RICHMOND, Va. -- A Richmond City Council committee effectively killed legislation Tuesday that would have seen the council elected by ranked choice voting in 2024.
The council's Organizational Development Standing Committee, which is made up of all nine members, voted 6-3 to strike the legislation from the upcoming full council meeting.
What is ranked-choice voting versus plurality voting?
Say there was a ballot for voters to decide what the best season is. Under the current format, plurality voting, voters would tick one box for either spring, summer fall or winter. The winner is whoever gets the most votes, even if it's not a majority or over 50%.
Under ranked-choice voting, voters would pick their first choice, then second, third and fourth. Once voting is finished, if one season gets more than 50% of the vote, they are the winner.
If no candidate or season meets that majority threshold, the candidate with the fewest votes is removed. The people who picked them have their vote go to whoever their second choice was.
If there is still no winner, the process is repeated with the lowest vote-getter in each round being removed and their votes redistributed until someone gets over 50% of the vote or two candidates remain.
How do Richmond leaders feel about ranked-choice voting?
"It's really about trying to make sure people feel enfranchised and not having candidates split a vote," Katherine Jordan, a councilmember for Richmond's 2nd District, said.
Jordan introduced the ordinance and said she learned of the concept while running in the last election. She said, personally, she would want to know that she represents the majority of voters in her district, regardless of which choice she was.
"With this, you know that you could have confidence of saying, this is my first choice. But you know what, I'm okay with this other person to what I want I don't want is this third candidate," Jordan said.
Jordan argues another benefit is the possibility of tempering political attacks.
"Because no longer are you trying to discredit everyone else, you're trying to appeal to the broadest base possible because you may want to be their second or third vote," Jordan said.
However, not everyone in Richmond is in favor of this new voting format.
"Whoever received the most votes, let's stick with that and that should be the winner. We shouldn't be voting on one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10," James "JJ" Minor, the president of Richmond's NAACP chapter, said.
Minor said that among the NAACP's concerns are they say it violates "one person, one vote" that someone with the most votes at the start could lose and its potential for confusing voters.
"Our seniors are talking about it, they don't understand it. I think we should stick with what we have right now. Why are we trying to fix something that's not broken?" Minor said.
CBS6 Political Analyst Dr. Bob Holsworth adds that confusion could come from the fact that only city councils and county boards can make the switch and voters could face other races in the more traditional format.
"There's a lot of good reasons to have ranked-choice voting. It would make a letter better sense, I think, for the voters and be a lot less confusing if it applied to all similar elections that were occurring at the same time," Holsworth said.
Richmond's registrar would be tasked with implementing the new system if approved and Registrar Keith Balmer said voter awareness would be the biggest challenge but added that his office is prepared to engage the community.
"Because one thing I don't want is for voters to go into a polling place in 2024 confused. Like that will fall on me and I wouldn't feel good about that. So I got to make sure that they understand the process," Balmer said.
