Ranked-choice voting (RCV) advocates are circulating incredibly misleading messaging about what the deceptive system actually is ahead of a Wisconsin Senate hearing on legislation attempting to bring RCV to the state.
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.
Obtained by The Federalist, a memo produced by Democracy Found, a Wisconsin-based RCV advocacy group, attempts to mislead voters and legislators about how a top-five ranked-choice voting system would actually work. Similar to Alaska’s top-four RCV elections, a top-five RCV system would create a jungle-style race in which candidates from different parties would run in the same primary. The top five vote-getters would then advance to the general election, in which RCV would be used to determine the winner.
Bills (AB 563 and SB 528) proposing such a system for Wisconsin’s congressional primaries and general elections are currently being considered by the state’s legislature, with a Senate committee hearing on SB 528 set to occur on Tuesday.
In its memo titled, “Factual Correction: Final Five Voting (FFV) and Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) are Not the Same,” Democracy Found deceptively attempts to argue that a top-five primary and RCV are completely separate systems, despite admitting the two are inextricably linked. After describing how a top-five primary works, the group dovetails into discussing the instant-runoff general election
