House speaker elections can be better with ranked choice voting
The ongoing chaos of the House speaker election points to the need for reform: ranked choice voting (RCV) could transform House leadership elections.
As Representatives Jamie Raskin and Don Beyer outlined in their recent MSNBC op-ed, RCV “incentivizes leaders to govern responsibly and makes our elections more democratic.” RCV can identify the winner with the widest and deepest support on one ballot; the endless and unproductive speaker elections that have become the norm today do not have to continue.
FairVote’s Rachel Hutchinson wrote about the case for RCV in speaker’s elections in a recent report, “The ‘Motion to Vacate’ and Electoral Incentives.” Senior Fellow David Daley also made the case in an op-ed for The Guardian.
Ranked choice voting would allow representatives to elect leaders that best represent the interests of the majority. Currently, House leadership elections reward a small minority of members for jeopardizing the interests of the House and citizenry to advance their personal agendas.
With RCV, representatives could rank speaker candidates on a single ballot in order of preference. Representatives could easily support candidates that would best serve the country, regardless of party. And of course, RCV could be used for both the speaker floor vote and within conference elections, with similar benefits.
RCV would ensure leaders govern more responsibly. Leaders would be beholden to the mainstream majority that elected them, rather than concessions to the loudest few with chaotic consequences – like the one-member “motion to vacate” that facilitated Kevin McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month. RCV has long been part of Robert’s Rules of Order, and has been embraced in public and private elections across the country.
This is not the first time this year that the speaker’s race – and the incentives within it – has become a political football. In January, it took 15 ballots for the House to elect a speaker – only for that speaker to be ousted 10 months later.
Now the House is without a permanent speaker at a time of international crisis, and Congress must pass the budget next month to avert a government shutdown. Ranked choice voting in the speaker’s contest can be the first step towards serious institutional reform.
