Bill to create ranked voting to spur election chaos

Taxpayer Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

The Senate Committee on Rules will be having a hearing on ranked voting, SB 343, on March 16th.

Instead of voting for a candidate SB 343 would ask voters to rank the candidates for their first choice, second choice and third choice and so on. If you thought that the current scenario of having tens of thousands of ballots every election cycle being contested and re-examined due to people not marking their ballots clearly (for single bubble) was an issue, you can expect this problem to triple on election night as people write more answers for a single race.

It also means the State would have spend money installing brand new systems to allow the complex voting.

One San Francisco State University study showed that ranked voting decreases voter turnout by 3-5%.   Wow!  The politicians are considering an idea that actually decreases voter turnout.

A 2017 Politics and Policy paper said that people who used ranked voting found it less fair.

SB 343 headline reads; “Permits counties to adopt ranked-choice voting to conduct county elections.Requires Secretary of State to create and staff division to assist counties that adopt ranked-choice voting in purchasing compatible computers, voting machines and vote tally systems.”

The politicians should focus their efforts at making our existing election system more fair, more timely and more trusted.

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