Op-Ed: Think Carefully About Supporting Ranked Choice Voting

There are two initiatives on the ballot which will change how elections are conducted in Montana. These initiatives change our constitution. They are promoting a relatively untested “ranked choice” system which has only been adopted by two other states.

Constitutional Initiative 125 replaces Montana’s open party primaries with a primary that puts all candidates on the same ballot. The top four vote getters then advance to the general election.

Constitutional Initiative 126 requires whoever wins the general election to have 50% + 1 of votes in order to win. This measure is silent on the mechanics of how that would work.

Promoters say this system will make it more difficult for “extremists” to win elections. They say the current primary system allows “extreme” candidates to advance to the general election by winning relatively few votes in the party primaries. Their pitch is that this change will open the process to “moderates.”

But “extreme” and “moderate” are meaningless political terms. The truth is the Republican Party in Montana has moved dramatically to the right. Traditional Republicans like Marc Racicot and Bob Brown are no longer welcome in the Republican fold. The so-called Freedom Caucus is now firmly in control of the party apparatus. It has left us with a hardened and uncompromising Republican Party. These political activists will not just go away because the election process changes.

Ranked choice advocates present themselves as “moderates” who want to counter “extremists” on the left and right. But the numbers tell the story. The Republican Party controls the Legislature with a supermajority. There is only one Democrat in statewide office. The proponents’ argument is based on false equivalence. That brings us back to changing our current primary system and replacing it with ranked-choice voting. Here are a few things to think about.

Only two states, Alaska and Maine, have implemented ranked-choice voting. Both are recent adopters. Though the idea has been around for a long time, there are few examples of how it works on a statewide basis. The advocates of ranked-choice voting seek to enshrine it in our constitution.

Here in Montana, local election offices have been targeted by conspiracy-based “election deniers” through the last few election cycles. They have been hounding local election officials, demanding things like hand counting all ballots, eliminating mail ballots, and creating barriers to people registering to vote. The majority of these attacks have been thwarted because the system used by election officials is well-established and time-tested. The confusing nature of rank-choice voting will provide a field day for the conspiracy crowd and result in pushing an untested method into the hands of the courts and promoting more legislative tinkering with our elections.

Finally, these proposals punt important implementation issues to the Montana Legislature. The Republican Party and legislative leaders are clearly opposed to ranked-choice voting. Moreover, the Republican legislature has a well-established pattern of doing whatever they damn well please without regard for the Montana Constitution. Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen worked hard to keep these measures off the ballot and failed because of the courts. The idea that these players will make a good-faith effort to implement these initiatives if they pass is naive. They are far more likely to construct a system that is built to fail, throwing our already challenged election system into uncertainty and chaos.

Most of us are sick and tired of our elections. Big campaigns spend obscene amounts of money and have created a class of media pundits who treat important issues like sporting events. Officials begin raising money the day after they are elected, making campaigning a full-time job that takes precedence over doing the people’s work. Ranked choice voting does nothing about any of that. It’s a lot more like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Ken Toole has held numerous positions in the Montana Democratic Party. He served in the Montana Senate and on the Public Service Commission. He is semi-retired and lives on a small farm/ranch east of Cascade.