In Roanoke, Democrat Joe Cobb won the mayorship in a three-way race, narrowly and pending a recount.
In Lynchburg, Republican Jacqueline Timmer won the Ward I seat for city council, also in a three-way race.
These two elections would seem to have little in common except for this: They both show why it’s hard to build support for ranked-choice voting.
Here’s how I jump to that conclusion, but first an explanation of what ranked-choice voting is: Ranked-choice voting is where, in an election with more than two candidates, you can rank your choices. If no one wins a majority, then the last-place candidate is eliminated and whoever you listed as your second choice gets your vote. Here’s a real-life example, from a 2022 special election for Alaska’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
There were three candidates, one Democrat and two Republicans. For now, let’s set aside how the state wound up with two Republican candidates.
Not surprisingly, the two Republicans — Sarah Palin and Nick Begich — split the conservative vote, so round one wound up like this:
Mary Peltola (D) 39.7%
Sarah Palin (R) 30.9%
Nick Begich (R) 27.8%
Alaska law, though, requires a majority and employs ranked-choice voting. That means Begich was eliminated and election workers looked at who his supporters listed as their second choice. You’d think, as Republican voters, they would have listed Palin. Some did, but some did not. Once the second choice of Begich’s voters was applied, the final results were:
Mary Peltola (D) 51.5%
Sarah Palin (R) 48.5%
It seems that even in a strongly Republican state such as Alaska, a lot of Republicans had no use for Palin and were willing to back a Democrat as their second choice.
This exemplifies the argument for ranked-choice voting: It enables voters to vote for their preferred choice without worrying about “wasting” their vote because if their choice doesn’t win, their second-choice votes will get used.
The argument against: This goes against the American tradition of “first past the post” — because, in theory, a second-place candidate could win if enough voters for the third-place candidate listed that person as their second choice.
For the record, Palin didn’t lose because of ranked-choice voting, since she finished second in the first round before ranked-choice votes came into play. She lost because Alaska has an “open primary” law that made it possible for two Republican candidates to wind up in the final three, but that’s beside the point. Had she been more popular with Begich supporters, she’d have won the ranked-choice voting even though Peltola finished first initially.
For ranked-choice supporters, this Alaska election is a good example, regardless of whether Palin finished first or second initially: The process encourages moderation and works against candidates who can get a plurality but not a majority.
I suspect that’s also why some aren’t a fan of ranked-choice, because not everyone is a fan of moderation.
Ranked-choice voting is not new. The French political thinker Nicolas de Condorcet first discussed it back in 1788, and it first came into vogue in the United States in 1912. Over the next 18 years, some 24 American cities adopted the method. Most also abandoned the system, although it’s had a resurgence of sorts since 2002. New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis are among the major cities that use ranked-choice; so does Maine in state elections and, as we’ve seen, Alaska.
Alaska stands out as an exception in one way: Most of the places that have embraced ranked-choice voting are liberal bastions. Virginia gave localities the power to use ranked-choice voting in 2020 when Democrats controlled both the governorship and General Assembly. Since then, though, only Arlington County and Charlottesville have adopted it. Arlington held its first ranked-choice election in 2023; Charlottesville will next year. Others could follow: The mayors of Fairfax city and Newport News have expressed support for ranked-choice voting; Falls Church is also looking at the process.
All those fit a pattern, though: All those are Democratic-voting localities. Republicans have generally been averse to the notion. Virginia Republicans did use ranked-choice in their 2021 statewide nominations, but that was an exception. For one thing, by definition, their winner was going to be a Republican. They were also pushed into it by the exigencies of the pandemic, which made a convention impossible. They could have gone with a statewide primary, but some Republicans feared that then-state Sen. Amanda Chase might have won with only a plurality, so ranked-choice voting seemed a clever way to forestall that. (As it turned out, she finished third in the first round and was eliminated after the fifth round. Glenn Youngkin led throughout.)
The November elections this year saw a voter pushback against ranked-choice voting, by both Republicans and Democrats. Four states — Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon — all rejected referendums on ranked-choice voting. Alaska barely voted to retain the system. Missouri passed an outright ban on ranked-choice voting.
In October, the Montgomery County League of Women Voters hosted a presentation on ranked-choice voting. I attended and, during the question-and-answer portion, posed this question: What arguments can be offered to persuade skeptical Republicans? I suspect most Republicans would have found the answer — that it’s good to have elected officials win a majority — unsatisfying. It’s not that Republicans dispute that notion, but there are few examples of how ranked-choice voting would help Republicans.
Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones recently wrote an opinion piece in the (Newport News) Daily Press and (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot newspapers in which he made the case for ranked-choice voting: “Richmond, Roanoke, Winchester, and Virginia Beach all elected mayors this year in wide-field races with a winner who earned less than half the votes.” (So did lots of smaller communities, including Gretna, Marion and Saltville.)
The problem is, none of those examples are likely to be persuasive to Republicans.
In Winchester, Republican Les Veach won with 48.94% in a three-way race. In Virginia Beach, Republican Bobby Dyer won with 40.94% in a five-way race. Since Republicans won those two races, why would they want to risk a ranked-choice election where those candidates might not pick up enough second-choice voters to win the final round?
Nor is the Roanoke mayor’s race going to be very persuasive, either. Cobb appears to have won with 37.26% of the vote, just barely ahead of Republican David Bowers at 37.11%. The race was close because independent Stephanie Moon carved off a lot of votes (ultimately 25.14%) that otherwise would have likely gone to Cobb. My evidence: In the presidential race, the Democratic nominee won 60.82% of the vote in Roanoke, the Republican nominee 37.31%. Since Bowers’ percentage nearly matched Donald Trump’s percentage, it sure looks to me as if Republican voters stuck with Bowers in the mayoral race while Democratic voters splintered. (Moon also carried precincts that normally voted heavily Democratic.) 
