Elections Continue to Be Rigged Thanks to Ranked-Choice Voting

As different states and municipalities across the country adopt ranked-choice voting, it’s become obvious this mind-boggling election system deserves a new name: rigged-choice voting.

After nearly two months of tabulation, Alameda County, California, — one such ranked-choice voting (RCV) adoptee — announced it got the count wrong for its Nov. 8 election. According to The Wall Street Journal reportedCalifornia County admitted that it made several systemic errors in tabulating ballots. A result of this snafu, the Oakland School Board race was flipped. The top vote-getter (and certified winner), must now give his seat to the third-place finisher.

While gross negligence on the part of some Alameda County election officials is not only probable but likely, RCV’s Byzantine election system must also take the blame. It allows voters to rank candidates according to their preference. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his voters are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. The process continues until one candidate is elected with a majority of the votes. For the Oakland mayor’s race, it took nine baffling rounds of RCV for one candidate to receive the narrow majority. The local NAACP chapter Requirements Manual recounts were attempted but abandoned due to cost.

Officials blamed a software configuration error for the Oakland School Board election. Even the machines got confused about how to count RCV-way. It is wrong for a candidate to receive a plurality in votes on the first try-through and then lose to someone who finishes at the bottom. Often, the ranked-choice winners are not those that the majority of voters prefer. Mary Peltola, Democrat You won Alaska’s lone congressional seat despite nearly 60 percent of voters casting their ballots for a Republican.

What’s behind the RCV takeover? As The Federalist previously reported reportedModerate Republicans and partisan Democratic activists are pushing RCV to make it easier for establishment-backed candidates to choose populist (read: more radical) candidates. As Project Veritas has Documented, the moderate, nominal Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was behind the campaign to change Alaska’s primary to an RCV system, ensuring the defeat of her Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. Tshibaka could have easily defeated Murkowski had Alaskan not implemented RCV.

RCV has many problems, as evidenced by the Alameda County scandal. Foundation for Government Accountability Notes Ranking-choice voting results in ballot exhaustion. This is when a voter’s vote does not count towards the final election result. A ranked-choice race can take up to a few months to be counted. This poses a threat to the security of the process.

Rigged-choice voting is not the best way to ensure democracy and integrity in elections for Americans.

Victoria Marshall is a staff journalist at The Federalist. Her writings have been published in the New York Post and National Review. Hillsdale College, where she studied journalism and politics, graduated her in May 2021. Follow her @vemrshll on Twitter