Virginia voters can have confidence in November that the election process will be simple and their votes will count. That’s because of the defeat of two radical election proposals pushed by well-financed lobbying groups. Each would have made voting less transparent and more confusing. Voters were spared the latest mess only by gubernatorial veto on April 8.
That bill, Senate Bill 428, would have required the commonwealth to assist local implementation of an election system known as ranked choice voting, or RCV. With RCV, voters rank candidates by preference using a ballot that looks more like a standardized test. Voters’ top preferences are tallied up. If no candidate has a majority of first-place votes, the least popular candidate gets eliminated. If this doesn’t sound complicated yet, stick with me; it gets worse.
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Votes from the candidate that has been eliminated are then shifted to the voter’s second-choice candidate. If a voter fails to fill in a second-choice bubble, the ballot is “exhausted,” which is another way of saying disqualified; it’s as if the voter never showed up in the first place. The votes are tallied again, and the process repeats until, from the adjusted votes on the remaining ballots, one candidate finally emerges with a majority.
RCV makes voting take a lot longer, with many more decisions to make and bubbles to mark. Just imagine a ballot with 15 RCV races, each with five candidates. That’s 75 candidates to rank. Lines and wait times at the polls would be unimaginable.
One bizarre twist of RCV is that candidates with the most first-place votes can ultimately lose the election. That happened in Maine in 2018 when incumbent U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost to Jared Golden despite initially winning a plurality of first-place votes. And in Oakland, California, Don Perata won the first-place vote for mayor in 2010, before ultimately losing to Jean Quan, in what The New York Times attributed to the “power of finishing second in a ranked-choice election.” In a 2022 Oakland School Board contest, tabulators erroneously tossed out hundreds of votes and initially certified the wrong winner before a private audit exposed the failure, testifying to RCV’s complexity and lack of transparency.
It’s hard to imagine why any Virginia legislator said “yes” to such an election nightmare. Thankfully, Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the RCV expansion bill over “concerns about disenfranchisement and an increased lack of voter confidence.”
Credit does go to the Virginia General Assembly — where both the Virginia House and Senate are controlled by Democrats — for dismissing another fraught election measure, House Bill 375, out of hand. This bill would have committed Virginia to a plan called the “National Popular Vote,” or NPV, which would rewrite the rules for presidential elections without the proper process for constitutional change. The intended effect is to nullify the Electoral College through an interstate compact of dubious legality.
Both political parties in the commonwealth know that the NPV election system would erode Virginia’s national political clout in favor of California, Texas and a handful of other giant states. The American founders considered and rejected a national popular vote because it lacks the checks and balances to protect minority rights and limit corruption. But to the monied interests pushing it, that seems to be part of the appeal.
In fact, the NPV plan probably wouldn’t even work. It relies on all states cooperating in the weeks following a presidential election. What happens if they don’t, or if the result is close? Nobody knows, because NPV has no provisions to deal with problems, conflicts or nationwide recounts. All this is dangerous in a closely divided nation with a recent history of contentious elections where partisans on all sides routinely raise concerns about election fraud and voter disenfranchisement.
The Virginia General Assembly’s dismissal of the latest push for NPV shows that both Democrats and Republicans realize our present system of electing a president works, both to represent Americans from coast to coast and to contain election issues within states where they are more easily settled. That, and Gov. Youngkin’s stand against RCV, should give Virginia voters greater confidence in the democratic process.
Virginia leaders are right to reject risky election changes like NPV and RCV. Let’s hope state lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle agree to permanently abandon any effort to promote these flawed political schemes.
Videos: Richmond-area voters tell us who they voted for and why
We visited polling sites throughout the Richmond region to talk to voters on Super Tuesday.
Chester voter Joe Raper explains why he is voting for Donald Trump.
Michael Glotz, a resident of western Henrico, voted for Donald Trump in Tuesday's primary. Glotz said the country needs someone "strong enough…
Arlinda Hairston speaks about voting on Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
Cannon West speaks about voting on Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
Richmond voter Charlene Pitchford explains why she is voting for Joe Biden
Sandston voter Barbara Fore explains why she is voting for Donald Trump
Chesterfield voter Stephen Hood explains why he is voting for Donald Trump
Trent England is founder and executive director of Save Our States and co-chairman of the Stop Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition. Contact him at trent@saveourstates.com.