We the People of Johnson Co MO - Wednesday, September 7, 2022 🎲 What is this Ranked Choice Voting Thing Being Considered for Missouri?
The Missouri Top-Four Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative is not on the ballot in Missouri as an initiated constitutional amendment on November 8, 2022.
After reading a lot about Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) I’m glad it isn’t. Let me explain why, and hopefully try to help you understand RCV, although I can tell you it’s darn convoluted. My eyes bugged out and I got brain fatigue thinking it through. The underlined words in the headline above are links you can click on to see full articles. In the rest of the article links are in pink.
When I’m researching something, from drug studies to political initiatives, the first place I check is funding. Who’s pouring money into this? When you look at financial support for RCV it’s not Conservatives. It’s not even middle of the road Liberals. It’s far-left socialist/communist Liberals.
A great deal of Funding for the RCV push comes from Fairvote.com which says it is a non-partisan organization. However, its two largest doners have been the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John and Laura Arnold Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation, with assets of approximately $14 billion, is one of the wealthiest grant makers in the United States. Hewlett awards grants only to causes that represent liberal and progressive ideologies. John Arnold is less well-known. He entered the investment industry out of college by working for Enron, the infamous natural gas conglomerate that collapsed in 2001 following revelations of its vast accounting fraud. He reportedly earned the company $750 million the year Enron collapsed. Hm.
Massachusetts recently voted against the use of RCV in the Yes on Question 2 Initiative. More than half of the $5.6 million in donations for the campaign came from John Arnold (right, the Enron guy). John Soros, son of George Soros donated $100,000, and Kathryn Murdoch, daughter-in-law to Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, kicked in $500,000 to Yes on 2. Murdoch, an activist who split politically with her father-in-law, is listed as the president of Quadrivium, an organization that supports solutions for “critical societal problems.”
So, now you can follow the money.
What IS RCV?
The most accurate answer is, a really convoluted way to vote. When someone comes up with something new, the first rational question is, “How is this better than what we’ve used before?” and “Why would I want to change?” Answers to both of these questions come up with negative answers when I look at it.
In Missouri the Initiative is called Missouri Top-4 Ranked-Choice. Here’s how RCV in Missouri has been proposed. The ballot initiative would have changed the electoral system for electing state executive, state legislative, and congressional officials in Missouri beginning on August 1, 2024.[1] The ballot initiative would have replaced partisan primaries with open top-four primaries. This means primaries would not have been done separately for Republicans and Democrats. All candidates would have been put on one primary ballot, and the top 4 candidates would proceed to the Miss America Finalists, I mean the General Election. Yes, you calculated correctly, the top 4 could indeed be candidates from only one party.
The ballot initiative would have established ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, for general elections, in which voters can rank the four candidates that succeeded from the primaries.[1] As mentioned above, it’s possible none of the candidates are from your chosen party. Or it could be that two candidates are listed for your party, but only one candidate from the opposing party. What happens then? Your party is split, and the vote will probably go to the opposing party.
There is a cost for switching to RCV as well. State and local governmental entities estimate costs of $2.7 million to at least $5.2 million in one-time costs, and ongoing costs of at least $27,000 annually, $170,000 each primary election, $152,000 each general election, and $117,000 for all other elections. State and local governmental entities estimate no savings.[3] This is not cost-effective. Missouri would be paying a GREAT DEAL MORE for a more difficult to understand system of voting that allows a great deal of manipulation in the tabulation process. So.
Proponents of RCV contend this allows for more “nuanced” voting. WHAAAAAAT!?!?! I definitely do not want nuanced voting. I want clear, straight-forward, accurate voting and tabulation.
They also tout that RCV is a Majority system, whereas our current voting system is Plurality. That’s only true if there are more than two candidates. However, their hope is to convince voters that our current system doesn’t actually represent “democracy” because the winner may not have a “majority” of the votes. RCV is plurality to the max, until the votes are adequately manipulated. I don’t want my votes manipulated.
How does the math work in RCV? This question is where it gets hard to explain. Which is not a good thing when you’re voting. Each voter will vote for her 4 top-ranked candidates. Here’s how it would look:
Number of ballots that look exactly like this - 6 4 2 2 1 2 1
First Choice - A B C C C D D
Second Choice - C D A D B B -
Third Choice - D C B - - A -
Fourth Choice - - - D - - C -
So, who won? Who the heck knows??!?!?
Check the 1st choice votes: A gets 6, B gets 4, C gets 2+2+1=5, and D gets 2+1=3. Notice that A has the most, but 6/18 is only 1/3, not a majority. Well, duh! If you have four candidates no one will get a majority. My thought is, so what? But nevertheless, without a majority the RCV method kicks in and eliminates the last place candidate, which is D in this example.
So, the ballots are rewritten with candidate D gone. Two of the voters who ranked D first now have their voting power transferred down to their backup choice of candidate B. But one voter only ranked D on their ballot. So, is their voting power “gone”? Yes. That voter only had their voice counted in the first round. Now she’s OUT.
And so it goes until only one candidate is left. If you want to follow the whole process, go to How does the math work in RCV? You might want to take a sandwich and a stiff drink with you.
Straight forward? NO. Easy to understand? NO. Requires a GREAT DEAL OF MANIPULATION OF VOTES? YES! What could possibly go wrong with this method????
More aptly put, what could go right?
Socialist Liberals are indeed trying to make voting very difficult to understand. It gives them a greater ability to manipulate votes. Ranked Choice Voting is NOT a good method for voting.