Ranked Choice Voting is sweeping Utah, we are the test state for this new voting system. The other option they are considering is approval. We believe voting should remain 1 vote per 1 voter, however if they force approval or ranked through then approval is the better option. We will start this off with a quote from Heritage.org and from a democrat. This is to illustrate that it’s not a partisan issue. Republicans and democrats should both be on board to stop ranked choice voting from going through in Utah. See Summit Counties blog about it HERE and you can see the presentation our election clerks put together for the legislature here, and you can see the presentation about plurality by the OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE RESEARCH AND GENERAL COUNSE HERE.
“We do not often agree with former California Governor Jerry Brown Jr. (D), but he was right in 2016 when he vetoed a bill to expand ranked choice voting in his state, saying it was “overly complicated and confusing” and “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”2 Such a system would present many opportunities to rig the electoral system.”
Sadly our Lt. Governor has made a massive push to shove this through city by city. Some of our largest have fallen to this system already. In those cases, because it will effect Utah as a state, there needs to be a vote on what Utahns want. Do we want RCV or Approval, or the Standard voting sytem?
This is an excellent assessment of the 96 jurisdictions who have already used rcv
Utah election integrity is in question and now more than ever we need you (the voters) to be informed. RCV sounds lovely in theory, but it has serious issues.
Below are just some of the problems with ranked choive voting, some of these cross over into approval as well, but to keep things fairly simple this is RCV specific.
- Ranked choice voting is a scheme to disconnect elections from the voters and issues
- It allows candidates with marginal support from voters to win
- It hinders true debates and dialog among candidates
- It eliminates genuine binary choices between two top-tier candidates.
- Ranked choice process removes protections against a “tyranny of the majority,” stifling outsiders, encouraging the broken two-party system, and disallowing plurality victories
- This is a gateway to the state moving control of our vote from the county/precinct level to the state
- The Utah Ranked Choice Website cites “Experimenting with elections” as a positive thing, it’s not.
- Effective 3/26/2019 Utah Code 20A-5-8 (2)(b) (i) Voting equipment used in the state may include technology that allows for ranked-choice voting.
- (ii) The lieutenant governor may, for voting equipment used for ranked-choice voting under Title 20A, Chapter 4, Part 6, Municipal Alternate Voting Methods Pilot Project, certify voting equipment that has been successfully used within the United States or a territory of the United States for ranked-choice voting for a race for federal office.
- In Pilot cities only 25% of their voters got one vote counted in a race for either 2 or 3 city council seats, whereas other voters got more votes counted.
- Effectively eliminates the primary
- Depends on the computer to tell you who won
- Ranked choice voting favors middle-of-the-road results, thus excluding true reformers from victory
- Obscures a true audit, makes it almost impossible
- ASK: WHAT IS MUNICIPAL ALTERNATIVE VOTING METHODS PILOT PROJECT?
We have highlighted in 2 flyers below some of the biggest issues with Ranked Choice Voting. Please share and spread the word. It’s critical this be stopped in Utah.
Here is how it works. In 2008, instead of choosing to cast your ballot for John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, or Cynthia McKinney, all of whom were running for president, you would vote for all of them and rank your choice. In other words, you would list all five candidates on your ballot from one to five, with one being your first choice for president and five being your last choice.
If none of the candidates were chosen as the number one pick by a majority of voters in Round One, then the presidential candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated from the ballot. People who selected that candidate as their top pick—let us say it was McKinney—would automatically have their votes changed to their second choice. Then the scores would be recalculated, over and over again, until one of the candidates finally won a majority as the second, third, or even fourth choice of voters.
In the end, a voter’s ballot might wind up being cast for the candidate he ranked far below his first choice—a candidate to whom he may have strong political objections and for whom he would not vote in a traditional voting system.
Some key highlights to be aware of:
Of 137 primary elections in 2016-2020, only 23 had a winner who got more than 50%.
Utah is a test case. There are 23 cities in Utah currently scheduled to use rcv. There are only 26 other cities in the nation who use RCV. (Plus 2 states: Maine and Alaska)
SOURCES:
https://www.city-journal.org/promise-and-peril-of-ranked-choice-voting?wallit_nosession=1
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/ranked-choice-voting-bad-choice
https://www.wamc.org/post/argument-against-ranked-choice-voting-massachusetts
Ranked Choice Voting’s Failure In Massachusetts
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/ranked-choice-voting-bad-choice
Ranked-Choice Voting Is Not the Solution
https://www.wamc.org/post/argument-against-ranked-choice-voting-massachusetts
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/time-to-admit-failure-of-ranked-choice-voting/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ranked-choice-voting-is-an-abomination/ar-BB19a4KK
http://m.amsterdamnews.com/news/2021/may/13/ranked-choice-voting-it-voter-suppression/
This Type of Voting Doesn’t Rank as Real Election Reform
What’s Wrong with Ranked Choice Voting
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10911539
Alameda County election failures disenfranchised voters, advocates say
https://applieddivinitystudies.com/2020/09/02/ranked-bad/
Ranked-choice voting makes elections unnecessarily complex and confusing
https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting/
Decent article summarizing the history of Dominion's GEMS (General Election Management System), which Powell keeps referring to as the "same DNA" as Smartmatic and Diebold. Only detail the author missed: GEMS was originally designed by federal criminal hacker Jeffrey Dean before Diebold bought it.
by u/Law_And_Politics in anarchogeoism