By Lindsey Harmon
As Nevadans, we cherish the principle that every person’s vote matters. Our democracy is built on a foundation that empowers citizens with a clear and simple rule: one person, one vote. This fundamental idea ensures that our voices are heard, our choices respected, and our elections straightforward.
However, Rank Choice Voting (RCV), an element of Question 3 not discussed in television ads by the proponents of this amendment, is a risky system to enshrine into our constitution without more robust testing – testing that, as of now, does not exist. Statewide RCV elections have been used in only two states, Maine and Alaska, for a grand total of just three elections since 2018.
If passed, Question 3 has the potential to permanently undercut the foundations of Nevada’s elections, needlessly injecting chaos into a process voters are already familiar with.
RCV comes with potentially serious and well-documented problems. Under this system, voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than selecting just one. On the surface, this might seem like a way to ensure broad support for elected officials, but in reality, it introduces significant challenges that undermine our democratic process. That can include something called ballot “exhaustion,” where voters who did not rank a top candidate have their ballot tossed out during the process, as if they never voted at all.
A recent study also reveals 1 in 20 voters are finding their votes to be rejected due to improperly marked ballots. That’s 5 percent of voters, people who would be voting – under Question 3 – not only in Senate and House elections, but for every statewide office and every state legislator. In Nevada we already have issues with down ballot completion, imagine how many voters will stop mid way through the ballot under this system. As someone who spends significant resources and time curing ballots every cycle, I can tell you from experience, voters are busy. We already have enough challenges in ballot completion, why would we add another stumbling block?
In some cases, ballots in RCV elections are ten times more likely to be rejected than ballots in a non-RCV election. The current system, where each voter casts a single vote for the candidate of their choice, is clear and efficient. Burdened by a counting process that isn’t just tallying results, but eliminating candidates and ballots over the course of days and weeks – RCV makes the transparency of elections more difficult, which could potentially add fuel to the fire with election denialism and issues certifying the vote locally.
That’s exactly what happened during New York City’s 2021 mayoral primary, when the city’s Board of Elections was forced to delete initial results from its website after human error injected tens of thousands of test votes into the tallies and skewed the initial results.
It’s also worth asking: Why would we risk implementing a system that increases the likelihood of voter error and disenfranchisement that remains largely untested at the state level?
Question 3 seeks to permanently enshrine a potentially imperfect system in our state constitution, making it much more difficult to address its issues once they arise. Constitutional amendments would require at least two more elections or two legislative sessions to change in any way – functionally a five year process. If passed, it would be exceedingly difficult to repeal or amend, leaving Nevadans stuck with a potentially broken process that could cost millions of dollars to fix.
Finally, the proponents of Question 3 have sold this effort as a “grassroots operation” but it is funded by big donors from out of state and there are no guaranteed funding streams for the voter education this is going to require. A 2022 analysis from the state’s Legislative Counsel Bureau found RCV would cost at least $3.2 million to implement in Nevada, and at least another $114,000 per election cycle. None of that money is accounted for by Question 3, nor is any of it already in the state budget. Instead, the burden will be passed on to taxpayers and to nonprofits who are experts in voter education, but who were excluded from the process of moving this to the ballot in the first place.
In the end, Rank Choice Voting is a solution in search of a problem. Our current voting system ensures that each Nevadan’s voice is heard clearly and directly. Introducing complexity, and a higher risk of discarded votes is not the way forward. Nevadans deserve a voting system that respects their voices, not one that silences them through a maze of ranked preferences and confusing calculations.
Put simply, Rank Choice Voting has no place in the constitution.
Lindsey Harmon is a life-long Nevadan and the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes Nevada, an organization that advocates and educates on behalf of issues of abortion rights and sexual and reproductive health care in Nevada.
Submitted opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of This Is Reno. Have something to say? Submit an opinion article or letter to the editor here.
