Burlington’s Backtrack: A Warning to Nevada 

In November, Nevadans will be asked to vote on Ballot Question 3, which will enshrine ranked-choice voting (RCV) into the Nevada constitution. I’ve written many articles about the terrible, long-lasting consequences of a yes vote, which would take a minimum of four years to undo if we change our minds, as almost every jurisdiction in the world that has implemented RCV since the 1850s has done. 

What is Ranked-Choice Voting?

Also known as “instant runoff” voting (ICV), ranked​-​choice voting requires that voters rank their preference for multiple candidates for election to each office. Suppose no candidate receives more than 50​ percent​ of ​the ​first-place votes.  In that case, the candidate with the least ​number of ​first-place votes is eliminated, and those who listed that candidate as their top preference will instead have their second-place votes distributed to candidates. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes, which could require multiple rounds of “instant runoff” tabulations. 

What are the Problems with Ranked-Choice Voting?

Among the problems with RCV are confusing ballots and procedures, a high likelihood of voter mistakes, difficulty verifying election results, decreased public trust inf elections, lower voter participation, longer times to determine the winner, exclusion of ballots, and perhaps most importantly, putting unpopular candidates in office.

Let us look at a real-world example of the latter situation. In 2009, the city of Burlington, Vermont held RCV elections for its mayor. In 2010, voters unsurprisingly repealed RCV as the method for their elections and returned to simple majority voting. 

In that 2009 mayoral election, candidate Andy Montroll was preferred by a fairly large margin over candidates Bob Kiss and Kurt Wright in any two-person race. Had there been a simple, time-tested winner-take-all election, popular candidate Montroll would have won. Instead, to the disappointment of the majority of voters, the RCV election put Bob Kiss into office. 

Research by mathematician Robert Bristow-Johnson shows that if the voters who wanted Montroll to win, which comprised a majority, roughly knew the popularity of the candidates, they could have changed how they ranked the candidates to give the win to Montroll. But so could have proponents of the other candidates.

In other words, groups of voters can game the system. In any case, due to the complexity of the RCV algorithms to determine the outcome it would be difficult to find such gaming of the vote count without a detailed analysis of the election. And if there had been actual corruption, it would have been very difficult to detect. 

Why Should You Vote Against Ranked-Choice Voting?

Is this the kind of system we want to implement in Nevada? Definitely not. The solution to good governance is for educated voters to choose the candidates they want to govern, not complex systems that will override the people’s choices with so-called “moderate candidates” who do not represent the will of the people.  

Vote NO on Ballot Question #3

Bob Zeidman is a Policy Fellow at Nevada Policy. His book Election Hacks is the true story of how he challenged his own beliefs about voting machine hacking in the 2020 presidential election and made international news and $5 million.