The Left Reveals Why Virginia Conservatives Should Oppose Ranked-Choice Voting
RCV supporters have yet to make the case that switching to their voting system would help Republicans get elected. If anything, they’re making the case it will help the Left.
A recent op-ed by UpVote Virginia’s Program Director Tamara Allen shows the push to spread ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Virginia is simply a partisan effort to empower the Left.
UpVote Virginia pretends to be a non-partisan “democracy reform” organization despite its liberal background. The group came out of OneVirginia2021, a liberal group seeking to take redistricting away from the legislature when Republicans had the majority. Left-wing advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, and the Brennan Center for Justice backed the group, and it succeeded in taking redistricting away from the legislature. In 2023, it rebranded as UpVote Virginia with RCV its new cause célèbre.
Why All Voters Should Oppose RCV
All voters should oppose RCV because it’s a confusing, expensive, billionaire-backed scheme that drives down voter turnout and advantages establishment-backed candidates.
Under RCV rules, voters rank candidates. Poll workers then eliminate last place finishers and count their ranked preferences until a candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote.
This system poses practical problems for voters, candidates, and poll workers.
- RCV confuses many voters, and if they don’t rank, they become disenfranchised if the count goes to more than one round.
- RCV disadvantages candidates who are little-known or hold strong viewpoints. There isn’t time in an election cycle for dedicated activists to build positive name recognition for their candidate to become voters’ second or third choice.
- RCV is expensive because it requires the state to spend more tax dollars educating voters on how to use it; purchasing new voting technology; and spending more on educating poll workers, who also must be paid for longer hours.
Allen contends RCV is not complicated because “we rank choices every day in our lives” and compares “ranking candidates on a ballot” with watching Netflix and eating lunch.
But what kind of nerd ranks all the available Netflix show before picking something to watch?
And it would take a special kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder for someone to rank all the options on a menu before deciding what to eat.
Why Conservatives Should Oppose RCV
Allen uses her supposedly non-partisan platform to argue why leftists should support RCV—which should give conservatives even more reason to oppose it.
She compares RCV with the alleged virtue of letting ex-felons vote and claims it will make democracy “more inclusive.” This builds on the Democrat Party’s myth that minorities are excluded from the body politic.
But she’s not referring specifically to voting obstacles. Rather, she appeals to minority voters in Virginia that RCV will give their “communities” more collective representation by allowing voters to elect leaders who “genuinely represent their communities” and understand woke concepts like “food deserts” and “environmental justice.”
The Left persistently tries to turn America into a blob of tribes or atomized “communities,” and Allen is making the case that RCV is simply a way to rig election outcomes to match that vision of the country.
But the American republic wasn’t founded by communities. It was founded by states, which consist of individual citizens.
Even if the Left’s tribal vision of America were preferable, RCV would only empower individual minority candidates if they form part of the entrenched political establishment.
Most voters don’t have a second-choice preference. When felt compelled to pick one, they’re more likely to select a name they recognize—like the name of an incumbent or someone whose name they’ve heard in 500 ads.
This would only compound the corrupt model of the Democrat Party: Wherein representative elites divvy up society’s spoils among their coalition of disparate minority groups.
As Restoration News previously covered, many of the mega donors spreading RCV nationwide do so specifically to keep conservatives out of office. If Virginia adopted RCV, conservatives would succeed in electing one of their own only in the darkest of red counties where they’re already the political establishment.
Allen’s arguments—comparing RCV with letting felons vote and touting RCV as a pathway to liberal policies—only reinforce the leftist intent behind pro-RCV organizations like UpVote Virginia.
(READ MORE: Instilling Confidence in American Voters Is Reason Enough to Pass Voter Integrity Laws)
