The Business Case for Ranked Choice Voting

Today is a good day for democracy — Ranked Choice Voting passed in New York City, with 73% of voters supporting the measure.
The number of Americans who can use ranked-choice voting has now more than doubled, thanks to the 74% of New York voters saying yes to Ballot Question 1. Progress isn’t exclusive to New York, as 5 cities used ranked-choice voting for the first time. There are now 20 U.S.cities — and the entire state of Maine — where voters have access to a ranked-choice voting system.
But with all the news today about the measure passing, some are still asking: why should we support ranked choice voting? There’s a lot of information out there about ranked-choice voting, as people desperately float ideas to improve our faulty electoral system. But it’s not just a buzzword, or a passing trend: it is one of the most tangible ways we can improve our democracy, right now.
There’s a plethora of reasons why: ranked-choice voting better reflects citizen preferences by allows them to rank candidates in order of preference, in one trip to the polls. It eliminates the problem we have in our elections where candidates frequently win with less than a majority of the vote. It diminishes the need for negative ads and campaigning, because candidates have to appeal to voters from the other party as well, giving them an incentive to portray themselves in a positive light. It is a well-researched topic with support from both sides of the aisle, and has been endorsed officially by the Editorial Board of the New York Times.
True this all may be, there is another compelling reason to support ranked choice voting: the economic argument. RCV has political benefits, but its economic ones may be what convinced business-savvy New Yorkers to support the measure. Inherently, ranked-choice voting increases competition between candidates, as voters will have the opportunity to rank every candidate. This creates an incentive for candidates to appeal to voters of both parties, in the hopes that voters rank them second, third, or tenth. This will be especially important in the upcoming elections, which may have between 10 and 20 candidates in 2021. Ranked choice voting is also called “instant runoff” voting, because the ballots are consistently run in mini-runoff elections automatically until one candidate has a majority of the vote. This eliminates the need for costly runoff elections — which can cost the taxpayer literally millions of dollars per election. The last runoff election in New York City in 2009 cost $15 million to administer. Runoff elections also garner notoriously low turnout, as voters struggle to make time to go to the polls for a second time. Rather than run low turnout, high cost runoff elections, voters can visit the polls only one time, cast their ballot, and let the system do its work.
Ranked-choice voting is not only more fair, but more efficient as well. In a time when not many government reforms check both of these boxes, RCV is a political unicorn. Because of this high impact opportunity, the effort in New York City was well-funded. Our Leadership Now Project, an organization of activated business leaders and policy professionals, was thrilled to support RankTheVoteNYC and Common Cause to promote and invest in the ballot initiative, citing its widespread benefits both economically and politically. Business leaders from across the country see the enormous potential ranked choice voting can have in New York and across the country — an opportunity to directly have a positive impact on our democratic system is rare, and organizations like ours jump on the chance to do so.
The election in New York provided another visible win for RCV, building on wins in Maine, San Francisco, and in the lead up to the 2020 RCV ballot initiative in Massachusetts. But even with this good news, New York City’s democracy is still far from robust. Only about 730,000 voters out of the 5.2 million registered (or 14%) came to the polls, and only ~1.1% voted early in NY’s first election with early voting. This continues to be a challenge.
While much work remains in our collective efforts to renew American democracy, including in New York, we are proud to have contributed to a win for democracy this Election Day. Today, we celebrate.
Helpful sites to learn more:
https://www.leadershipnowproject.org/
https://www.commoncause.org/new-york/our-work/voting-elections/rcv/
https://www.uniteamerica.org/rankthevote
https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used
