ARLINGTON, VA — The Arlington County Board decided Saturday against the use of ranked choice voting as the method for the county board election in November, when two open seats will be on the ballot.
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The board members cited the complexity of having two seats open on the county board as one of their reasons for rejecting the use of ranked choice voting in the general election. It was the confusion over the tabulation methods used with two seats open that made the board members hesitant to use ranked choice voting in November.
Arlington used ranked choice voting as the election method in the June Democratic primary election for county board, which was won by Maureen Coffey and Susan Cunningham. Coffey and Cunningham are expected to face independent Audrey Clement and Republican Juan Carlos Fierro in November’s general election for county board.
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The general election in Virginia is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 7.
Almost every member of the public who spoke before the county board made its decision on Saturday expressed support for the use of the ranked choice voting method in the general election.
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The use of ranked choice voting in the Democratic primary allowed Coffey, the candidate who came in third place after the counting of first place votes, to win one of the two nominations for county board.
Arlington used the “single transferrable vote” method to tabulate the winners in the Democratic primary. This tabulation system meant that a “surplus fraction” of Coffey’s votes after she was the first to cross the 33.3 percent threshold to win were then redistributed to the remaining candidates.
But voters who made Cunningham their first choice vote did not have their second place votes counted. The second place votes of people who voted for candidates Jonathan Dromgoole, Tony Weaver, J.D. Spain and Natalie Roy were counted.
Roy, who received the second most first place votes in the Democratic primary, came in third place under the ranked choice voting system.
Roy said in a statement that after using ranked choice voting in the primary, Arlington should have moved forward with ranked choice voting in the general election. The voting method should be used in every election, “not just when it is politically expedient,” Roy said.
“If the County Board decides not to do it for the upcoming general, then it should be tabled going forward for any future elections,” Roy said. “To not use RCV for the November election under the pretext of working out the kinks for the primary in 2024, will be viewed as disingenuous. There is plenty of time now to get it right and at the very least improve public engagement for the general election.”
The Democratic primary for county board was Virginia’s first-ever publicly run ranked choice voting election; political parties in the state had conducted their own privately held nominating selection processes using ranked choice voting.
In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation that allowed Arlington to run elections using ranked choice voting, and a similar measure allowed the method to be used in other localities in Virginia. Last December, three months before the board approved the Missing Middle Housing plan, the Arlington County Board voted to allow the use of ranked choice voting in the Democratic primary for county board.
Most voters seemingly understood the voting process, but many found the tabulation process hard to understand.
During the public comment period on Saturday, Chris DeRosa expressed support for the use of ranked choice voting in November’s general election and going forward.
DeRosa conceded that the tabulation of the votes in the Democratic primary was difficult to understand.
“I don’t understand how my car’s carburetor or hybrid fuel system works, but it’s not going to stop me from driving my Prius,” she said. “I don’t understand how solar panels capture the sun’s rays and convert them into energy. But it doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”
Another Arlington resident, Terri Armao, responded that understanding how a car’s carburetor works or how solar panels work “is not nearly the same as voting.”
“People, without understanding tabulation, they don’t understand ranked choice voting,” Armao said. “Anybody can pick up a pen and fill in a bubble. But that is not understanding how this process works.”
However, Armao said she supported using ranked choice voting in the general election for county board in November, but not in future elections.
County Board member Libby Garvey, at Saturday’s meeting, noted that voters who made Cunningham their first choice did not get their second place votes counted in the Democratic primary.
“I’m uncomfortable, and maybe I don’t completely understand it,” Garvey said about how the tabulation of votes was conducted in the Democratic primary.
Garvey also emphasized that she doesn’t need to understand how solar panels and electric vehicles work. “But I do want to know how my vote counts. That is really different,” she said. “And for that reason, I am very uncomfortable doing this for the two seats up in the fall.”
County Board Chair Christian Dorsey said that based on his outreach, Arlington residents’ familiarity with ranked choice voting is how it is conducted when a single seat is being contested, not with two seats on the ballot.
“The instant-runoff style — that’s what most people get when they think about RCV,” Dorsey said. “This has proved to be a little different.”
While Dorsey did not support using ranked choice voting in November, he did express support for the Democratic Party using it again in next year’s primary for county board, when Garvey will be up for re-election, and possibly in the 2024 general election for board if the county can help voters better understand the tabulation process.
Liz White, executive director of UpVote Virginia, a nonpartisan group that focuses on election issues such as ranked choice voting, said in a statement Saturday that Arlington’s experiment with ranked choice voting “was a success every step of the way” and that voters indicated in a countywide survey that they supported using it permanently as a result.
White said her group looks forward to working with and advising Arlington County as it considers using ranked choice voting in 2024 and beyond.
“Now it’s time for the board to build on the positive momentum of the June primaries and commit to using RCV in the future,” she said.
RELATED: Majority Oppose Ranked Choice Voting For Arlington Election: Survey
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