Ranked-Choice Voting is for Communists
“Dictatorship of the proletariat” begins by implementing the Left’s favorite new election idea, say the heirs of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao
America’s Communist Party (CPUSA) was founded in 1921 with an oath of allegiance to the Russian Communist Party. For the next 70 years, it survived on bundles of cash smuggled in from the Soviet Union and support from gullible Hollywood liberals.
The Communist Party is irrelevant in politics only because America already has a socialist party—Barack Obama’s Democrats—but now the armchair revolutionaries believe they’re poised to return in force thanks to a radical change in how Americans elect their leaders sweeping the states: Ranked-choice voting (RCV).
“Ranked-choice voting is part of the struggle for democracy in the Popular Front,” CPUSA activists recently declared as part of a new push to include RCV in the party’s 2024 platform. “Engaging in campaigns for ranked choice gives new Party members a way to help us build the Popular and United fronts, making the possibility of socialist and Communist candidates more viable.”.
They’re probably correct.
RCV demands voters cast a vote for every candidate on their ballot in a preferred order, not just the candidate of their choice as Americans have done for centuries.
Want to vote Democrat or Republican? Too bad. In a heated race using RCV, you have to vote for every Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Reform, Socialist, Constitution—and yes, Communist—Party candidate who happens to be on your ballot.
If you don’t, you ballot will likely get scrapped.
After voting, opaque algorithms run a series of rounds, dropping the lowest vote-getter each time until only one winner remains—and voters may be shocked to learn that it wasn’t the candidate they expected. In ruby-red Alaska, where Republicans have a near 2–1 party registration advantage, Republican congressional candidates won more votes than the lone Democrat in 2022, yet lost because they split the vote under the state’s unpopular RCV rules. The result: A Democrat victory for the first time in decades in a state that broke 10 points for Donald Trump in 2020.
Maine suffered the same fate in 2018. In both races, confused voters only filled in a single bubble on their ballots—as they’d been doing for decades—leading tabulators to trash 8,000 ballots in Maine and 15,000 in Alaska, respectively.
(COMMENTARY: Ban Ranked-Choice Voting, Save Georgia)
Smash the Bourgeoisie with RCV
While this has helped Democrats win in conservative districts, far-left third parties are scheming for ways to use RCV to draw votes from the Republicans—and further radicalize Democrats. “With ranked-choice voting,” the Communists explain, “working class mass organizations will be able to back candidates that fully reflect their goals in the electoral arena.
“Even if Democrats move left and scramble to cater to the insurgent anti-monopoly voters, the very possibility that Democrats could lose to further left candidates means more working class leverage over the electoral system.”
In 2024, that means defeating “the far right” (i.e. Trump-supporting Republicans). Under ranked-choice voting, if a Communist candidate didn’t outright win at least “our votes would simply be allocated to another non-fascist candidate. Ranked choice voting will allow us to strengthen the anti-monopoly struggle without compromising the critical task of defeating the far-right in the electoral arena.”
For mainstream American voters, however, the uncertainty that RCV brings to elections sows distrust in election outcomes. Where we should be demanding more transparency, RCV makes outcomes harder to predict while disenfranchising thousands of voters whose incomplete ballots get trashed by tabulators. Will that make such individuals more or less likely to vote the next time ‘round?
Democrats understand this. D.C.’s Democratic Party voted against adopting RCV in May 2023 because they feared it would confuse and “hinder voter engagement,” “undermin[ing] the strength of Democrats” in the district.
Yet everywhere else, “dark money” mega-donors bankroll RCV initiatives in states they aim to flip for Democrats. The biggest group behind this Astroturf campaign is FairVote, a Maryland leftist group funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, hedge fund billionaire John Arnold, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Tides Foundation.
Fortunately, Republicans are getting wise to this scheme and countering it with RCV bans, most notably in Florida. Georgia looks like the next key state preparing to ban the policy after learning that FairVote expects to win 2 more congressional seats for Democrats using RCV.
Conservatives shouldn’t stop until it’s illegal everywhere.
(FIRST RIGHT PODCAST: Ken Cuccinelli’s Crusade to Defend America’s Elections from the Radical Left)
