Stacey Abrams endorses ranked choice voting
Note: This post was last updated on August 21, 2024.
Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, recently praised ranked choice voting (RCV) in an interview with Pod Save America. Abrams joins dozens of leaders from across the political spectrum who have endorsed RCV.
In the interview, Abrams explained how RCV lets voters express their values and also meaningfully impact election outcomes:
Ranked choice voting basically says, ‘I like this guy a lot. He checks, like, six of my ten boxes. But this lady, she checks eight of them. And I’d rather put her first, but I’m not sure she can win.’ Well, in the current political system, you skip the woman because the guy seems more likely to win. So you put aside your values because you’re trying to game the system and figure out the lottery of winning. Ranked choice voting says ‘No, you can pick her. You can put her first. But you can put the other guy second.’
…If you’re right and the guy is going to get more votes, then instead he gets your vote second, so you haven’t wasted a vote… You got to pick who you wanted, and you got to pick your second best choice. And so, everybody wins. Except for the people who don’t.
This is the most economical and, I would say, efficient way to really understand and have our leaders reflect our needs.
Abrams described how RCV worked in practice in Alaska in 2022, with voters electing a cross-partisan slate of candidates to statewide offices – a conservative Republican governor, moderate Republican senator, and Democratic congresswoman:
Voters had the choice to figure out what they ranked highest in terms of need for each of these races. And as it turned out, because they were able to listen to and support candidates who reflected their values for what that job required, they got the mix at least that they could live with. But what was also really important is that, [Democrat Mary Peltola] was telling folks to vote for [Republican Lisa Murkowski], and Lisa was telling folks to vote for Mary… I do know that for ranked choice voting, it meant that more people got what they needed, and that’s what politics should actually be.
Stacey Abrams also discussed RCV on the first episode of her new podcast, Assembly Required. She was joined by Cynthia Richie Terrell, a FairVote co-founder and executive director of RepresentWomen. Abrams pointed to RCV’s momentum as proof that “we can make things better” with our elections.
In addition, on the Higher Learning podcast, Abrams described how RCV can give voters options and hope:
It encourages us to have more variety in what we discuss, more variety in who stands for office. And it encourages us to show up because we know that if our person doesn’t win, the next person we like might get it.
Stacey Abrams is just the latest political leader to endorse RCV. Others include Georgia Representative Nikema Williams, Utah Senator Mitt Romney, and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and Representative Mary Peltola.
RCV is the fastest-growing election reform in the United States, used by 50 cities, counties, and states for their public elections. Georgia is one of six Southern states where military and overseas voters use RCV to participate in runoffs. Check out Better Ballot GA for more information on ranked choice voting in the Peach State!
Image of Stacey Abrams by adapted from the original by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
