Legislation aims to ban ranked choice voting to force binary elections.
(WNY News Now) – Washington, DC – Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY-24), chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, alongside Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) reintroduced the One Vote One Choice Act to prevent the practice of ranked choice voting.
This legislation seeks to prevent ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank political candidates in the order they would prefer them. The most common form of ranked choice voting is Instant-Runnoff Voting. If a candidate receives the majority of the vote, they win the election. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and the ballots cast by voters who preferred that candidate would then be added to those voters’ next preferred candidate. This process continues until a candidate receives the majority of the vote.
Congresswoman Tenney claims that allowing voters to vote by preference, which allows them to vote for smaller parties first without “wasting” their vote, causes distorted election results that don’t demonstrate the preference of the voters.
“Not only does rank choice voting cause chaos and confusion, but it leads to distorted outcomes and results that do not demonstrate the will of the voters. By banning rank-choice voting, we will ensure that Americans can have confidence in the outcome of our elections. As chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, I will continue to support legislation like the One Vote, One Choice Act, which increases transparency, accessibility, and confidence in our electoral process,” said Congresswoman Tenney.
“For centuries, citizens of the United States have been able to cast their votes with one vote and one voice. But in recent years, there has been an effort to enact ranked choice voting, a method which distorts election outcomes. In 2021’s mayoral primary in New York City, voters had to wait weeks to discover who won, which, in turn, undermined voter confidence in the result. Outcomes like that are problematic for everyone and are exactly why we need to ban the practice of ranked choice voting at the federal level. Ensuring confidence in our elections is a critical function of a democratic republic, and I’m proud to introduce this bill to accomplish that goal,” said Congressman Lawler.
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