This post was originally published on this site.
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) has long been sold as the enlightened alternative to those supposedly benighted, partisan Republicans who just can’t handle voters having more choices. So imagine the awkwardness when the Democratic National Committee decides it may want to ban RCV in Democratic presidential primaries.
Yes, the DNC. The Democratic National Committee. Not the RNC. Not Donald Trump. Not some Republican state legislature. The Democrats.
The DNC is considering a rule that would prohibit states from using RCV to select delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination. That matters because Washington, D.C., is already using RCV in its 2026 primaries after voters overwhelmingly approved the system in 2024.
And that creates a rather entertaining problem for the RCV establishment.
For years, RCV advocates have portrayed opposition to ranked voting as a Republican plot. If someone raises concerns about ballot exhaustion, voter confusion, complicated tabulation or whether RCV actually delivers the promised political nirvana, the standard response is essentially: Republicans don’t like it.
Apparently, the Democratic National Committee didn’t get the memo.
The proposed DNC rule would prevent RCV from being used in Democratic presidential primaries, even in jurisdictions where voters have already chosen it. DC Democrats have now publicly urged the DNC to reject the proposed ban, arguing that it would override the wishes of voters who approved RCV by a 73% margin.
That is not exactly evidence of a Republican conspiracy.
There is an even bigger problem for the RCV sales pitch. RCV advocates routinely argue that the system is particularly valuable in presidential primaries because crowded fields allow voters to rank multiple candidates rather than choosing just one. FairVote, one of the nation’s leading RCV advocacy organizations, reported this year that 63% of likely Democratic primary voters supported using RCV for presidential nominations.
So why would the Democratic Party leadership want to prohibit something its advocates say Democratic voters love?
Perhaps because political parties understand something RCV evangelists occasionally overlook: a presidential primary isn’t merely an election. It’s a delegate-allocation process controlled by the political party.
The DNC may have legitimate reasons for wanting uniform rules, predictable delegate allocation and a nomination process it can administer consistently across states. Those are fair arguments. But if that’s the case, RCV supporters should debate those arguments honestly instead of pretending every objection is part of a Republican war on democracy.
And that’s the delicious irony here.
When Republicans oppose RCV, we’re told it’s partisan obstruction. When Democrats at the highest levels of the Democratic Party move to prohibit RCV from their own presidential nomination process, suddenly the conversation becomes much more complicated. Maybe RCV isn’t inherently partisan. Maybe opposition to RCV isn’t inherently partisan either. Maybe—just maybe—reasonable people can look at a complicated voting system and conclude that it isn’t necessarily the answer to every electoral problem.
The DNC’s proposed ban doesn’t prove that RCV is bad. But it does something almost as useful: it punctures the lazy argument that opposition to RCV is simply a Republican conspiracy.
Turns out Democrats can have doubts about RCV, too. Who knew democracy could be so bipartisan?