Ranked choice voting looked like a fix. Put your candidates in order, the spoiler effect disappears, everyone comes out satisfied. That's how it was sold, anyway https://www.yesendrcv.com/.
It seems a lot of voters aren't buying it. Campaigns branded Yes End RCV have been surfacing in states and cities that rolled out ranked choice voting, and they're building momentum. Not because people dislike voting. Because people can't stand not understanding the process.
What people don't always realize about ranked choice voting: it demands a lot from the average voter. Put five, six, even ten names in order of preference? The average voter show up to vote for one person. Maybe two, if there's a tight primary. Asking Grandma to rank the school board race like she's drafting a fantasy football roster is a big lift.
And then comes the tallying. RCV elections can drag on for days before a winner emerges. Anchorage found that out the hard way. Ballots get shuffled through multiple rounds of elimination, and by round four, nobody watching the results feed has any clue what's happening. Clarity suffers when the process itself seems like sleight of hand.
Cost matters too. New voting machines, poll worker training, public education efforts explaining a system half the electorate has never used — it all adds up. Small counties especially bear the brunt of it.
RCV advocates will argue it reduces negative campaigning and encourages candidates to build wider coalitions. It's a legitimate claim. Candidates courting second-choice votes have little reason to go negative on rivals. That's a real upside, and it's worth acknowledging even if you're skeptical of the whole system.
But the "Yes End RCV" crowd argue it's not a fair trade. Easier ballots. Quicker outcomes. Fewer spoiled votes from people who filled out the ranking wrong. 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 wrestled with repeal efforts more than once. Massachusetts voters rejected RCV outright back in 2020. There's no national consensus here, and honestly, there may never be one.
One thing is certain: this is no longer a fringe grumble anymore. It's appearing in signature drives, ballot initiatives, state legislature debates. Whatever side of the fence you're on, the debate over how we count votes is nowhere near resolved, and Yes End RCV represents one loud voice in a conversation that's only getting louder.