The “Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act,” introduced by Republican Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil, would be a solid bill if Senate Republicans can grow a pair and eliminate the filibuster so it can pass (they won’t because they’re cowards who don’t want to govern, but we can dream, right?). Every item Republicans have been begging for since 2020’s election fiasco are in it: mandatory voter ID, voter roll purges and maintenance, zero grace periods for mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, bans on ballot harvesting and universal vote-by-mail, a requirement for auditable paper ballots, and much more. If passed, it would change American politics for the better and create a level playing field that would allow Republicans to compete fairly without the constant threat of Democrats cheating their way to victory. (If you don’t think Democrats cheat, ask yourself why they, or any reasonable person, would possibly be against this bill?)
There is one provision, however, that seems a bit arbitrary and overreaching, and that is an outright ban on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in federal elections. (Incidentally, such a ban is not included in the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, passed by the House in 2024). Now, given the brutal comments I received the last time I wrote about this, I have zero expectation that reactions to this column will be any different. Still, as always, I’m just asking you to consider the points I’m about to make, even if you don’t end up agreeing in the end.
About those comments, the majority came down to one complaint: Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who is a useless RINO, managing to secure a victory in 2022 with the help of RCV. I’ll admit, what happened that year in Alaska with Murkowski and also Sarah Palin are sore spots to be sure, and it’s completely understandable why it would give you a bad taste about RCV. But I feel like Republicans only have a few instances, Alaska being most noteworthy, of RCV not working out in their favor, and it’s tainting the whole pot. What isn’t being considered are the elections it could have really helped us in had it been in place.
If RCV had been the system in New Hampshire in 2016, Libertarian candidate Brian Chabot’s 12,597 votes wouldn’t have spoiled Republican Kelly Ayotte’s chance to upset Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who won by barely more than 1,000 votes. Instead, Ayotte would have likely been most Libertarians’ second choice. Thus, when Chabot was eliminated under the RCV rules (since Hassan didn’t get the required 50 percent plus one), those votes would have gone to the Republican and pushed her over the top.
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Say what you want about Alaska, but an even worse sore spot for me is the disaster that ensued with Georgia’s special election in 2020, when Republican Sen. David Perdue won more votes than Democrat Jon Ossoff in the first round. However, since Georgia requires a candidate to win an outright majority, he was forced to go through an entire other election, one that he barely lost due to low GOP turnout. In the first round, Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel took 115,039 votes. Under RCV, the second round would have been conducted automatically, with Hazel voters’ second choice, likely Perdue, easily carrying the day. Imagine the damage that might have been at least mitigated had Republicans kept the Senate during Biden’s first two years.
But it doesn’t end there. In 2022, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver’s 81,365 voters helped Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock beat Republican Herchel Walker in a runoff after both candidates failed to reach 50 percent in the general. Under a RCV system, Oliver’s votes would have gone mostly to Walker and likely would have been enough to push him over the top.
Those are some high profile, high stakes examples that show how RCV voting can help Republicans, especially given the tendency of conservative and libertarian types to wander off the reservation and unwisely vote for obscure candidates who have zero chance in a general election. To those who think this would hurt third parties, it actually wouldn’t. In fact, under RCV people can rage against the machine all they want and feel good about it, then back up their rebellion with a sensible second choice that won’t toss the baby out with the bathwater.
If you aren’t yet ready to introduce RCV voting in general elections, fine. But what about using it to help Republicans nominate candidates in the primaries who actually have enough consensus to beat the Democratic nominee? Think former Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's improbable 2021 victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe. The RCV system used at the time because of Covid actually helped weed out some more extreme conservatives that maybe you and I would have liked better, but who could never have won a general election victory in a blue state.
Banning RCV outright would also directly harm military and overseas voters, most of whom vote Republican. Currently, six red states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina), send Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) voters two ballots, a standard absentee ballot and a ranked choice ballot in case the election ends in a runoff. This prevents these voters from being disenfranchised from runoff elections by their ballot not arriving in time. With RCV, they’ve already made their second choice.
If I had my druthers I wouldn’t include a ban on RCV in the bill, but, since I’m a pragmatist, it also wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. The good far outweighs the bad. But I also think such a ban would be a shame, because RCV has the potential to be a great tool to help the good guys win, even if a few bad ones manage to slip in here and there.
Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote.
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