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Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate Research

Abstract

Many people across the political spectrum are frustrated with many of the problems that come with simple plurality voting, also known as first-past-the-post, which is implemented in the lion’s share of elections across the United States. To solve many of these problems, some activists and other political organizations advocate for cities and states to adopt Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) as a viable alternative. However, many people, both Republicans and Democrats, claim that implementing this system would be too complicated for people to understand. Due to this, there would be high rates of ballot exhaustion, which would disenfranchise vulnerable minorities who already face significant barriers to voting as is. While there is plenty of research attempting to demonstrate how much people understand how RCV impacts elections, not enough attention has been placed on whether an RCV election taking place at the state or local level will have any impact on voter turnout. This report aims to address this gap in the literature by going through polling data of RCV elections in statewide and local elections and comparing them. This paper also contains a discussion of the different spheres of thought regarding RCV and its unique history in North America and across the world.

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