Letter: Ranked choice voting is hardly radical

May 4, 2024 | Richmond Times-Dispatch

By Joan Porte, Bo Harmon, Liz White, Mike Cantwell

In his April 23 op-ed, "Thankfully, Virginia rejects measures that would unleash chaos upon voters," Trent England lauded the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 428, a ranked choice voting (RCV) bill he called a “radical” proposal.

This is the latest in nearly a dozen opinion pieces by Mr. England over the last year — including in other Virginia publications. They all follow the same formula: scare voters about ballots with “more decisions to make and bubbles to mark.”

Nevermind the fact that RCV is the fastest-growing nonpartisan election reform in America, and that data indicates majorities of voters in Alaska, New York, Maine, Minnesota and Utah prefer it to single-choice elections. More importantly, it’s been used for several years in Virginia with great success, including to nominate Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021. It was also recently made permanent for County Board primaries in Arlington.

Let's have an honest conversation, both about the merits of RCV and about the author’s involvement in the campaign to muddy the waters around it. Mr. England represents a dark-money political group based in Oklahoma, so it’s understandable how he got facts wrong about Virginia’s RCV legislation (he inaccurately called it an “expansion,” for example).

As representatives of several grassroots organizations who have been working with advocates and lawmakers across Virginia, we’re happy to correct the record.

First, Senate Bill 428 did not do anything to expand RCV, nor did it mandate any locality or party to use it. The bill simply made minor technical adjustments to an earlier bipartisan bill (House Bill 1103) to support election administrators already running RCV elections in municipalities that have chosen to do so. Furthermore, these changes were specifically requested by the governor’s Department of Elections.

While the fact remains that Virginia voters across the political spectrum have already used RCV smoothly, the writer chose to sow chaos.

Since when was “majority rule” a controversial idea?

Joan Porte, League of Women Voters of Virginia.

Bo Harmon, RepresentUs.

Liz White, UpVote Virginia.

Mike Cantwell, Veterans for All Voters.