That tells me that with ranked-choice voting, Cobb would have won the second round in a landslide because Moon’s second-choice votes likely would have gone to him. Bottom line: Without ranked-choice, the Republican came within 59 votes of winning a three-way race (again, pending a recount but recounts rarely change results), while with it, the Republican would have stood no chance. (I won’t even begin to speculate how ranked-choice voting would have played out in the city’s seven-way race for three council seats, which were eventually won by two Democrats and one Republican, although none achieved a majority vote.) 
Now let’s look at Lynchburg’s Ward I. Timmer won with 44.05% of the vote. Democrat Randy Smith placed second with 38.40% of the vote, while independent Cameron Craddock Howe won 16.74%. If this were a ranked-choice election, Howe would have been eliminated and her voters’ second choices apportioned accordingly. How might those have gone? While we have no way of knowing for sure, we do know this: Kamala Harris won Ward I with 51.2% of the vote while Trump took 46.5%. That tells me that Howe won some Republican votes but a lot of Democratic ones. I’m guessing that if ranked-choice had been in play, most of Howe’s voters would have listed Smith as their second choice, vaulting him from second place into the winner’s seat.
Ranked-choice voting may be a wonderful thing, but here are two examples where it would have worked against Republicans. If ranked-choice voting advocates want more communities to adopt the system, they’re going to need some examples of where it would benefit Republicans and not just Democrats.
It’s possible there is such an example. It’s also in Lynchburg, but as with many things involving Lynchburg politics, it’s complicated. 
Ward IV had two candidates on the ballot: Republican incumbent Chris Faraldi and Democratic challenger April Watson. However, Peter Alexander — who ran and lost against Faraldi in the Republican primary — mounted a write-in campaign, part of a long-running split among Lynchburg Republicans that state party chair Rich Anderson is now trying to mediate.
Faraldi won, with 47.13% of the vote. Watson took 45.26%, while write-ins (most of which were likely for Alexander) accounted for 7.61%. (See sidebar below for more on this.)
If Lynchburg had a ranked-choice system, it would have kicked in here since Faraldi took less than a majority. Let’s assume that system also had a provision for write-in votes. (Some ranked-choice voting places, such as Portland, Oregon, do.) How might those write-ins have gone? We can only guess, but since Alexander’s campaign was premised on being anti-Faraldi, it seems safe to assume that his supporters would not have listed Faraldi as their second choice. Would they have listed Watson, though? Maybe they’d have simply left that second-choice option blank. Again, we have no way of knowing. However, if enough had listed Watson as their second choice, she would have won under a ranked-choice system.
Here’s a case where ranked-choice would have worked against one Republican (Faraldi) but might have pleased certain Republicans who fall on the other side of the Lynchburg Republican civil war. Is that enough to persuade Republicans that ranked-choice voting is a good thing? Since the outcome here might have been a Democratic victory, I suspect not.
Did an anti-Faraldi campaign wind up helping Faraldi instead?
Did Peter Alexander make a mistake by running a write-in campaign against Lynchburg Republican council member Chris Faraldi?
Let’s look at the numbers. Alexander, who lost to Faraldi in the June Republican primary, mounted a write-in campaign in the fall and indicated that if he couldn’t win, he’d be happier if Democrat April Watson won over Faraldi.
We don’t know how many votes Alexander got because write-ins in that race were less than 10% and state law doesn’t require those to be broken out. However, in Wards I, II and III, write-in votes ranged from 70 to 85. In Ward IV, there were 750 so it seems likely that anywhere from 665 to 750 of those were for Alexander.
Faraldi won by 185 votes. What if Alexander hadn’t run? Where would his votes have gone? Would those voters not have cast a ballot in the Ward IV race at all? Would they have voted for Faraldi as a better option than a Democrat? Or might some have voted for Watson as a way to block Faraldi?
If Alexander served as a relief valve for anti-Faraldi Republicans who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, then his candidacy really didn’t tip the balance. However, if his candidacy drew away Republican protest votes that otherwise might have gone to Watson as the only other anti-Faraldi option, then he inadvertently helped reelect Faraldi.
I’ve heard anecdotal accounts of disgruntled Republicans who voted for Watson as a way to keep Faraldi out. It’s always hard to know how widespread such accounts are. However, here’s some curious math:
Donald Trump carried Ward IV with 5,526 votes to 4,286 for Kamala Harris.
There’s typically some drop-off from the top of the ticket to lower-ballot offices. However, Watson polled 4,462 votes — more than Harris received in Ward IV. Either some Democrats skipped the presidential race, or Watson picked up some Republican votes — which would match the anecdotal accounts I’ve heard.
By contrast, if you add the Faraldi vote and the write-in vote (let’s assume it was all for Alexander, even though it probably wasn’t), we get 5,397 — below Trump’s total in Ward IV. Maybe that’s the natural ballot drop-off or maybe that’s indirect evidence of some Republicans voting for Watson.
Everything is clear in hindsight, but here, it looks as if the Republicans who wanted Faraldi out may have made a mistake. By voting for Alexander, they may have missed their chance to defeat Faraldi. Unless, of course, they weren’t so anti-Faraldi that they were willing to elect a Democrat and just wanted to hold him under 50%.
If Lynchburg had ranked-choice voting, we’d know for sure.
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