The General Assembly enacted legislation in 2020 to allow localities to use a ranked choice voting (RCV) method for election of “county boards of supervisors and city councils,” Va. Code § 24.2-673.1. It further amended Va. Code § 15.2-705.1 to allow RCV as an option for the county manager form of government.

Numerous concerns have been raised about the necessity and benefits of the RCV voting process. The proposed Department of Election (ELECT) Regulations illustrate two of these concerns. First, the process is confusing for voters and complicated for election administration. Second, and perhaps most important at present, the RCV process lacks transparency and may compound the lack of confidence many voters have expressed in election administration. Third, the resources that ELECT and local election administrators expend in implementing this process detracts from efforts to facilitate voter registration and early and absentee voting, which are far more important goals. ELECT should focus on making voting easy and keeping vote counting simple – these proposed regulations do not advance those goals.

The proposed regulations discussed below illustrate some of the problems inherent in Ranked Choice Voting – the process is confusing and lacks transparency.

1. The definitions set out at 1VAC-20-100-10 are contradictory and circular: They provide that “ranked choice voting is also known as instant run-off voting.” “Instant run off voting means no more than one seat in the office must be filled by the election.” But “single transferable vote means more than one seat in the office must be filled by the election.” These definitions suggest that “single transferable voting” is not “ranked choice voting.” But the statute states in contradiction that: “’Ranked choice voting’ is known as ‘instant runoff voting’ when electing a single office and ‘single transferable vote’ when elective multiple offices.” 24.2-673.1A. The terms are confusing. The definitions are also confusing in that the statute refers to single and multiple offices, while the proposed regulations refer to one seat or more than one seat in an office.
2.  1VAC-20-100-40, Ballot Treatment, discusses review of ballots with defective rankings, including determining voter intent. What aspects of this process are to be conducted by hand? If the tabulation process is to be conducted by scanners, has ELECT evaluated costs and availability of necessary voting and tabulation software and hardware?
3.  1VAC-20-100-40.1, Ballot Treatment, provides that “a duplicate ballot ranking shall be counted unless the voter’s choice was eliminated.” Does this need to be clarified to state that it should be counted in the earliest round and only once?
4. 1VAC-20-100-50, Reallocation of Votes, states that: “Vote reallocation will be conducted with the Inclusive Gregory Method of Reallocation.” The definition section, 1VAC-20-100-10, helpfully provides: “‘Inclusive Gregory Method of Reallocation’ means vote counts are transferred fractionally. When a candidate wins a seat, votes for that candidate are reweighted, multiplying their current weight by the quotient of their surplus vote divided by their total vote.” At a time when many voters fail to understand which presidential candidate won the most votes in 2020, introducing complicated mathematical concepts to the simple process of vote counting does not serve the interests of voters (or election administrators). This provision also appears to apply only to multi-candidate races.
5. 1VAC-20-100-60, Paper Ballots, does not address the circumstances under which a “ballot must be manually counted.” Is that the same as the as an optical scan ballot being unreadable? Under what circumstances would be the ballot be hand counted and in what circumstances would the general registrar or election official “transpose the voter’s intent to a machine readable ballot.” Also, shouldn’t there be a requirement be for election officials of both parties to review such ballots?
6. 1VAC-20-100-70, Election Results – The final results should report the total percentage of the winning candidate as a percentage of the total votes cast. For example, in the recent New York Mayor’s election, the results were largely reported as the winner receiving 50.4 % of the vote, but that was only of the votes cast in the 8th Round. Review pf the total of number of votes cast (including “exhausted ballots”), shows that the winner received only 43% of the total votes cast.
7. IVAC20-100-80.B, Outreach – The Department should be careful about posting information on RCV because it is not available for most elections and may cause confusion among voters participating in normal elections. Local election board postings should be enough, and should make clear that only certain races are subject to RCV.
8. The regulations may also address the issue of voter confusion and tabulation difficulties that will arise when only the election for county board/city council is subject to RCV, and the remainder of offices on the ballot are elected by the normal process.
9. Are there provisions for write-in votes in this process and how are those tabulated?

Thank you for your consideration.