I am strongly opposed to adopting Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in Virginia.

In 2021, Virginia Republicans used Ranked Choice Voting to nominate candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. I served first as a teller at a voting location and then spent the next three days in Richmond counting ballots. That experience gave me a firsthand look at one of RCV's most serious and persistent challenges: many voters simply did not understand how to complete the ballot correctly.

We encountered numerous ballots filled out incorrectly, including:

• The same candidate ranked as the voter's first choice in every ranking slot.
• Ballots with no first-choice selection but later rankings completed.
• Ballots that skipped rankings — for example, marking a first choice, leaving the second ranking blank, and then selecting a candidate for the third ranking.

These errors were not isolated incidents. They demonstrated that even highly motivated voters participating in a party nominating convention — people who had actively sought out the process — struggled to understand basic ranking mechanics. A statewide general election would involve millions of voters with far more varied levels of civic experience, making the problem significantly worse, not better.

In the weeks before the convention, there were also numerous articles and discussions about how voters could "game" the system through strategic ranking. Whether or not those strategies materially influenced the outcome, they added a layer of complexity that no legitimate election system should require voters to navigate. Elections should reward civic participation, not strategic sophistication.

Beyond my direct experience, adopting RCV statewide would introduce serious additional concerns:

• Ballot confusion at scale. What tripped up convention participants will confuse far larger numbers of general election voters, particularly those with lower literacy levels, limited English proficiency, or less familiarity with election procedures — the very voters the system is often claimed to help.
• Exhausted ballots disenfranchise voters. When all of a voter's ranked candidates are eliminated before a winner is determined, that ballot is "exhausted" and no longer counted. This means some voters effectively have no voice in the final outcome — a direct contradiction of the principle of equal suffrage.
• Results are delayed and harder to verify. RCV requires multiple rounds of tabulation. In close races, final results may not be known for days or weeks, eroding public confidence and complicating any audit or recount process.
• Costs fall on taxpayers. Implementation requires new software, significant voter education campaigns, staff retraining, and updated election infrastructure — all at public expense, with no demonstrated improvement in electoral outcomes for Virginia voters.
• Reduced transparency. Virginia's current system allows virtually anyone to observe and understand how votes are counted. RCV's multi-round tabulation process is far less intuitive, making meaningful public oversight more difficult.
• No proven benefit for Virginia. Proponents argue RCV produces more consensus-based winners, but jurisdictions that have adopted it — including Alaska and several U.S. cities — have experienced significant voter confusion, legal challenges, and calls for repeal. Alaska voters repealed RCV by referendum in 2024.

Our elections should prioritize simplicity, transparency, and equal treatment of every vote. Virginia's current system — one person, one vote, one choice per office — is straightforward to execute, easy to understand, fast to tabulate, and ensures every valid vote is counted equally in every round.

For these reasons, I urge the Board to retain Virginia's current voting method and reject the adoption of Ranked Choice Voting.