Some Republicans in Virginia are sabotaging conservative efforts to ban or limit ranked-choice (RCV) voting, claiming that it is a tool for Republicans to win elections. Some RCV supporters believe that Republicans’ success in Virginia in 2021 is due to the confusing voting system. They also worry that if voters choose the party nominees through traditional primaries only fringe candidates will be elected.

Chris Saxman, a former Republican delegate, recently argued that “RCV is a good tool for conservatives if they use it” adding “it reduces negative campaigning and eliminates spoiler effect, saves taxpayers money by avoiding runsoffs and helps nominating candidates who win the general election.”

War of Words among Republican Factions

Saxman responded to Dwayne Yancey’s Cardinal News Op-Ed in which he argued that RCV supporters should give examples of how the voting system could help Republicans. Yancey said it was “not helpful” for the ranked-choice-voting cause to show only where it benefits Democrats. It would need Republican buy-in in order to pass statewide.

Yancey cited a Newport News mayor’s op-ed in which he argued that RCV was needed because many cities, including his own, only elected mayors based on a plurality. Yancey responded by saying that some of these plurality-elected mayors are Republicans from purple or Democrat cities like Virginia Beach and Winchester. He pointed out that RCV could hurt Republicans in the Roanoke mayor’s race. In the Roanoke mayoral race, Kamala won 61 percent, but the Republican candidate was only 59 votes away from winning. Roanoke’s adoption of RCV would prevent a Republican from ever becoming mayor.

What is the advantage, Yancey wonders, of Republicans changing a system where they are already gaining control in purple counties and towns and hope to occasionally win upsets in blue-held strongholds?

Saxmon does not give any examples where RCV helped Virginia Republicans, or where might have helped Virginia Republicans. He reiterates Virginia Republican Chair Rich Anderson’s belief that RCV will help the party to nominate winners for general elections in 2021. He also cites the satisfaction of Republican primary voters in the 10th Congressional District with the use of RCV in nominating candidates. This is a poor example considering that every Republican candidate in the 10th since 2016 has been blown out.

Saxmon, in an odd move, cites Yancey as a source for the need to implement RCV. In this race, a conservative write-in challenged the establishment Republican incumbent and kept below 50% of the votes. Yancey points out that the Lynchburg Republican Civil War is so bitter that if Lynchburg used RCV, write-in voters would have voted Democrat for their second choice, denying them the city council seat. Saxmon’s reasoning for adopting RCV is unclear, especially since a Republican won the seat without it.

The traditional first-past the-post primary system has been nominating general election candidates for more than a century. However, the cost of educating voters about RCV will outweigh any savings made by avoiding run-ffs. Furthermore, negative campaigning and spoiler effect are facts of democracy, a sometimes messy and unpopular form of government.

RCV Mission Creep In Virginia

Virginia passed Legislation in 2020 that allows ranked-choice voting at the municipal and county level, if approved by a majority of the city council or board of supervisors. The law expires 2031. Localities will have less time to implement the legislation unless it is renewed by the General Assembly, which should be unlikely if Republicans continue to control the Governor’s Office.

Charlottesville doesn’t adopt the RCV until 2025, despite the fact that counties and cities have the option of adopting it. Only Arlington County and Charlottesville had adopted by the time of the 2024 elections.

WTOP News reported that in Arlington County, a RCV advocate said confusion over the voting method was the main problem. Multiple voters also told the local media outlet that they only voted their preferred candidates or relied on election volunteers to describe how the new system worked.

Sally Hudson, a former Democratic delegate who helped pass the bill for 2020, claimed that Charlottesville had a long history of using the RCV. Twenty years ago, University of Virginia student council elections began using the system.

Charlottesville’s local schoolteacher has argued in favor of adopting the app because her 11- and 12-year old students use it to make decisions.

Local communities will not find it easy to adopt RCV. A handful of Oregon local registrars were so afraid of the difficulty it would bring to their job that they formed a super-PAC in opposition. They were outspent by 10,000-1 but still managed to defeat it in double digits. Maine was the first state in the country to adopt RCV on a statewide basis. Proponents were compelled to create a 19-page manual to explain how to use RCV.

Lauren Eddy is the general registrar of Albemarle County and director for elections. she said that if the county adopted RCV, costs could reach $70,000.

Clara Belle Wheeler is the vice chair of Albemarle County’s electoral board. She is also a senior fellow with the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. She argued against the adoption, noting that the elderly and those who are less educated and well-informed could be disenfranchised, as they might like one candidate but may not know enough about other candidates to rank them. While some people found her remarks insensitive, the research of Princeton Professor Nolan McCarty, and the results from the recent RCV City Council election in Portland Oregon support her claim.

