One Person, How Many Votes? Race And Representation In Ranked-Choice Elections

Abstract

In recent years, ranked-choice voting (RCV) has gained traction across the United States. Its proponents claim RCV improves representation by allowing voters to rank multiple candidates in order of preference, thus empowering voters to express their views with more granularity and ensuring that winning candidates have a broad base of support in the electorate. However, critics of RCV assert that this system of voting, far from improving representation, actually inhibits meaningful participation because its complexity increases the rate of disqualifying ballot errors and because its instant runoffs introduce the possibility of ballot exhaustion, which occurs when all candidates ranked on a ballot are eliminated before the final round of tabulation. These criticisms become even more worrisome if ballot disqualification and ballot exhaustion occur unequally throughout the electorate, underrepresenting some voters’ views. This paper conducts the first analysis of the relationship between representational outcomes under RCV and voter demographics by examining ballot exhaustion, overvoting, and the average number of ranks used across precincts with different racial compositions. Using OLS regression analysis, this paper finds that precincts with higher percentages of voters of color tend to have higher rates of ballot exhaustion and overvoting, with mixed results for the average number of candidates ranked. These results have important policy and legal implications; in certain jurisdictions, RCV could threaten the voting rights of racial minorities, and without adequate voter education efforts, high rates of ballot exhaustion and overvoting may undermine RCV’s representational benefits.