After June Primary, Virginia County Halts Use of Ranked Choice Voting

A man walks to use a voting booth at one of the Virginia primary election polling stations at Colin Powell Elementary School in Centreville, Va., on March 1, 2016. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

After a trial run during the June primary for the Arlington County Board in Arlington, Virginia, the board decided not to use ranked choice voting (RCV) for local races in the upcoming November election.

Board members made the decision to halt the RCV pilot program after hearing mostly from proponents of RCV at a July 15 board meeting, because the members want more outreach and education provided to voters to help them understand how RCV works.

“I know we’ve heard some people who have asked that we commit to it now and for every election thereafter,” remarked outgoing Chair Christian Dorsey. “I don’t think that’s the proper thing to do at this point while we’re still gathering data, information, and socializing this with the community.”

Mr. Dorsey amplified the concerns of other board members and a few constituents who feel the public does not fully understand how RCV works, especially the tabulation process.

“I know I don’t need to understand my solar if I had solar panels, which I don’t—if I had an EV vehicle, which I don’t,” said Vice Chair Libby Garvey. “But I do want to know how my vote counts. That is really different. And, for that reason, I am very uncomfortable doing this for the two seats up in the fall.”

RCV is an election method that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Under Virginia law, candidates in an RCV election must secure 34 percent of votes cast when there are two open seats to win, as in the case of the Arlington primary.

Residents Give Feedback

The board conducted a survey after the June primary in which they received 2,450 responses. Fifty-seven percent of respondents indicated “positive” or “exceptional” experiences using RCV, while 29 percent and 13 percent indicated “negative” and “fair” experiences, respectively.

Forty-seven percent of respondents also believed that RCV should be implemented in every election, while 7 percent stated it should only be implemented in primaries. Thirty-two percent believed that RCV should not be implemented at all, and 12 percent reported that they did not know enough to take a position.

Ranked Choice Voting Scores for 2021 Virginia GOP Primary. Courtesy of FairVote

County board spokesman David Byetta said voters learned about RCV from a variety of sources, but the vast majority—74 percent—heard about it from political organizations. Other sources were friends, the county website, and the news.

Frank Lusby, head of the Arlington County Republican Committee’s election integrity team, said the RCV tabulation process requires a multistep encrypted software to tabulate votes.

“These additional steps add to an already complex election operation and create greater opportunity for errors that are harder to detect. Given this and the mathematical complexity of RCV, in a close election, voters might not trust that the election was performed correctly, even if it was,“ Mr. Lusby said. ”This can affect voter confidence in our system of government.”

Liz White is the executive director of Up Virginia, an RCV advocacy group. She said most of the concerns her organization heard were about the tabulation process.

“I will admit that it gets a little complex when you’re talking about selecting more than one winner at a time,” said Ms. White. “We’re not used to talking about fractions when it comes to tallying votes, and that’s an adjustment.”

Voter Outreach

Arlington’s election officials have been trying to educate voters about the RCV process, from how to rank candidates to how the tabulation is conducted.

The Arlington Electoral Board conducted voter outreach and education on RCV beginning in the fall of 2021, when it first conducted a Q&A and “mock election” and held a joint work session with the county board to discuss this voting method.

At its public meetings, the electoral board reviewed analyses of RCV and its application in Arlington.

In October 2021, the county board held a work session with the electoral board and the registrar on RCV. Beginning in the fall of 2022, the county board invited public input on the pilot use of RCV in the 2023 primary. The board received more than 780 survey responses, and 75 percent of respondents favored implementing the RCV pilot program.

After the December 2022 decision by the county board to use RCV in the June primary, the county’s election office spent the next six months completing 20 RCV outreach events in the county, providing 16 election office training classes on the tabulation process, and providing training for candidates and their campaigns.

Prior to the primary, voters were asked about their familiarity with RCV, and 56 percent stated they heard about it and understood it, 22 percent stated they were familiar, 19 percent said they heard about it but did not understand it, and 4 percent said they had never heard about RCV.

With Mr. Dorsey retiring and new members coming onto the board, broadly implementing RCV will have to be decided for the next election cycle, which Ms. White said would go much more smoothly than the first time, as has happened in other places that chose to use RCV for elections.

“It’s intended to produce proportional and representative results, which is exactly what it did in this primary, and it’s only going to get easier from here,” Ms. White said.