Ranked choice voting sounded like a fix. Put your candidates in order, the spoiler effect disappears, everyone walks away happier. At least, that was the sales pitch.
Turns out a lot of voters aren't buying it. Campaigns branded Yes End RCV have been cropping up in states and cities that rolled out ranked choice voting, and they're gaining traction. Not because people dislike voting. Because people can't stand not understanding the process ranked choice voting methods.
The trouble with ranked choice voting: it asks a lot of the average voter. Order anywhere from five to ten candidates in order of preference? Most people show up to vote for one person. Perhaps two, at most, if there's a tight primary. Expecting your grandmother to rank a school board race like she's filling out a fantasy football draft board is no small task.
And then comes the tallying. RCV elections can drag on for days before a winner emerges. Anchorage learned this firsthand. Ballots get shuffled through multiple rounds of elimination, and by round four, even people tracking the results in real time are lost. Clarity suffers when the process itself feels like a magic trick.
There's also the price tag. New voting machines, poll worker training, voter education campaigns explaining a system half the electorate has never used — all of it costs money. Smaller counties in particular feel the squeeze.
Those in favor of ranked choice voting will tell you it reduces negative campaigning and encourages candidates to build wider coalitions. That's a valid argument. Candidates chasing those second-place rankings have little reason to go negative on rivals. It's a genuine benefit, and it's worth admitting even if you're skeptical of the whole system.
But the Yes End RCV supporters argue it's not a fair trade. Simpler ballots. Faster results. Fewer invalid ballots from people who made a mistake ranking their choices. They point to exhausted ballots — ballots that get thrown out because a voter left too many rankings blank — as proof the system quietly disenfranchises people who believed their vote counted all the way through.
Maine took its own path. Alaska has faced repeal efforts more than once. Massachusetts voters rejected RCV outright back in 2020. There's no consensus across the country, and honestly, there may never be one.
What's clear is this isn't a fringe grumble anymore. It's showing up in signature drives, ballot initiatives, state legislature debates. Whatever side of the fence you're on, the debate over vote-counting methods is nowhere near resolved, and "Yes End RCV" is one loud voice in a conversation that's far from over.