Successful ranked choice voting rollout in Arlington, VA
Yesterday, Arlington County, Virginia held its first ranked choice voting (RCV) election in a Democratic primary for two seats on the Arlington County Board. This was especially notable as the first government-run RCV election in Virginia history. Virginia Republicans have used RCV to nominate candidates for statewide office and some congressional candidates, but those were party-run elections.
Everywhere RCV is used, voters like and understand it. Arlington’s primary followed this trend, with local news outlets reporting that most voters found the process easy:
It was super easy. I looked over it before I got here, went in and it’s 1, 2, 3.
– Lyon Park voter Brad Prindle on WUSA9
It was pretty easy. I think it gives the impression of more of an equal playing field and it encourages people to read up more on the candidates.
– Westover voter Andrea Hansen in the Virginia Mercury
[Ranked choice voting is] a great idea…. If your first candidate isn’t chosen, your voice is still heard.
– Westover voter Eileen Kropf in the Virginia Mercury
On the voter education front, the polls were filled with sample ballots, instructional materials, and poll workers ready to answer questions (I can attest to this personally as an Arlington resident who saw the very well-run poll sites in action).
As soon as we make sure the voter is qualified to vote at this particular precinct we take the time to show them what the ballot looks like. It’s two sided. One side is regular, one side is ranked choice, and we do try to explain it.
– Janet Boyd, chief Glencarlyn election officer on WUSA9
Voters rank things every day. As we also saw in last year’s first use of RCV in Alaska, asking voters to rank candidates 1-2-3 is far from the most “complex” thing on the ballot. Brad Harmon, the chief election officer in Rosslyn, told WUSA9 that:
We’ve probably had more people mess up the non ranked choice part of the ballot than the ranked choice part.
Tania Griffin, a spokesperson for the Arlington elections office, told the Mercury that the county had “not been made aware of any RCV issues today.”
Additionally, ballot-scanning machines at the polls instantly checked voters’ ballots for errors; if the machine detected an incorrectly filled ballot, voters could fill out a new one on the spot.
All this should come as no surprise to those who have been following the growth of ranked choice voting across the country. Research and experience have shown that voters who use ranked choice voting understand and support it, and there are best practices for election administrators and poll workers to smoothly and successfully implement it. Arlington County is conducting an unscientific online survey on voters’ experience with RCV, and we encourage interested Arlington residents to take it!
As in Alaska and countless other states and cities across the country, it appears that Virginia voters find RCV an intuitive and better way to vote.
