Even though Indiana doesn’t currently allow for that election method, those in support of the bill cite the confusion the system causes as a reason to ban it outright.
Senate Bill 12 outlines that ranked choice voting allows for voters to rank each candidate on a ballot for a particular office in an order of preference. Then, election workers count each ballot in multiple rounds as candidates are eliminated.
The bill, authored by State Sen. Blake Doriot , R- Goshen , states an election may not be decided by ranked choice voting.
“It can be very complicated when this is done,” Doriot said, citing an example from a 2013 Minneapolis mayoral ballot that had 40,495 possible combinations.
The problem with ranked choice voting, Doriot said, is that if a voter supports one candidate, ranking the other candidates could be a vote against that candidate.
“So your vote, if you skip those, in the next rounds, then your vote doesn’t count. It’s just thrown away. That scares me,” Doriot said.
In a 2022 special election in Alaska , which has ranked choice voting, for a Congressional seat, the Republican candidate started with 110,000 votes and the Democrat started with 75,000 votes for first place, Doriot said. When ranked choice voting ballots were counted, the Democrat ultimately won, he said.
Election data from the 2022 special election show that there were two Republican candidates — Sarah Palin and Nick Begich — to one Democratic candidate Mary Peltola . Palin and Begich split the 110,000 Republican votes.
Peltola narrowly edged out Palin by 3 percentage points after multiple rounds of ballot counting.
“I find this somewhat distressing because in the United States we have always been one vote one person,” Doriot said.
Seven people testified on the bill, the majority in support of it.
Barbara Tully , with the League of Women Voters Indiana , said the organization supports ranked choice voting because it would “give voters meaningful choices to reduce the toxicity of negative campaigning.”
“It can be disheartening for voters to feel they are repeatedly casting their vote on the lesser of two evils and many stop showing up to the polls entirely. Ranked choice voting eliminates this pressure and provides opportunities for voters to have a wider range of choices that they can actually feel excited about,” Tully said.
Julia Vaughn , the executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said Indiana doesn’t allow for ranked choice voting and a bill allowing the voting method to move forward hasn’t been filed.
“Banning it has no practical effect on our elections, which are in need of reform to increase voter turnout,” Vaughn said. “With limited time in session, and no shortage of real problems facing our state, why spend time banning a type of voting that isn’t even used here? We deserve real solutions for our real problems, not distractions.”
Under ranked choice voting, all the first-choice votes are tabulated, Vaughn said. If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, he or she wins, Vuaghn said.
But if a candidate doesn’t receive 50 percent of the vote in the first round, then the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated, Vaughn said. Then, officials take the ballots of the first-choice candidates that were eliminated and count the second choice, she said.
The process continues until a candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, Vaughn said.
“Ranked choice voting would make our elections more equitable, allow for more diverse perspectives in races, and provide more choices to voters,” Vaughn said.
Kegan Prentice , with the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, said ranked choice voting would create confusion for voters.
Paul Lagemann , a member of Heritage Action , said the organization supports the bill because it “protect(s) the integrity of our elections.”
“Ranked choice voting fundamentally changes the election process and is fraught with problems,” Lagemann said.
For example, if a voter doesn’t rank all the candidates, then his or her ballot would be “thrown out in subsequent rounds,” Lagemann said.
“When citizens believe elections produce clear results between candidates holding different ideas, they are able to live with those results even if they don’t like the outcome. Rank choice voting is a gimmick that would undermine Hoosier elections and all the hard work done over many years to ensure voter confidence,” Lagemann said.
Brad King , co-director of the Indiana Election Division, said he supports the bill because Indiana tried ranked choice voting from 1912 to 1916, and stopped the process after one election.
“There are no studies from that era, but anecdotally the reason given was often that voters wised up and understood that by voting for another candidate, in addition to their first choice, they were in fact weakening their preferred candidate’s chances of success,” King said.
The bill passed out of committee in a 7-2 vote, with both Democrats voting against the bill.
State Sen. J.D. Ford , D- Indianapolis , said he didn’t support the bill because Indiana doesn’t do ranked choice voting.
“I think that this is something that we might be getting a little distracted on. We already don’t have it in our state. We should be focusing on bills that get us out from the bottom in terms of voter participation in our state,” Ford said.
State Sen. Greg Walker , R- Columbus , said as former chairman of the committee he didn’t give the bill a hearing because he was concerned it “would have difficulty passing at the state level.”
Indiana has used ranked choice voting successfully in 2020, when the state Republican Party used the method to select delegates, Walker said. Further, a future legislative body could pass a bill to allow for ranked choice voting, he said.
“I think this is actually a moot point, but I am going to vote ‘yes’ to get it over with,” Walker said.
akukulka@post-trib.com
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