Witnesses tell Michigan committee ranked‑choice voting would complicate elections, risk ballot exhaustion

LANSING — Two witnesses told the Michigan House Committee on Election Integrity that adopting ranked‑choice voting statewide would complicate voting, slow results and risk throwing out ballots, while committee members said they want proponents to present counterarguments before any action.

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the committee that RCV “really does fundamentally jeopardize free and fair elections, particularly when it comes to voter confidence in the election system and to the transparency and accountability that voters expect.” His colleague, Trent England, summarized their position bluntly: “Ranked choice voting makes voting harder.”

The witnesses described how an RCV ballot asks voters to rank multiple candidates in each race and said that, if many voters stop ranking their choices before the final round, those ballots can be “exhausted” and removed from later rounds of tabulation. Snead and England warned that this mechanism both reduces the pool counted in the denominator used to claim a majority winner and creates more complex tabulation, recount and audit procedures.

They cited several real‑world examples. Snead said Maine and Alaska are the only two states currently using statewide RCV; he and England said both are relatively small by population. They pointed to an Oakland, California, school board election in 2022 in which about 26,000 ballots were counted and, they said, 235 ballots were handled in a way that produced an incorrect certified outcome until outside experts reran the numbers and litigation followed. They also noted that New York City, using RCV for its mayoral primary, delayed the first round of ranked tabulation for a week and planned weekly reports thereafter.

On administrative issues, the witnesses said RCV typically requires centralizing ballots or vote totals across jurisdictions before elimination rounds can begin. They argued that in a decentralized system such as Michigan’s, that centralization raises logistical and recount questions: “There is never, as far as I can find in any of the research about ranked choice voting in any election results, there's never been a recount with ranked choice voting, in an election where you have millions of ballots,” England said, arguing that municipal pilots do not prove statewide feasibility.

They also raised cost and voter‑education concerns. Snead said New York City spent about $15 million on voter education when it first used RCV and pointed to Maine’s 19‑page voter guide as evidence of the upfront expense required to explain the system to voters. The witnesses cited studies they said show little or negative effects on turnout and no clear evidence RCV produces more moderate winners; they referenced an MIT study and research from the Hubert Humphrey School and University of Minnesota.

Committee members asked questions about how RCV would interact with Michigan’s straight‑ticket option and whether RCV would produce more moderate nominees. The committee member who identified themselves as Representative Kolazar said it was “my hope … that we will eventually hear somebody who’s for it” so the panel can consider both sides. Representative Fox asked whether the witnesses would “argue for paper ballots and same day results in our election system in the state of Michigan”; Snead answered that he supports hand‑marked paper ballots paired with electronic tabulation for speed, but said RCV complicates that approach.

No committee action on policy was taken at the hearing; the only formal action recorded at the start of the meeting was Representative Hoadley’s motion to adopt the minutes of the June 3 meeting, which the committee approved by unanimous consent.

The witnesses concluded by offering to answer committee questions and by urging legislators to consider the administrative, legal and voter‑confidence tradeoffs they described if Michigan voters are presented with an RCV ballot measure.