Vivek Ramaswamy, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, says in 2004 he voted for Michael Badnarik for president. See this story. Ramaswamy was age 19 at the time. Badnarik was the Libertarian presidential nominee that year. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board never misses an opportunity to disparage Ranked Choice Voting and did so again on Wed, June 26 in an editorial applauding the Arlington County, VA Board of Supervisors decision last week to use Plurality Voting instead of RCV is the November 2023 General Election.
I posted the following commentary on the WSJ website in response:
Here is an analysis of the June Ranked Choice Voting election in Arlington County, Virginia. Voters ranked their candidates in order of preference, which is very simple. Scroll down to where you see Round 1 through Round 7 in a horizontal box. Then click through the seven rounds of vote counting to see the vote transfer process. This is hard for the public to understand? If so, we have far deeper problems than RCV vs. Plurality Voting. Is the Editorial Board of the WSJ really too dumb to understand this process? No, the WSJ is–again–writing disingenuously about RCV, because they know many of the Republican candidates they support are too unpopular with the electorate to win RCV elections.
Ohio voters vote on August 8 on Issue One, which would make it more difficult for statewide initiatives to get on the ballot. The Libertarian, Green, and Forward Parties have asked voters to reject the idea. See this story.
The Eleventh Circuit will hear Graeter Birmingham Ministries v Alabama Secretary of State, 22-13708, the week of November 13. This is the case over access to the Alabama list of registered voters. The state charges tens of thousands of dollars for the list. But the U.S. District Court had ruled that a provision in federal law requires the state to give a free list in certain circumstances. The plaintiffs want a free list of which voters were purged after the November 2022 election, and a list of voters who had applied to register but were denied due to a felony conviction.
This decision is not a permanent decision to not use Ranked Choice Voting in the future, but it is a temporary setback for election reformers. Here is a story from The Virginia Mercury.
