Comments At Arlington County Board Meeting, February 24, 2024.
I applaud the County’s proposal to schedule a ranked choice election for the County Board race in November, 2024. Ranked choice voting (a/k/a RCV) is a necessary tool for gauging voter support for candidates and the policies they promote. It’s better than first past the post elections, which have produced a non-competitive political system at all levels of government.
RCV enables voters to rank candidates in order of preference and determines the winner by transferring losers’ ballots to other ranked candidates until someone gets the quorum needed to win. Thus no votes are wasted.
Yet the confusion surrounding the RCV tabulation of the June, 2023 Democratic Primary for County Board was unfortunate. I believe it could have been avoided if the Arlington Registrar had provided a link to the state’s official RCV election tabulation report that listed the results and provided an explanation of the round by round tabulation.
The Registrar recently revamped the Arlington Elections website with a lot more information and detail. Past County election results are available with a link to the state’s election results website. Yet when I visited the state site today, I could not find a link to the above mentioned official RCV election tabulation report.
Going forward, if a link to RCV election results is not available on the state website, the Registrar should post the RCV tabulation report on the Arlington website.