JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Two weeks before Election Day, activists from across the country gathered for an online rally heralding the historic number of state ballot initiatives seeking to change the way people vote. Hopes were high that voters would ditch traditional partisan primaries and embrace ballots with more candidate choices.
Instead, the election-reform movement lost almost everywhere it appeared on a statewide ballot.
“It turns out, in retrospect, we weren’t yet ready for prime time,” said John Opdycke, president of the advocacy group Open Primaries, which organized the rally.
In Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota, voters rejected either ranked choice voting, open primaries or a combination of both.
The open primary proposals sought to place candidates of all parties on the same ballot, with a certain number of top finishers advancing to the general election. Under ranked choice voting, people can vote for multiple candidates in order of preference. If no one receives a majority of first-place votes, then candidates who receive the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes redistributed to people’s next choices.
Election-reform advocates raised about $110 million for the statewide ballot measures, vastly outpacing their opponents, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance figures that could grow even larger as post-election reports are filed. Still, their promotional push wasn’t enough to persuade most voters.
“While Americans are frustrated with politics, I think most Americans are just fine with the traditional way of voting,” said Trent England, executive director of Save Our States, which opposes ranked choice voting.
Advocates for alternative election methods had thought momentum was on their side after Alaska voters narrowly approved a combination of open primaries and ranked choice voting in 2020. Then voters in Nevada — where initiatives proposing constitutional amendments require approval in two consecutive elections — gave first-round approval to a similar measure in 2022. But Nevada voters reversed course this year.
In Alaska, an attempt this year to repeal open primaries and ranked choice voting appears to have fallen just short, garnering 49.9 percent support in results released Wednesday. Final results are expected to be certified Saturday.
In addition to Alaska, versions of ranked choice voting already exist in Maine’s federal elections and in about 50 counties or cities. Voters in Washington, D.C., and the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., both approved ranked choice voting this month. And voters in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minn., reaffirmed their use of it.
Data suggests that ranked choice voting rarely results in different outcomes than traditional elections won by candidates receiving a plurality, but not majority, of support. The AP analyzed nearly 150 races this fall in 16 jurisdictions where ranked choice voting is authorized, ranging from the Board of Assessors elections in Arden, Del., to the presidential elections in Alaska and Maine. The ranking system was needed in just 30 percent of those cases; the rest were won by candidates receiving a majority of the initial votes.
