Several of the election process changes pushed mostly by Democrats across the nation threaten to disenfranchise legal voters. The confusing process of ranked-choice voting creates the possibility that a voter’s ballot will be trashed, and the removal of safeguards against noncitizen voting increases the likelihood that an eligible voter’s ballot could be canceled out by an illegal vote. Both issues are now under the spotlight in Virginia, as bills relating to each await Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s veto.
The bills were part of a handful of bills sent to Youngkin’s desk from the Democrat-controlled legislature that would make Virginia elections less secure. Thankfully, one has already met Youngkin’s veto pen.
Disenfranchisement via Ranked-Choice Voting
In recent years, Democrats, center-left activists, and establishment Republicans have increased their push across the nation for a ballot-counting scheme called ranked-choice voting (RCV). It is a purposeful push, since RCV systemically favors left-leaning candidates and harms conservatives — even in cases when a majority of voters actually vote for conservatives.
With ranked-choice voting, as The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood explained, “voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his voters are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. The process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.” RCV has been pushed since the ’90s by leftist groups such as FairVote, which also seeks to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a straight popular vote scheme.
Virginia SB428
