[Updated 12/21/23]:
Arlington County Board members adopted imposition of ranked-choice voting for the June 2024 Arlington County Board primary. Watch for upcoming coverage.
[Updated, 12/17/23]:
Arlington County Board members on Dec. 16 removed the item on ranked-choice voting for the 2024 Democratic primary from their "consent agenda" and will hold a full public hearing on it at the Dec. 19 meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m.
[Original article, 12/14/23:]
It didn’t go perfectly the first time around, but Arlington County Board members later this month are expected to decree that ranked-choice voting be used in County Board nominating primaries moving forward.
Undertaking action in December, even though it is being voted on by a lame-duck board with two of five members set to be gone on Dec. 31, is the “best time” to do it, County Board member Matt de Ferranti told the GazetteLeader.
“Using ranked-choice voting in the primary next year is what all board members, both current and incoming, have said publicly is their preference, so this does not seem a surprise or premature to me,” he said.
Why not just bite the bullet and change the ordinance to also make ranked-choice voting the method for future County Board general elections, as well? Both de Ferranti and his board colleague Libby Garvey said they are stuck with the wording that was legally advertised by staff, focused only on the primary. But each said they expect the 2024 board at its January meeting to adopt ranked-choice voting for County Board general elections, as well.
“I support ranked-choice voting for the general election and am confident that we will finalize that choice once the incoming board members have joined,” de Ferranti said.
Using powers delegated to them two years before by the General Assembly, County Board members in December 2022 imposed ranked-choice (also known as instant-runoff) voting for the 2023 County Board primary.
In retrospect, it perhaps was not the most opportune time, given that 2023 was the one year of each four-year election cycle when two seats were up on a single ballot. The result was voter confusion and (based on the method of calculating votes required by state election officials) the feeling by some that least one candidate was cheated out of victory when Maureen Coffey catapulted over Natalie Roy to win one of the two nomination slots.
Perhaps as a result of the confusion and anger generated by the primary, or perhaps because Arlington Democrats feared using the format for last month’s general election might have given two non-Democrats in the four-candidate field a chance at success, County Board members (Democrats all) over the summer chose to run that election under the familiar winner-take-all format. It was a decision that drew angry retorts from those who for years have been pushing to allow ranked-choice elections in Virginia.
The 2024 County Board race will feature the seat of Libby Garvey, who has held it since 2012 and says she will decide by January or February whether to seek a new four-year term. Two Democrats already have kicked off bids to run for the position, and more are waiting in the wings – the larger the field, potentially the more interesting a ranked-choice election becomes.
Conceivably, Arlington Democrats could opt for a party-run caucus to select their nominee, but odds favor the party’s going with the primary option, since it moves the cost and administrative burden to local election officials.
Garvey, who is expected to chair the County Board next year, declined to discuss specifics about the ranked-choice (RCV) proposal, but joined with de Ferranti to say she anticipated a resolution moving the 2024 and future County Board general-election races to ranked-choice voting would be addressed in January.
That would meet with the approval of advocates like Mike Cantwell, Virginia lead for the Veterans for All Voters organization and a former vice president of FairVote Virginia.
“The positive effects of RCV can only be fully realized if RCV is used in the general election,” he told the GazetteLeader.
Cantwell, who ran for County Board as an independent in 2021, said the ranked-choice method reduces negative campaigning, encourages more people to run and reduces the risk of fringe candidates winning election.
With ranked-choice elections, “voters vote for candidates they support, not against those they oppose most,” Cantwell said.
Legislation enacted several years ago by the General Assembly, allowing localities to use instant-runoff/ranked-choice voting for governing-body elections, left the decision-making on the issue to the elected bodies themselves, rather than requiring (or even allowing) a voter referendum on the issue. That has led some to cry foul, noting that elected officials have a vested interest in the method of elections, creating an almost inherent conflict.
This decision on the voting method for the primary election likely only will impact Democrats, as Republicans typically use other methods to select their nominees. Arlington County Republican Committee chairman Matthew Hurtt declined to comment on the GOP’s position at the moment, but earlier this year, some party rank-and-file were harshly critical of ranked-choice voting during a meeting with Arlington director of elections Gretchen Reinemeyer.
The ordinance change to switch to ranked-choice voting for the primary currently sits on the County Board’s Dec. 16 “consent agenda,” but if any member of the public demands that it be removed for full consideration, that discussion and a vote will take place at the Dec. 19 board meeting.
When she takes office in January, Coffey will become the second County Board member to owe her seat to a come-from-behind ranked-choice victory in a Democratic nominating process.
Following the death of board member Erik Gutshall in 2020, a summertime special election was called to fill the remainder of his term. In the Democratic nominating caucus (run by the party under the ranked-choice format), Takis Karantonis leapfrogged Barbara Kanninen, who had led on the first ballot, and won both the nomination and the special election.
State law currently only allows a ranked-choice option for governing-body elections (boards of supervisors and city councils). Advocates hoped that if the first-in-the-commonwealth efforts by Arlington had gone well, the General Assembly might expand the option to other races.
