OPPOSED TO RANKED CHOICE VOTING

By Amy Waychoff

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Amy Waychoff and I have lived in Montgomery County for 36 years. 

I oppose Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) for many reasons. Just look at Arlington County’s experience during the primary election this year. They used RCV, but then abandoned it for the general election primarily because the process is so confusing. According to the Board’s Vice Chair, 

“There are a whole lot of people where maybe their second votes never count,. . . Maybe I don’t completely understand it.”* 

One study in 2014 documented a problem called ballot “exhaustion,” whereby ballots are discarded in the second and subsequent rounds. This phenomenon happens when the voter marks only one or two candidates. The study concluded that RCV “does not ensure that the winning candidate will have received a majority of all votes cast, only a majority of all valid votes in the final round of tallying.” For example, Tony Santos, mayor of San Leandro, California, lost his re-election bid in 2010 due to RCV. After the first round, Santos led, but only with 36 percent of the vote. After six rounds, “the winner had 51 percent to Santos’ 49 percent of the remaining vote. The winner held a majority over Santos in the final round but his share of the total votes cast was 46 percent, not a majority.”**

RCV is expensive. Last year the cost of implementing RCV was estimated at a whopping $2 million in Montgomery County alone. 

Four years ago, California legislators voted for RCV, but Governor Newsom vetoed the bill because “the promise that RCV leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.” Like the Governor, I believe that RCV requires much more study before it is used more widely. Therefore, please give MC 1-24 an unfavorable report. Thank you.

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Amy Waychoff is a Member of the Maryland Republican Central Committee from Montgomery County. This was her statement to the Montgomery County Delegation in Annapolis.