counted.  That lack of transparency results in an undermining in the confidence of elections.

Simplicity and transparency of the results are critical attributes for any voting system, but especially in a time where there is such mistrust in our election system – mistrust that is based in part on a misunderstanding on how our very simple current system works.