VOICES Paul Honig: Ranked Choice Voting for CT

There are several election reforms being considered by the General Assembly this year in Connecticut.  Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is one of them.  

RCV is beneficial to elections in many ways. The two most important of these are :

• Elimination of the spoiler effect: Many Democrats and Republicans were worried that Oz Griebel would siphon off votes from their preferred candidate and hand a victory to their least favorite candidate. With RCV, voters are able to vote for the candidate they truly support without worrying about wasting a vote.
• Requires a true majority to win: Bob Stefanowski won the Republican primary with just 29.4% of the vote under our current “plurality” system.  More than 70% of Republican primary voters preferred another candidate.
  

RCV is a non-partisan issue. Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters would have benefited from RCV in Connecticut’s last primaries and elections.

The main difference for voters is at the ballot, because with RCV you don’t just vote for one candidate; instead, you rank the candidates in the order of your preference.

Here’s how it works: Voters’ first choice votes are tabulated.  If a candidate has a majority of the vote, that candidate wins the election.  If not, the last place candidate is eliminated and all the votes for the last place candidate are reallocated to those voters’ next choice among the remaining candidates.  This process is repeated until a candidate has a majority or there is only one candidate left.

Four bills have been introduced in the last two years relating to RCV - two from Democrats and two from Republicans. The Secretary of State, Denise Merrill, is interested RCV, and will include a study as a part of her election reform package this year.  

Here is a link to the email signup for Voter Choice CT, the grassroots organization promoting RCV in Connecticut. We need as many voices as possible to tell the legislature to support RCV.

Watch this 5 minute YouTube video created by the group advocating to bring RCV to Maine that gives a concise explanation.

The Government Administration and Elections Committee of the CT General Assembly would be the committee of cognizance. You can contact members of the committee to encourage them to include RCV in a public hearing during this session.

Paul Honig of Harwinton was the Democratic candidate for State Representative in the 76th District, including Harwinton, Burlington, Litchfield and Thomaston.