By Mark Bauer
Richmond, VA did something fairly novel last month: They set aside a portion of the city’s budget for special projects for the purpose of allowing people in the community to vote on how the money is spent.
The big winner in that vote: Trees. Residents across multiple districts voted first and foremost for planting trees to increase shade for combating urban heat islands.
But the other big winner in that vote (and frankly, the reason we’re writing about it): Ranked choice voting. When city leaders decided to put a portion of this budget up to vote, they opted to utilize ranked choice voting as the method for getting it done.
By using ranked choice voting, voters were able to rank their projects in order of preference: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Once the votes were tabulated, the projects with the most support will be funded and the others eliminated.
“Because you can rank multiple preferences, you can vote for the project you truly support without worrying that you’re siphoning votes away from another worthy project,” democracy reform advocates including UpVote Virginia said in a column. “This encourages voters to express their genuine preferences rather than voting strategically, resulting in outcomes that better reflect community priorities.”
More than 5,000 Richmonders turned out to vote, of all ages and backgrounds. As long as they live, work or play in the city, locals as young as 14 were invited to cast a ballot for determining how to allocate funds.
That broad range demonstrates how easy it is for voters to utilize ranked choice voting in elections. Not only was ranked choice voting effective at identifying what projects should be funded, it also clearly reveals community priorities. A simple Yes / No ballot would’ve been able to determine what is funded and what is not, but it wouldn’t have been able to illustrate, for example, that Trees were a top priority, relative to Sidewalk and Crosswalk improvements, which came in second.
“There’s a reason RCV is the fastest-growing nonpartisan electoral reform in America,” ranked choice advocates said. “Exit polling data regularly indicates that the more people learn about it and use it firsthand, the more they like it and want to use it again.”
If I were a Richmonder, I’d be excited about the opportunity to express my priorities. As other cities across America seek fairer, more representative ways to make collective decisions, Richmond’s successful test-run with ranked choice voting provides a promising roadmap.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rank the Vote.
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Mark Bauer is a producer, entrepreneur, day trader and former Independent candidate for Congress in Texas. Previously he spent 10 years as a legal journalist covering the legal market in Texas and regulatory issues in Washington DC.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Rank the Vote, its members, supporters, funders, or affiliates.
