A Disaster in Disguise: RCV Masquerading

By, Kathy Six

July 29, 2025

There has been a recent push to place Rank Choice Voting as an option for our future elections. The actuating of RCV (rank choice voting) as a positive option to provide us a more enhanced freedom of choice is disingenuous. To understand why, we must unravel the rank choice voting system with simple examples that will help us clarify this complex concept. There are several primary issues this type of voting can cause. These issues being addressed here are by no means all inclusive, however, they are the greatest obstacles in keeping elections fair and to provide equity amongst candidates and voters.

First, with RCV, your vote is weakened. 

Q: How can voting more than once weaken my vote?

Let’s look at this statistically. For the sake of simplicity and analyzing RCV, we will simplify the numbers. For this examination, we will use 100 voters with 1 primary candidate per party and a secondary candidate per party. We will also include two third party candidates. We shall call the two democratic parties D1 and D2. The republican candidates R1 and R2 and third party candidates C1 and C2. 

Ordinarily, one would select one candidate. That means, 100 voters would cast 1 vote each. This is a 100:1 ratio. However with the addition of rank choice voting, each voter can now vote as many as three times. Now our numbers jump from 100:1 to 300:3. This might seem like an equal trade. However, if another voter chooses a candidate you’ve selected, it’s either made your value heavier or lighter. For example, a democratic voter selects D1, R2 and C1. You might wonder why a democratic voter would rank a republican candidate as their second choice. This is a sleight of a hand trick used to give weight or reduce weight for other voters. A republican voter, unaware of this legerdemain votes based on their desire to have a republican win the race. He or she selects R1, R2 and C1.

Let’s look at the rankings now after just two voters.

D1=1

D2=0

R1=1

R2=2

C1=2

In this example, both voters' voting weight dropped. Neither candidate the voters had listed as their first choice won this round. The voter that crossed into the other party devalued the other voter’s primary choice. You might wonder why one would vote against their own party. 

Let’s look at the case of the current president, Donald Trump. There are millions of people who have openly stated they would take any president except Donald Trump. If those voters believe the democratic front runner is unlikely to win, this tactic at least affords them the satisfaction of not allowing the republican front runner to win either, as in this example, Donald Trump.

If voters can be directed en masse to participate in this artifice, the above situation can be easily achieved. Let’s go back to the 100 voters. Let’s assume that 51 are republicans who wish R1 to win. The remaining 49 wish D1 to win the race. In a straight vote, the winner would be R1. They've achieved 50% plus 1 which is the requirement to win an election.

Now let’s also assume that the 49 hoping for D1 to win believe there’s a high probability that R1 will win. They’d prefer to exclude R1 at any cost. So, we’re going to instruct the 49

to vote in the following way.

The ranking instructions for each voter hoping to prevent R1 from winning are D1, C1 and C2. The 51 voters hoping for R1 are given no instruction on how the vote might be tipped or weighted, and so, vote according to their political preferences. There will be variations so let’s consider them. These voters do the following:

11 vote R1, R2 and C1

20 vote R1, R2 and C2

20 vote R1, R2 and do not vote for a third candidate.

Here are the results after the vote.

D1=49

D2=0

R1=51

R2=51

C1=60

C2=69

Even though the majority (51 to 49) elected R1 for this race, C2 won. In other words, the voters were instructed to skip D2 and put their second and third votes into the other categories besides the majority parties, the election results do not reflect the will of the people. Instead, they reflect the will of one group to obstruct the intentions of the other. Although the group of 49 did not get their choice, they were able to impede the other.

Second: Voters are more likely to make errors on RCV ballots.

Q: Aren’t there instructions? Everyone who votes should be able to read the instructions.

If only this were true. Current ballots prevent one from accidentally filling in two bubbles in a side by side layout. RCV would require a far more complex layout increasing statistically the rate of error by a significant margin. Since most of us have experienced taking tests where one must choose a bubble for the correct answer in a layout where questions run vertically and answers lay horizontal, we have all run into the issue of trying to make sure we have just one bubble per answer. Even when one is especially meticulous, it is far easier to make an error in more complex layouts.

In the layout to the right, the bubbles align vertically with one bubble per candidate. One simply cannot select more than one bubble for the same candidate. One can choose too many in a section causing a spoiled ballot, but those errors are few.

Compare the layout to the right to that of those below. It's clear that the number of bubbles has increased dramatically. Each candidate must have multiple bubbles to reflect the possibility of being chosen first, second, third and so on.

Are any of these ballots incorrect and will be spoiled?

Can you figure out why the second ballot was spoiled?

