As a former Fairfax County Democratic Committee officer and longtime party activist, I've been intimately involved in elections for much of my adult life, including my entire 13 years in Northern Virginia.  Relying on my experience with elections and voters, I hereby submit my informed opinion that ranked-choice voting (RCV), while well-meaning, is a bad idea.

The concept of RCV is to allow voters of underperforming candidates have a second "bite at the apple" to influence the outcome of an election.  This, on the surface, might appear to have some merit in providing equity where there are major imbalances of resources to reach voters among various candidates, that diverge from their substantive merits as candidates.

However, RCV has been applied sporadically in jurisdictions across the United States, and has demonstrated no improvement in the elections process, and in fact has proved problematic.

Voters are familiar and comfortable with accepting first-past-the-post winners, even where a victorious candidate earns only a plurality of votes.  There is no history of voters distrusting the legitimacy of an election where the top vote-getter fails to reach a majority.  Therefore, no "problem" exists needing to be solved.

Meanwhile, where RCV has been applied, voters are routinely confused and concerned about the value of their vote.  Will a first-choice vote be diluted by candidates who have few first-choices?  This in itself is unfair in the minds of many.  Further, the system can easily be manipulated by instructions by a candidate's campaign to the candidate's strongest supporters to decline to provide second-choices.  This dilutes the very purpose of RCV.

There simply is no reason to abandon first-past-the-post elections.

I therefore respectfully discourage adoption of RCV generally, and encourage regulations that only minimize its implementation in Virginia.