- Seventeen states, including Iowa, have banned ranked choice voting.
- Critics cite voter confusion, unpredictable outcomes and partisan concerns as reasons.
- Utah's pilot program sees declining interest despite initial support from some voters.
SALT LAKE CITY — The conservative backlash against ranked choice voting grew to over one-third of U.S. states last week as Iowa became the 17th Republican-controlled legislature in less than four years to ban the alternative voting system.
Besides Iowa, states prohibiting ranked choice voting this year include Arkansas, Kansas, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming. These states follow on the heels of Florida and Tennessee that turned against the once-popular voting system in 2022.
Unlike Utah, none of these 17 states ever implemented ranked choice voting, which is marketed by its cheerleaders as a way to give voters more options, incentivize centrist election outcomes and turn down the temperature of political rhetoric.
But the Beehive State, too, may be seeing enthusiasm wane for its experiment with ranked choice voting. Some municipalities that tested the unique process have reported unintuitive election results, voter confusion and decreased turnout.
There is also a partisan element. Along with mail-in ballots and voter roll cleanup, ranked choice voting has been thrown into the middle of a nationwide debate over how to increase trust in election results.
"It's gotten caught in the political division that's in our country right now," said Kelleen Potter, the executive director of Utah Ranked Choice Voting.
How does ranked choice voting work?
Now, as the Utah Legislature's seven-year ranked choice voting pilot program comes to a close, Potter hopes lawmakers will allow local governments leaders who like the voting program to continue using it indefinitely.
Over the past three municipal election cycles, two dozen Utah cities have used ranked choice voting. But after an initial burst of interest, the craze might be fizzling out.
In 2019, two cities utilized ranked choice voting. In 2021, that number shot up to 23. In 2023, it fell to 12. And this year, only four cities plan to have ranked choice elections: Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Millcreek and Midvale.
Ranked choice voting differs from America's traditional "first-past-the-post" process, where each voter casts one ballot for one candidate. Instead, voters are asked to arrange candidates in order of preference.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and ballots are redistributed based on subsequent rankings until a candidate receives a majority.
Advocates argue the process encourages candidates to seek broad support, opens the door for third parties and removes the pressure to vote for the lesser of two evils.
"It's done exactly what it was supposed to do," Potter said of the pilot program. "Consistently in all the surveys that have been done, the majority of voters have liked using it."
A Utah Ranked Choice Voting poll in 2021 found that over 85% of voters who used ranked choice voting liked it. A Millcreek poll found that around 70% of voters also liked it. And a UVU analysis found support among around 60% of Utahns who had used ranked choice voting.
But critics counter that in crowded contests, the process relies on an opaque algorithm that can be hard to understand, throws out incomplete ballots and fosters skepticism.
What goes wrong with ranked choice voting?
Several years after Republicans brought ranked choice voting to Utah — former state GOP chair Stan Lockhart is a prominent proponent of the system — GOP lawmakers appear ready to ditch it.
A 2025 bill that would have extended the voting program for another decade was killed before it ever came up for a vote.
When bill sponsor Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, was asked whether he thought there was a desire among lawmakers to let cities continue using ranked choice voting, he said his last attempt showed the answer is "a resounding 'NO.'"
Even though some of this reaction is surely partisan — Trump has called ranked choice voting "one of the greatest threats to democracy" — much of it is driven by legitimate concerns about introducing a novel election system during such a fraught political environment, according to Lisa Dixon, the executive director of the right-leaning Center for Election Confidence.
"People are seeing that, on the one hand, it introduces some new problems," Dixon said. "And then, on the flip side, we've also seen that it doesn't always deliver its promises of creating consensus candidates that are more in the middle."
Where it has been implemented statewide, it has sometimes produced "unpredictable" outcomes, Dixon said, as in the case of Republican Sarah Palin's loss to Democrat Mary Peltola in Alaska's 2022 special at-large House race, where a large majority of voters preferred Republican representation.
That same year, a ranked choice election for a school board seat in Oakland, California, declared the wrong candidate as the winner because of a programming glitch. But the wrong candidate was certified before a recount identified the error.
And while the 2021 New York City mayoral race has been touted as an example of ranked choice voting electing a more moderate candidate — Mayor Eric Adams — this year, it appears that multiple progressive groups are attempting to game the system to elect a self-described socialist.
"Whatever the problem that we're trying to fix in our country, we shouldn't be abandoning what we currently do, and turning to a system that's going to introduce more problems," Dixon said.