The RCV as a Gatekeeper’s tool

Former Virginia Gov. George Allen (R) praised the Virginia GOP’s use of RCV in its 2021 nominating convention, arguing that it helped the party sweep every statewide office in general elections.

In an interview given to the R Street Institute, a “sometimes libertarian”, think tank that the Left uses for its token right of center ally, Saxmon praised RCV as it “discouraged candidates from engaging negative campaigning in opposition of their opponents because of the fear of falling down in the voters’ rankings due to going negative.” A system that limits free speech should make us question whose interests are served. The democratic process is harmed if underdog candidates are afraid to criticize corrupt, hypocritical or establishment-backed incumbents for fear of losing the second choice votes of their locked-in supporters.

Allen and Saxmon’s example 2021 of why RCV is good for Republicans, however, is shortsighted in a few ways. Virginia Republicans, like MAGA Republicans who claim that no alternative candidate could have defeated Hilary Clinton in 2016, have no idea if alternate nominees in 2021 would have won all or any of those statewide elections. General elections can be unpredictable. Just as some voters might have deemed Hillary Clinton dangerous enough to elect Ted Cruz, others may have decided that the inclusion of parents in public education or allowing boys to use girls’ restroom stalls would have been enough for moderate Virginia voters to vote Republican regardless of who was leading the ticket.

In the case of 2021, this type of speculation is not necessary. Gov. Glenn Youngkin was the winner of in the first round RCV primary voting counting. He maintained this lead until his opponents were eliminated, including Attorney General Jason Miyares and Lt. Governor. Winsome Sears. The argument that Republican RCV supporters use–that RCV is needed to prevent the party’s base nominating unelectable candidates-, doesn’t work. Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination without RCV in 2012 by appealing to enough Right-leaning voters.

The 2021 Virginia GOP nominating process is not a good example of how a RCV general elections would be. The RCV system is great if it can produce candidates who are able to compete with Democrats, but its supporters have not proven this correlation. If Virginia adopted RCV like Alaska, its primaries would be eliminated.

In a purple-colored state like Virginia, a four-way RCV election would feature a conservative candidate, a moderate Republican candidate, a center left Democrat candidate, and a far Left Democrat candidate. In every election, the second-choice vote from the far-Left Democrat and moderate Republican would easily propel the center-left Democrat to victory. In a three-way RCV, the same would apply. A conservative candidate would never get enough votes for second choice to win. Considering Virginia’s Republican voters skew less college educated than the state’s Democratic voters, the confusion of RCV would disenfranchise more of them on the second RCV count, making it more difficult for even an establishment-approved candidate like Youngkin to win an RCV general election.

The Liberal Establishment is Honest in its Support for RCV.

Yancey’s challenge to RCV supporters to provide evidence that the system will help Republicans win election still stands. So does the reason he was compelled to make it. Because they think conservative ideas are not popular with the majority, liberals in the establishment tend to avoid appealing to the Republican base to promote their “reform” ideas for elections. When the Right wins they tend to assume that there is a problem with campaign finance laws or election laws. The mainstream Democrats who support RCV have no qualms about using it as a tool to prevent the Right from gaining power.

Hudson, a UVA professor of public policy and economics, told the Daily Progress that she believes RCV is a way to fix many of the problems in American democracy. “Especially in a town like Charlottesville, which has seen how far political extremism can go.” She said that if the Republican Party had used RCV, Trump may not have won the nomination. Hudson, like the liberal mega-donors from out of state who are funding RCV efforts across the country, see forcing technocratic, moderate choices on voters as a duty to protect the society against the extreme political views that the majority gravitates towards.

After Allen’s speech at UpVote, U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, (D-VA), characterized RCV as “extremely partisan” and , praising , it as a means to mitigate the growth of “extreme political polarization,” and mistrust in institutions, by strengthening democracy, after “a former President and his allies tried to overturn a fair and free election.”

Beyer and Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Deep State advocate (D-MD), cosponsored this year’s Ranked Choice Voting Act. The bill, if passed, would require all Congressional primary and general elections to use RCV.

Conservatives in Virginia should oppose RCV for the simple fact that it will prevent their side from winning.

Saxmon and Allen are Republican establishment figures who appear to view RCV as an instrument to help moderates choose candidates they find acceptable. They either don’t see the need for a course correction to the Washington, D.C.-based consensus that extends to Virginia or they are unwilling to do the hard work necessary to convince middle-class voters. The establishment and moderate Republicans do not need the elites to manipulate the voting system in their favor. It’s not necessary to rig the voting process in their favor. They can win over conservative voters who are skeptical in primaries, like Romney did.