The rejection rate on errors is startling. In an article by Dr. Alan Perry and Dr. John Kidd at the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy, the rejection rate of ballots for various reasons was incredibly high when RCV was introduced. In their study, ballots that had to be spoiled due to over voting (selecting more than one candidate in a particular rank or selecting the same candidate in more than one ranking) on average was over 65%. In other words, if you fill in two bubbles in the same row (see figures above), the ballot is rejected. Imagine if 30% of people voting made this error. Thirty percent would equate to almost 49,000,000 based on the number of voters in the 2025 election. Imagine if forty-nine million people’s votes didn’t count.

In addition, if voters are required to return to the ballot box VS machine reordering votes, the rate of spoiled ballots continues to increase for each round as we begin to develop voter exhaustion (errors resulting in uncounted ballots).

Third: RCV transfers votes away from candidates without the voter having an option.

Q: Doesn’t the machine automatically tally my choices? It can’t change my vote, can it?

Actually, it can. Since RCV includes more than the primary candidate for each party, there can be an issue with a clear majority winner. If this happens, your voter scorecard gets manipulated. Let’s take 50 of those voters. They selected R2, C1 and C2. If R2 is eliminated in the first round because there was no clear majority, their C1 vote becomes their first choice and C2 becomes their second choice. Essentially, the tabulator has changed your vote. If 30 other voters selected C1 as their top choice, then we’ve just put 80 of the 100 votes for candidate C1. 

Here we can watch RCV in action in a much simpler form. The video demonstrates how RCV works using a simple model to make the concept clearer.

If you were a bit confused by these statistical analogies, no need to be embarrassed. Few people automatically consider the mathematical and statistical implications of RVC. We have only Maine, Alaska and some jurisdictions of other states to evaluate the RCV system. Let’s take a look at some real situations where RCV has affected the outcome in an election and the will of the people was not represented.

In Maine’s Congressional District 2, RCV made a mess of the race. Since neither candidate received 51% of the vote, there were subsequent rounds required. Since RCV allows for voters to skip choosing a first rank, many voters’ ballots were counted, however, their votes for their second choice automatically became their first choice. Write in votes are also allowed, convoluting the process even more. 

Another common issue is that the number of exhausted ballots is not only higher than standard voting methods, but increases as the rounds continue. In places where voters are required to return to the ballot box VS machine calculating and readjusting your ranks, voter exhaustion increases voter error. While attempting to obtain a majority in San Francisco's Board of Supervisors Election, there were 20 rounds of voting. During each round, the number of exhausted ballots increased until they reached nearly half of the ballots being exhausted by the last round. Imagine if only half of the voters on election day determined the outcome while the other half were spoiled ballots, and one of those ballots was yours. Much like testing exhaustion, voting exhaustion increasing the likelihood of errors is real.

Confusion seems to be a common theme for RCV. It also requires a much longer timeline to sort out the results. In some cases it took more than a month to tabulate results for elections using RCV.

Lastly: RCV requires a far more intense knowledge of the candidates and their positions on policy. 

Q: People should know about their candidates before voting, shouldn’t they? That’s not a bad thing.

Absolutely, we would do well to know not only the candidate we prefer, but the opposing candidates and be able to explain our position. In a perfect world, that’s what happens. In the real world, knowledge about candidates is often lacking. 

The average voter’s knowledge of the candidates’ platforms is minimal. For those of us who do spend time comparing candidates, this would have little effect on our choices and we will go in and likely rank without having any ulterior motive except to rank the candidates properly. Reality is another story. When one is uninformed, they often do one of three things. 1. They may elect to not vote at all. 2. They will vote but make choices that do not actually reflect their values. 3. They simply guess and create a random vote that may or may not reflect their values. Low knowledge voters have a big impact on results.

Now imagine voters who already struggle with lack of information, with RCV, having to know more than one candidate’s position to rank them would cause many voters to merely bubble in a name with little or no knowledge of that candidate. Do we really want our election to become a game of chance?

You might be wondering how many states or parts of a state use RCV. It's more prevalent than you might think. The following map shows just how much of a stronghold RCV has on primarily blue states or states that have democratic governors.

If one is unfamiliar with the pitfalls of RCV, one can be easily convinced it is a fair way of choosing candidates. To protect the election process, we must stand up and defeat RCV as an option in this state and we must educate others about the pitfalls of RCV. We must also help by reminding others to never sign an RCV petition to bring it to a vote. Since most people aren't clear of the pitfalls of RCV, the vote itself could be skewed with people voting on something they don't understand. If this option should end up on our ballot, we must encourage and educate everyone to vote no.