Bill to prohibit ranked-choice voting in WV advanced by Senate Committee

Article owned and originally published by WDTV 5 News on Feb. 16, 2024.

Original Article

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va (WDTV) - Senate Bill 593 seeks to prohibit ranked-choice voting in elections in the state of West Virginia.

SB 593 was introduced to the Legislature on January 30, 2024 and was advanced by the Senate Government Organization Committee and is on its way to the judiciary committee.

According to Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for every eligible voter to meaningfully participate in the democratic process, Ranked-Choice Voting “is a process that allows voters to rank candidates for a particular office in order of preference,” rather than the current system where each voter votes for their top candidate only.

In the example they provide, a Ranked-Choice Voting system would allow citizens to rank all of the possible candidates from highest preference to lowest preference.

1. If a candidate is the highest preference for more than half of all voters, that candidate wins the election.

2. If no candidate secures the majority of votes, the lowest ranked candidate on the ballot is removed, and the votes that listed them as the highest preference are redistributed to the voter’s second choice.

3. This process continues until a candidate wins more than half the votes.

This way, if citizens vote for a third-party candidate, and neither the two main-party candidates nor the third-party candidate receive the majority of votes; those who voted third-party will have their votes redistributed between the two main-party candidates respective to who they listed as their second choice.

The CLC says that RCV is currently used in 11 cities in 7 states, and leads to several benefits:

• Increased voter participation

• Saves time and money with less runoff elections

• Avoids the “spoiler effect”

• Voters do not have to worry about strategically voting for candidates that they do not like in order to avoid “throwing away” or splitting their vote.

• Reduces negative campaign tactics

• Equitable Representation