Tacoma could soon ‘open the door’ to ranked-choice voting. How does that system work?
The way that Tacomans vote could shift if a recommendation to the City Council sticks.
Tacoma is updating its charter this year as part of a once-in-a-decade process to amend the city’s constitution. The Charter Review Committee is backing a slate of proposals.
One of those recommendations would pave the way for ranked-choice voting, which allows people to rank political candidates according to preference, committee Chair Stephen Wamback told The News Tribune.
Twelve of the committee’s members, including Wamback, voted in favor of the idea with two opposed, according to the charter-review draft report. Tuesday is the deadline for the final report although Wamback said it’s scheduled to get delivered to City Council the previous day.
The council will discuss the recommendations and choose which ones will be on the November ballot.
Wamback said committee members wanted to create an avenue for ranked-choice voting in Tacoma in case it starts to become more common statewide. The proposed amendment “[s]pecifies that ranked-choice voting is among the election-related matters that the City Council may set forth in ordinance, but does not require that ranked-choice voting be used or adopted,” according to the draft report.
Put another way, Wamback said: “This opens the door to ranked-choice voting but does not require it.”
Ranked-choice voting recently has emerged as a trendy reform.
Advocates argue that including it in the city’s charter is crucial to fortifying democracy. Detractors say that the process could potentially be costly, complex and prompt election-result delays.
How does ranked-choice voting work?
Lisa Ayrault, executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit FairVote Washington, told The News Tribune that ranked-choice voting is a simple process for ballot casters. If someone’s first-choice candidate gets eliminated, then their runner-up would be counted.
“Who do you like best? Put them down first. If that candidate can’t win, who would you want next? Put them down,” Ayrault said. “So that’s one of the big civic benefits: Voters are free from having to vote strategically.”
Going with one’s second pick happens all the time in real life, Ayrault said. If someone else ate the leftover piece of pie that had been sitting in the fridge, then you might opt for ice cream instead.
The ranked-choice method has its critics. Some say that it sows confusion in the voting process, which is the last thing the country needs during a time of deepening distrust in democracy.
“I think that we need to be careful about trying to address problems like divisiveness in politics by simply changing the system that we use to elect candidates,” Jason Snead with the Honest Elections Project told NPR. “Many of the issues that we are experiencing, the bitterness and the division in our politics, are symptoms of other problems. And I don’t know that we have to solve something at some sort of system level.”
Where is ranked-choice voting being applied?
Pierce County tried using ranked-choice voting in 2008 for an election cycle. It was ultimately repealed after hitting logistical road bumps, largely thanks to technology and implementation issues, and high costs.
Yet its proponents, such as state Sens. Yasmin Trudeau and T’wina Nobles, have insisted that lessons from the county’s failed attempt could be applied to avoid repeating the same mistakes today.
During the public-comment portion of an April 18 Charter Review Committee meeting, some argued in favor of using ranked choice in Tacoma. Heidi Stephens urged the committee to upgrade its recommendation from an “open-door” suggestion to a requirement and to call it by a different name: instant-runoff voting.
“We’re not simply reinstating the rejected method previously used by the county, which required multiple complicated calculations, but true instant-runoff voting is honestly instant,” Stephens said. “It’s faster, clearer and unquestionably more accurate for the voters’ intention of their ranked choices.”
Certain democracies around the world have applied versions of ranked-choice voting, including Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. More than 50 jurisdictions in the United States — such as San Francisco, Santa Fe and Minneapolis — have done the same. Seattle voters in 2022 adopted ranked-choice voting, too.
That type of voting encourages a broader swath of contenders to enter the race, especially when it comes to women, first-time candidates and people of color, Ayrault said. Several metros that employ ranked choice to elect their City Councils, for instance, now enjoy gender parity.
The ranked-choice conversation is timely given the upcoming presidential election, Ayrault added. Many Americans are disillusioned with both President Joe Biden and former Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump.
Ranked choice would ensure that those who prefer a third-party candidate can vote honestly, she said, and that there aren’t any “spoilers” in the race.
Ayrault hopes ranked-choice voting is in Tacoma’s future: “Ranked-choice voting allows voters to have more input in elections — more say, more nuanced voice — and that is good for democracy.”
