Ranked Choice Voting

The 2024 legislative session was a defensive fight for ranked choice voting (RCV), taking place against the backdrop of a presidential campaign and the biggest year yet for RCV ballot initiatives in states like Nevada and Oregon. While there was a lot of attention on what happened in November, during the session there was a pre-emptive effort to blunt many attempts at RCV progress, from bans on RCV in places where it wasn’t law to begin with, to vetoes of technical changes in jurisdictions that already use RCV. No state passed any legislation expanding the use of RCV. However, RCV advocates were able to defend major victories and hold the line for future RCV efforts. Here are a few key trends we identified in this year’s proposed and passed legislation on RCV:

RCV Bans. The most striking statistic from this section relates to RCV bans. 2024 saw a record number of RCV bans passed, in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri¹, and Oklahoma. These six states join Idaho, Florida, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee in banning RCV. In the states that passed RCV bans this year, all but Kentucky had state governments with Republican trifectas; in Kentucky, the Republican majority in the legislature was able to override a veto by their Democratic Governor. Beyond what passed, the sheer number of introductions in this category — 38 proposals from 18 states — was five times as many proposals as last year, where we tracked just seven RCV bans introduced in six states. Overall, this tracks with broader trends that have been developing in the movement over the past few years: 1) most progress on RCV happens via ballot initiative (even truer in 2024 with RCV on the statewide ballot in four states), 2) most anti-RCV progress happens in the form of legislative bans, and 3) most successful RCV efforts in state legislatures are focused on defending and expanding previous gains and preventing bans.

Slowing the progress of RCV. There were other legislative strategies to slow RCV progress this session, apart from RCV bans. Two bills passed this session show different examples: One is Virginia’s SB 428, a bill designed to clarify and clean up election practices for local RCV use in the state. It passed but was vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who won his party’s nomination in a ranked vote. Another is Colorado’s SB 210, a last-minute attempt to delay the implementation timeline of a voter-initiated ballot measure to bring RCV to the state by requiring local implementation in a dozen municipalities before it can be used statewide. These two bills show how RCV opposition takes place in places where RCV is already used — delaying successful adoption or expansion by preventing needed technical changes or creating new hurdles to implementation.

Holding the line. In Utah, HB 290 presented a major battle over whether to keep the state’s municipal RCV pilot program in place. Not only was this effort defeated, but advocates were also able to win a technical support bill (UT SB 107) to clarify processes in the municipalities currently participating in the pilot program. Aside from Utah, advocates also helped defeat multiple proposed RCV bans in Arizona (SCR 1011), Iowa (HF2610), and Georgia (SB 355) that all passed one House. In most states’ second year of legislative session, and in the context of an election year — where it’s less common to see ambitious election legislation and more reactive messaging bills — these results aren’t surprising.