OPINION: Why RCV is BAD

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” — Thomas Sowell 

Ranked Choice Voting will be on the ballot in November as Proposition 1, but what is RCV and what will it do to Idaho and you? 

Prop 1 eliminates our current political party primaries and replaces them with jungle primaries where dozens of candidates compete to win the four top slots. Those four top vote earners go on to the RCV general election. For the RCV general election you are expected to rank the four candidates in order of your preference. They say it is simple. It’s not. 

In our current system, the political parties participate in a Primary Election where the members of each of the parties, Democrat, Republican, Constitution and Libertarian, select their candidate to run in the General Election.  

But what about Independent voters; people who do not want to affiliate with any party? Isn’t it unfair that they can’t participate in the party primaries? No, not at all. If you are an independent candidate you go directly to the general election, no primary needed. Independent voters don’t participate in the party primaries because they don’t want to and they don’t have to. They can vote for the independent or ANY candidate in the general election. 

Critics say that it is unfair to ask taxpayers to pay for the party primary elections. Is it unfair that your tax dollars go to pay for public schools even if you don’t have kids or the fire department even though you never had a fire? Party primaries are part of the overall election process where all voters eventually benefit. Having them run by the state ensures the people select the candidates rather than party bosses, like we just witnessed with the Harris candidacy.  

Proponents of Prop 1 claim RCV is a good system that will produce “better” results. OK, better how? What will be better? 

Will voting be better? In our current system you go to the polls twice; once to select between two or more candidates to be your party’s nominee in the general election and then again in the general election to select the winner. 

With RCV, you would also go to the polls twice: once to select from dozens of candidates from every party and then again to rank the top four candidates in order of preference. To make a good decision, you would need to spend a lot more time evaluating many candidates. Prop 1 means more work for you the voter. 

Will the results reporting be better? In our current system, the ballots are tallied at the county level and the results sent to Boise. Results are usually known a few hours after the polls close. Audits can easily be conducted at the county or precinct level.  

With RCV, the ballots must be transmitted to a central tabulation system that will use a computer algorithm to determine the winner. These systems are expensive ($40 million) products of companies like Dominion Voting Systems. Results may not be known for days or even weeks and it is impossible to audit the results at the county or precinct level. 

Prop 1 means waiting longer to get results and lower voter confidence. Perhaps this is why voter turnout with complex and confusing RCV is consistently lower than with simpler traditional voting. 

Prop 1 would give us a system that is harder to use, more complex, more expensive, more confusing and more susceptible to fraud. In what way is it better? 

With Ranked Choice Voting there are four candidates from the jungle primary you need to rank best to worst. Because four candidates are splitting the vote, it is unlikely that any one candidate will get more than the 50% of the vote needed to win outright. This is by design so the winning strategy for a candidate is to not take any strong positions. The winning strategy isn’t to be the voter’s first choice; it is to be the second choice among the voters who’s first choice was the worst candidate. That way you get the votes when the worst candidate is eliminated.  

According to Game Theory analysis, while it may sound counter intuitive it is a statistical fact that RCV produces weak candidates who put being liked before principle. Once elected, these candidates are easily swayed by special interest groups and big money donors in the name of compromise.  

In a Republican majority precinct, the winning strategy is to be the second choice of the voters that support the worst candidate. This causes the winner to be to the left of the majority of the voters in that precinct.  

The same is true for Democrat precincts where RCV will cause the elected officials to appeal to the Republican voters. This explains why the progressive proponents of Proposition 1 are pushing RCV in red Idaho and not blue Washington or Oregon. If Prop 1 is so great, why aren’t they pushing it in those blue states?  

Proposition 1 will force Idaho to use an expensive, confusing and unreliable voting system run by machines made by companies like Dominion.  

Let’s keep it simple and keep using what has proven to work.  

Vote NO on Proposition 1. 

It’s just common sense.

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Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.