Proposition 1 - Ranked choice voting threatens Idaho elections
Idahoans deserve transparent, fair & accountable elections.
Thank you Idaho! We successfully and overwhelmingly protected the integrity of Idaho’s elections. Our work has just begun.
RCV complicates everything for voters and election workers.
RCV is a power grab funded by special interest groups outside of Idaho.
RCV is slow and relies on computer technology; you can’t hand verify!
RCV silences the voice of significant portions of the electorate.
Ranked Choice Voting is confusing.
American elections are traditionally decided on the “one-person, one vote” principle, in which each voter chooses one candidate, and the winner secures the plurality of votes. By contrast, voters in RCV elections must rank candidates on the ballot. If no candidate wins a 50-percent majority, the race goes through multiple rounds of computer tabulation in an instant runoff.
Rather than identifying one candidate to support, voters must research multiple candidates and form opinions about their relative preferences for as many as four or more. This benefits those who have more time and access to information—in short, RCV gives more power to elites while making it harder for everyone else.
Ranked Choice Voting destroys transparency.
RCV elections that require multiple rounds of tabulation rely on computers to make adjustments, or discard, ballots in each round. There is no way to quickly confirm the accuracy of the computer processes involved. This is why, in an RCV election in California, a data entry error went undetected and the wrong winner was certified.
Ranked Choice Voting is expensive.
RCV demands significant investments in new computer equipment, training, and voter re-education. The Idaho ballot initiative admits that the costs cannot be accurately estimated, with a projected taxpayer expense of up to $40 million.
In addition, current county and state computer systems do not support these nontraditional voting methods. Additional staff training at both the county and state levels will be necessary. And voter re-education has proven insufficient in other regions, resulting in ongoing confusion and expense.
Ranked Choice Voting likely does not count all votes.
In traditional elections, every submitted ballot that follows the instructions is counted towards the result, but this isn’t the case with RCV.
“Exhausted ballots” in RCV elections do not count towards the final tally. While many RCV ballots are thrown out due to voter error in following convoluted instructions, ballots that follow the instructions to the letter can also be thrown away because the voter ranked candidates who are no longer in contention. As candidates are eliminated through multiple rounds of tabulation, voters have their ballots exhausted because they only ranked candidates that have been removed during successive rounds.
In other words, for a voter’s voice to fully count in every round of an RCV election, he must vote for all candidates on the ballot, even those he may not support.
