There’s a new election initiative that some people in Michigan are hoping to put before the voters in November of 2026. The effort is called “Rank MI Vote.” The people behind this effort are trying to garner enough signatures to get Ranked Choice Voting on the ballot next year. They claim, “Ranked Choice Voting is the one simple change we need to get America back on track.” When in fact, it is anything but simple.
Under ranked choice voting, voters rank their preferred candidates on the ballot in order of preference. If no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote, the votes for the candidate with the least amount of support, are then reallocated to those voters’ second choices and so on, until a winner is finally called. Under Michigan’s current voting system, the candidate who receives the highest number of votes wins.
Ranked Choice Voting undermines the “one person, one vote” tradition in our Republic, allowing certain votes to be weighted more heavily than others. This is not what our Founding Fathers intended.
Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting. This is how we’ve ended up with Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who are blocking President Trump at every turn.
Five cities here in Michigan — Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Ferndale, Kalamazoo, and Royal Oak — have already passed proposals to adopt ranked choice voting in their elections, according to the Detroit Free Press. However, current state election law makes it illegal to implement so far.
Rep. Rachelle Smit, R-Martin, chair of the House Election Integrity Committee and a former township clerk, introduced House Bill 4707 to ban Ranked Choice Voting statewide. She says ranked choice voting is confusing for voters. The bill easily passed in the Michigan House 57-44. The bill now heads to the Michigan Senate, where it is expected to die.
Ranked Choice Voting complicates the voting process by requiring voters to rank multiple candidates in order of preference. This can cause significant delays in determining election winners, often preventing results from being finalized on election night, even days later.
It mandates the use of machine ballot counters, and due to the complexity of counting ranked ballots, the likelihood of errors increases. This has led to some elections being overturned.
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Add to that, the nightmare it would cause state and local canvassing boards to certify or audit a contested election. Further still, there is no way to conduct a recount if an election were close. Last year in Calhoun County, the recount for the State Representative there took several days to sort out because of nine days of early voting, multiple precincts and mail-in ballots complicating the process. Now how would a recount be conducted with ranked choice ballots in that mix?
Ranked Choice Voting is a really bad choice for Michigan, for so many reasons. You can learn more at: https://stoprcv.com/