The suburbs of Washington, D.C. saw the introduction of ranked-choice balloting (RCV) on Tuesday.
In Arlington, Virginia Democrats have used this innovative system to hold a county-wide primary. The tabulation started on Friday, which was the earliest date possible.
RCV is the new norm. A well-funded campaign is underway to convince voters that elections need to be fundamentally changed. Arlington’s experiment with elections was deemed “confusing” by The Washington Post, and it also noted that “not many people understood how it worked.”
RCV makes voting more difficult and complex. Voters are asked for their ranking of candidates from 1 to 10.
Currently, the winner of the election is the person who has the most votes. With RCV, however, algorithms are used in order to calculate the winner.
If no candidate receives more than half of the votes in the first place, the candidate with the lowest performance is eliminated. Votes for this candidate are then redistributed according to the second choice made by each voter. The roulette wheel continues until one candidate receives more than half of the remaining votes.
Confused? In Arlington, it got even worse.
In the Arlington Democratic Primary County Board, RCV was used for the first-time to allow voters to select three candidates from six to fill two vacant seats. Even election experts struggled to understand the complicated math and process used to fill multiple positions.
Arlington NAACP president Mike Hemminger stated that the introduction of RCV prompted “a number of grave concerns” from his community and will require him to work with his organization in order to ensure that “noone’s fundamental right to vote is disenfranchised.”
Virginia Democrats changed the law in order to allow RCV for certain elections, but they also decided to accept ballots that were up to three day late. This is a problem, because RCV cannot be tabulated until all votes are received. Each vote can have a profound impact on the results of an election.
Imagine the nightmare of this on a nationwide scale. The recounts, lawsuits, and legal appeals after nearly every election would be endless.
RCV has many flaws. RCV’s elimination process can cause a candidate who is in the lead to lose an election. The Republican Congressman Bruce Poliquin, who won the majority of first-place votes in Maine’s RCV election, lost the election.
Your vote may be thrown out under RCV during the elimination phase. In each round of elimination, ballots that have been deemed exhausted are thrown away.
Each round of elimination results in fewer and less “voters”. In 2021, 140,000 votes were removed from the Democratic Mayoral Primary of New York City. Alaska’s special congressional race in 2022 saw 11,000 votes eliminated.
A tabulation error in Oakland, California, last year led to the incorrect winner being certified. If the results were counted correctly the third-place finisher actually won the race and was forced to sue in order to get his seat on the board.
Why do Arlington and other localities use this system? There is a national push for RCV. This is supported by the Left’s largest dark money donors, as well as deep-pocketed interests such Arabella Advisors’ network, George Soros, and others.
The same network is behind the left’s attempts to manipulate voting for political gain. This includes endless lawsuits by the left to rewrite voting laws in states or the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which works behind the scenes to inject left-wing politics to election offices. Hansjorg Wyss is a foreign billionaire who spends hundreds of millions on American politics and election.
RCV advocates often push for the introduction of RCV in all states by first focusing on allowing a “local choice” like Virginia. When legislatures refuse to do this, dark money from the left pours into state to promote ballot measures.
RCV’s ultimate goal is to eliminate the party primaries, and overturn the entire democratic system. RCV’s goal is to weaken political parties and create a power vacuum, which Arabella and Soros will fill. They have the resources, funding and infrastructure needed to accomplish this.
Other words, the elites of the left are buying a brand new system for elections, which will move politics to the left, and make the system more responsive to their needs, not those of the voters. It’s part of the ongoing leftist push to change voting for partisan gains.
There is an alternative, which is better for voters and elections: Ban ranked-choice vote.
Florida, Tennessee and three other states have all passed bans in the last year. Americans want voting to be simple and easy. Arlington’s election demonstrates that RCV makes voting more difficult, complicated and open to lawsuits.
