Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and state Senate Republicans introduced a measure on Tuesday to prohibit the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in elections.
Under RCV, often dubbed “rigged-choice voting” by its critics, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
SB 355 stipulates that RCV “shall not be used in determining the election or nomination of any candidate to any local, state, or federal elective office.” This law would not, however, apply to “electors who are entitled to vote absentee ballot under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act,” which was amended in 2021 to allow for overseas voters to use an RCV, or “instant runoff,” ballot for statewide and presidential races.
As the Atlanta Civic Circle reported, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said the system was adopted for UOCAVA “as a way to avoid problems with overseas mailing, which can be unreliable in getting ballots in time for elections.”
“Ranked-choice voting is designed to cause confusion and fatigue among voters,” Jones said in a statement. “This type of voting system, pushed by dark money groups, could cause a drastic increase in the number of ballots being thrown out, disenfranchising Georgia voters. Georgians deserve to have the utmost faith in their elections,
