Ranked Choice Voting In Arlington Scuttled By Vote Counting Confusion

ARLINGTON, VA — Arlington County Board members decided against approving the use of ranked choice voting in November’s general election for two seats on the county board at its meeting on Saturday, a decision they attributed primarily to confusion about vote tabulation issues.

Arlington County Board member Libby Garvey noted at Saturday's board meeting that, after seeing the use of ranked choice voting in the publicly run primary, she did not fully understand how the tabulation method worked in the two-seat primary election for county board.

“I’m probably not the only one who doesn’t understand all of it,” she said.

Arlington's use of ranked choice voting in the June Democratic primary for county board resulted in Maureen Coffey and Susan Cunningham winning the election. The two Democratic nominees are expected to face independent Audrey Clement and Republican Juan Carlos Fierro in November's general election for county board.

Garvey said the confusion caused by the use of ranked choice voting was because two seats were up for grabs in the primary. “I don’t think people understand all the ramifications,” she said.

READ ALSO: Use Of Ranked Choice Voting Rejected By Arlington For General Election

In an email to Patch on Monday, Garvey explained that she thought she understood the tabulation process when she voted to approve its use last December, but later realized she did not. "I suspect this may be the case with a lot of people," she said.

Garvey also noted that many people in the Democratic Party "were anxious to use this method," which has been used in previous primaries conducted internally by the political party.

"With the vote just taken, we were looking at a general election, which must reflect the desires and understanding of the whole population, which is a very different situation from a pilot in a party primary," she said.

Democratic primary elections in Arlington have proven to be consequential over the past few decades because its winners have in almost every case determined the candidates who will eventually win in the general election. Under Virginia law, all voters, not just members of a specific political party, can participate in a publicly run primary election.

"Again, I suspect a number of the advocates for using ranked choice voting in the primary did not actually understand all the ramifications of how the tabulation would work," Garvey said.

The June 20 primary was the first time that ranked choice voting had been used in a publicly run primary in Virginia.

Virginia Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington) said he was disappointed with the board's decision not to use ranked choice voting in the general election for county board.

Describing the board's decision as a case of political "hokey pokey," Hope said if ranked choice voting was appropriate for the Democratic primary, it should have been good enough for the general election.

Hope said the board's decision represents a big loss for voters who benefited from a more collegial campaign for county board in contrast to the mudslinging seen in the Democratic primary elections for Arlington County commonwealth's attorney and sheriff.

Other jurisdictions in Virginia and across the nation that were looking to Arlington as a potential model for running a ranked choice voting election also may be scared off after the board's decision not to use it in the general election, he told Patch.

In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation — patroned by Hope — that allowed Arlington to run elections using ranked choice voting. A similar measure allowed the method to be used in other localities in Virginia. The bill took effect in 2021.

Hope's legislation did not stipulate how votes should be tabulated. But Virginia state regulations, written by the state elections board, mandated that Arlington and other localities in the state use the “single transferrable vote” system.

In the Democratic primary for Arlington County Board, this tabulation system meant that a "surplus fraction" of Coffey's votes after she was the first to cross the 33.3 percent threshold to win were then redistributed to the remaining candidates. But voters who made Cunningham their first choice vote did not have their second place votes counted, the vast majority of whom were likely Natalie Roy.

Arlington County Board member Matt de Ferranti said at Saturday’s meeting that he would support moving forward with ranked choice voting only when the county has “deeply and fully considered the tabulation methods in addition to the overall process” when two seats are at stake.

READ ALSO: Coffey, Cunningham Win Democratic Primary For Arlington County Board

The Arlington County Board voted last December to use ranked choice voting in the publicly run primaries for county board in 2023.

Prior to approving ranked choice voting in the primaries, member Katie Cristol had announced that she would not be seeking re-election. A few days after the board approved the use of ranked choice voting, Chair Christian Dorsey announced he would not be seeking re-election. That meant candidates who decided to enter the Democratic primary would be vying for two open seats, rather than running against two incumbents.

Gretchen Reinemeyer, the general registrar and director of elections for Arlington County, said her office met with the county board in a public work session in advance of the initial endorsement by the board last November in favor of using ranked choice voting in the 2023 county board primary.

Reinemeyer's office provided a sample of what the ballot would like and showed a video to explain tabulation in a multi-winner election, she said in an email to Patch.

The elections office also met with each board member or their aide to explain in detail every aspect of ranked choice voting as it was being implemented in the Democratic primary election for county board, for more than an hour in some cases, Reinemeyer said.

At Saturday’s board meeting, Garvey said one of the reasons she voted to use ranked choice voting in the primary “was this idea that it really does get better behavior … and not so much negative campaigning, which I think is really healthy.”

But Garvey also noted that less negative campaigning “happens just anyway when you have two seats up.”

“So, you don’t need ranked choice voting to do that,” she said.

At Saturday's meeting, Arlington County Board member Takis Karantonis said he "heard a lot from voters who belong to minorities" that they did not understand the ranked choice voting process used in the Democratic primary.

“What did we do to reach out to these voters, to those who are less prone to turn out, who are less white, who are less educated, who have a higher threshold of accessibility to the political process?” Karantonis asked.

He added that the "uptake" from minority voters in Arlington on ranked choice voting "seems to be low."

Karantonis also noted that 98 percent of the emails he received in response to the use of ranked choice voting "were from majority white voters, and this is very unusual on any topic."

Among those emails from "majority white voters," about 85 percent "were just unhappy for the fact that their candidate didn’t win," he said.

RELATED:

• Arlington Board Primary 'Cliffhanger' Awaits Ranked Choice Tabulations
• Majority Oppose Ranked Choice Voting For Arlington Election: Survey