Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a Democrat-backed bill Monday aimed at expanding the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in Virginia elections.
“A heightened risk of mistakenly erroneous ballot submissions raises concerns about disenfranchisement and an increased lack of voter confidence in election results,” Youngkin wrote. “Before RCV is further institutionalized and regulated at the Virginia Department of Elections, the legitimate questions of voters need to be answered.”
Under RCV, which critics often refer to as “rigged-choice voting,” voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes reallocated to voters’ second-choice candidates. The process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
Passed by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly earlier this year, Senate Bill 428 sought to normalize RCV in commonwealth elections by requiring the State Board of Elections to develop “standards for vote tabulating software for use with existing voting systems in elections conducted by ranked choice voting.” As Daniel Brubaker explained in these pages, the bill instructs “the State Board of Elections to create voter education materials on RCV, publish these on their website, and assist localities deciding to use RCV in developing voter education materials on that topic.”
Ranked-choice voting software companies would also be invited to apply for accreditation with the State Elections Board. Meanwhile, damaged ballots unable to “go through the machine … will not be hand counted,” but replaced with a new “substitute ballot [that matches]
