Ranked Choice Voting’s Biggest Sell Is Also Its Biggest Myth

Counting Ballots

If you listen to advocates of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), you’d think it was the electoral equivalent of a miracle cure. Campaigns will be nicer. Voters will be happier. Turnout will soar. Polarization will fade. Children will laugh. Puppies will frolic.

Reality, as always, is less impressive.

The sales pitch for RCV has become increasingly detached from the evidence. Supporters often dismiss criticism as “Republican talking points,” but that’s a strange argument when the traditional election system is still used by virtually every municipality in America. If 99.98% of local governments continue to use plurality voting, then skepticism of RCV isn’t some fringe partisan position. It’s simply the view held by the overwhelming majority of election administrators and elected officials across the country.  Yet RCV advocates continue to promise a political utopia that never seems to arrive.

Take the claim that RCV produces more positive campaigns. This is perhaps the most repeated talking point in the RCV playbook. Candidates, we’re told, will avoid attacking opponents because they want to earn second- and third-choice votes.

That’s a nice theory.  Then reality intervenes.

The 2025 New York City mayoral primary was conducted under Ranked Choice Voting and featured a barrage of attack ads, accusations, negative mailers, and relentless political combat. Candidates and independent expenditure committees hammered opponents with television ads and direct mail campaigns. The presence of RCV didn’t suddenly transform ambitious politicians into kindergarten teachers sharing juice boxes. Politics remained politics.  There was nothing nice about the campaign or the debates.  And “independent” candidate Andrew Cuomo attracted many of the votes he got in the primary.  Mayor Mamdani’s 50.78% victory produced a majority — barely.

Nor was New York an isolated example.

Supporters often point to Alaska as a success story for RCV. Yet the 2022 Alaska congressional race became a showcase for bitter infighting between Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. The two candidates spent months savagely attacking each other while Democrat Mary Peltola largely stayed above the fray. Even analyses favorable to RCV acknowledged that the Palin-Begich feud played a major role in the outcome.

In other words, one of the most famous RCV elections in America did not produce a kumbaya campaign. It produced exactly what competitive elections usually produce: candidates attacking one another.  Because human nature doesn’t change simply because the ballot gets more complicated.

Then there’s the claim that RCV creates better representation. Again, that depends on what you mean by “better.”

RCV can produce a candidate who ultimately receives more than 50 percent after multiple rounds of vote redistribution. That’s true. But a majority after several rounds of elimination is not necessarily the same thing as broader representation.  If RCV was in place in Huntington Beach now, Gracey Van Der Mark would be headed to the Assembly over primary winner Chris Kluwe because Van Derk Mark would be the obvious choice of votes that went to Republican Matt Harper.  Van Der mark is the “democratic” choice but would she provide “better” representation for HB over Kluwe?

The Alaska special election remains a fascinating example. Researchers examining the election data have argued that Nick Begich may have been the candidate who would have defeated either Palin or Peltola in a head-to-head contest, yet he was eliminated before the final round. Political scientists refer to this as a “Condorcet failure.” In plain English: the candidate who may have been most broadly acceptable to voters didn’t win.

That doesn’t mean the election was illegitimate. It means RCV, like every voting system ever invented, has tradeoffs.  Yet advocates frequently market RCV as though it magically solves representation problems. It doesn’t.  No voting method can perfectly capture the preferences of millions of people. RCV simply exchanges one set of imperfections for another.

Then we arrive at perhaps the most exaggerated claim of all: higher voter turnout.

Whenever turnout rises in an RCV election, supporters are quick to credit the voting system. But correlation is not causation.

Turnout is driven by candidate quality, media attention, issue salience, demographic changes, campaign spending, voter enthusiasm, and national political conditions. The idea that voters suddenly rush to the polls because they’re allowed to rank five candidates instead of choosing one is, at best, difficult to prove.  Consider New York City’s mayoral primary. Turnout surged because it was a high-profile, intensely competitive race involving major political personalities and competing visions for the city’s future. The election generated massive media coverage and public interest. Those factors are far more obvious explanations than the mechanics of ballot counting.

The same pattern appears repeatedly across the country. High-interest elections produce higher turnout. Low-interest elections produce lower turnout. The voting method is often far less important than the issues and candidates on the ballot.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the RCV movement is that its advocates oversell it.  If supporters simply argued that RCV is an alternative method for selecting winners, there would be room for a reasonable debate. Instead, they frequently portray it as a cure for negativity, polarization, voter disengagement, and poor representation.

But elections conducted under RCV still feature attack ads. They still generate controversy. They still produce winners and losers who question the outcome. They still leave many voters unhappy.  Imagine that.  Politics remains political.

Ranked Choice Voting may produce a majority winner after multiple counting rounds. Some voters may prefer that approach. Others may not. That’s a legitimate debate.  What is not legitimate is pretending that anyone who raises questions about RCV is parroting Republican partisan talking points. The vast majority of American elections continue to operate under traditional voting systems. Skepticism toward a relatively new electoral experiment is not radical.  It’s normal.

And after years of lofty promises, the evidence increasingly suggests that RCV’s greatest achievement may be convincing people that changing the way ballots are counted can somehow change human behavior.  So far, the voters—and the candidates—haven’t gotten the memo.