DCLO Opposes Ranked Choice Voting

Contribute towards DCLO’s Opposition Statement for the Oregon Voter Guide in November. The submission will cost $1200 or we will need 500 signatures. Your support is appreciated.

Read our Statement Here……..

RANKED CHOICE VOTING HAS PROVEN TO BE A DISASTER

In the 2021 mayor race in Sandy, Utah, more than 18 percent of the original ballots, more than 4,000 in total, were trashed in a race decided by just 21 votes. 

In the 2010 Board of Supervisors race in San Francisco, more ballots were trashed than were counted. After 20 rounds of counting, 8,200 ballots decided the winner while 9,503 ballots were trashed and an additional 605 ballots were tossed for overvoting. To get to the forced majority vote required by RCV, a majority of all votes were thrown in the trash.

In the 2021 Portland, Maine, Charter Commission race a candidate that started with just four percent of the vote ended up winning a seat. Only one in 25 voters wanted this candidate, but it is who they got. A candidate that originally had more than 1,800 votes lost to a candidate with only 367 votes. 

Two months after a 2021 school board election using ranked-choice voting in Alameda County, California, and after the election was certified, a software error was found. The announced third place finisher had actually won the election.

New York City’s 2021 Mayoral Democratic Primary was thrown into chaos because of RCV. An astounding 140,000 ballots—nearly 15 percent of the total—were trashed. And after a week of counting and 11 rounds of tabulations, it was discovered that 135,000 test ballots had been counted by mistake. In the end it took an additional eight rounds of counting and nearly a month to declare a winner in the race.

Even in the states that now regularly use RCV, support isn’t strong. Maine narrowly passed RCV in 2016 with just 52 percent of the vote. Alaska adopted RCV in 2020 with just 50.55 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, Florida, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee have all BANNED ranked-choice voting since just 2022.

PLEASE VOTE NO

ON

RANKED CHOICE VOTING