Ranked-Choice Voting Is BAD for Nevada
Vote NO on Ballot Question #3
What is Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV)?
Ranked-choice voting is a radical, complicated system of voting which threatens to upend Nevada’s traditional ‘one person, one vote’ democratic system.
Adopting RCV would only function to further erode Nevadans’ confidence in elections.
The first prong of RCV installs California-style ‘jungle’ primaries – meaning any registered voter, regardless of party affiliation, can cast a vote for any candidate in any party. From that, the top five candidates advance to the November general election.
The second prong of RCV requires voters to list their preference – in order – among the remaining five candidates for the general election.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of first-place votes, then an ‘instant runoff’ occurs whereby the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those who listed that candidate as their top preference will instead have their second-place votes distributed among remaining candidates. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes – which could potentially require up to 3 rounds of ‘instant runoff’ tabulations.
What is Ballot Exhaustion?
RCV suffers from the phenomenon of ballot exhaustion– when a ballot is cast but does not count toward the end election result. This occurs when a voter overvotes, undervotes or only ranks candidates that have already been eliminated on their ballot. Because the ballots are exhausted, it leaves voters disenfranchised.
Why Would RCV Be Bad for Nevada?
Decreased Voter Turnout
Jurisdictions which have embraced RCV have experienced comparably lower voter turnout. In five San Francisco elections from 1995 to 2011, adoption of RCV exacerbated disparities in voter turnout between those who are already likely to vote and those who are not, including younger voters and those with lower levels of education.
Complex and Confusing
RCV is needlessly complicated and confusing. It asks voters to make decisions about all the candidates on the ballot, prompting them to cast their vote for candidates of whom they may disapprove or know nothing about. Researching five candidates for each of several races is a tall order. Moreover, a lack of familiarity with RCV creates more confusion for both voters and election administrators, making it more prone to tabulation errors and long-delayed election results.
The Constitutional Issue
It would be unwise to enshrine an unproven and confusing system into our state constitution. If Nevadans later find the new system to be complicated, burdensome or otherwise undesirable, a prolonged constitutional process would be required to abolish it and return to the proven ‘one person, one vote’ system.
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