Ranked choice voting, the controversial balloting method in which voters select candidates in the order of their preference, saw voters in Colorado unexpectedly reject it Tuesday.
Similar measures in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada were also losing as of early Wednesday morning, according to partial results from state election departments.
The loss in Colorado particularly stung proponents, who had vastly outspent the opposition there.
“Reforms of this magnitude take time and effort,” said Kent Thiry, the co-chair and a big financial backer of the pro-ranked choice campaign.
“Time and public sentiment are on the side of our reforms, as support was highest among voters under the age of 50, because they have the biggest stake in the future.”
And in Alaska, a move to repeal the ranked choice system was virtually tied with support for it in early results. Alaska voters had approved ranked choice in 2020, but Republicans led an effort to repeal it, blaming it for the victory of Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, to the state’s sole House seat in 2022.
Some of the states may take some time to report final results because of mail-in voting.
Language prohibiting the use of ranked choice voting was also included in a Missouri constitutional amendment that passed successfully Tuesday.
In ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates in the order in which they would like to see them win, starting with their first choice and working their way down, instead of only choosing one candidate to vote for.
The ranked choice ballot measures would also fully or partially open up party primaries in several of the places they were considered. In Colorado and Idaho, the top four vote-getters in a conventional primary, of any party, would advance to a ranked choice vote in the general election. In Nevada, there would be five candidates who would advance.
The idea did win support in one high-profile place: Washington, D.C..
Voters in the nation’s capital, where the registration is overwhelmingly Democratic, gave it more than 72% of the vote in unofficial results.
“Today’s win is an amazing testament to D.C. voters turning their frustration with today’s politics into real progress,” said Meredith Sumpter, president and CEO of ranked choice advocacy group FairVote.
In D.C., the measure would allow independents, about one-sixth of the registered voters, to vote in taxpayer-funded party primaries, something that’s currently banned.
The proposed changes in Washington and the states drew the ire of local parties, who say they will be disruptive. The D.C. Democratic Party say the change would “cause our Party’s values and goals to be diluted.”
But ranked choice advocates say the current system of selecting just one candidate per race often leaves voters with no good choice, thanks to gerrymandering and polarization. They say it will deal with the “spoiler” role played by third-party candidates, who can split the vote and allow a candidate to be elected with only a plurality, not a majority, of votes.
FairVote identified 70 such plurality-only winners in statewide primaries for U.S. House, Senate and state offices earlier this year.
Deb Otis, research and policy director FairVote, likened the process to ordering at a restaurant in an interview with HuffPost in October.
“I have a list of my favorite foods, and if the item I want is sold out, I will order my second choice. I won’t go home hungry. I know what my second choice is,” she said.
But whether ranked choice voting really allows for higher-quality and more diverse candidates is open to question.
A study by Jonathan Colner, a data science assistant professor at New York University, found little evidence of that in a look at 47 cities in 13 states where the system is already used.
FairVote said the study relied too much on jurisdictions where ranked choice voting was only recently put in place and not enough on places where it’s been in effect longer.
Some critics of ranked choice voting object to the way it has been pushed. In Oregon, state lawmakers put it on the ballot, but in the other states and D.C., it was added after paid signature-gathering efforts.
In Colorado, Thiry In late October, gave more than $1.4 million to the campaign and is co-chair of the board of Unite America, a group that advocates for open primaries, ranked choice general elections and ending gerrymandering and has backed FairVote.
According to Colorado Public Radio, Thiry and a group of other wealthy donors such as Kathryn Murdoch, daughter-in-law of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Ken Griffin, founder the Citadel hedge fund, have spent tens of millions of dollars on ranked choice efforts in several states.
When Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) announced his opposition to the ranked choice measure, he said the campaign in his state showed the dangers that it could lead to in the form of an increased role for big money in politics.
“Coloradans have had no opportunity to debate meaningfully this transformation of our elections or the chance to think through the unintended consequences of these far-reaching changes. Instead, we have been battered by a one-sided barrage of millions of dollars of TV advertisements to persuade us to abandon our current, world-class election system for an untested experiment,” Bennet said in a statement.
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FairVote pointed to the number of signatures the ranked choice voting measure gathered in Colorado and the fact that elected officials from both parties supported it as evidence the idea has broad public support.