Ranked choice voting proposal draws GOP opposition ahead of November vote

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii Republicans are campaigning against a proposal for a new voting system in Honolulu elections. The proposal is a charter amendment that will go before Honolulu voters in November.

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What is ranked choice voting

Ranked choice voting, also called ranked voting, lets voters list a second, third or fourth choice candidate instead of voting for only one candidate. The system is gaining popularity but is also seen as a threat to Republican candidates, especially in Hawaii.

HNN analyst Colin Moore, speaking on a recent edition of the Fans of Democracy podcast, said ranked voting for mayor, council, and the city prosecutor is the most dramatic of several proposed Honolulu charter changes.

“This is one of the big ones,” Moore said.

Trey Gortner, a Honolulu Charter Commission member, said the system “allows a voter to show his true preferences.”

Moore said the argument for ranked voting is that “it eliminates the roughest form of campaigning because you want to appeal to everyone.”

How ranked voting works

An animation used to explain the system to voters in Maine states voters “can choose to rank as many or as few candidates as you want,” and “never have to rank all the candidates,” or can choose to support a single candidate by marking the bubble for preference number one.

Progressive and government reform groups say ranked voting eliminates the “spoiler effect,” in which two candidates compete for similar voters.

“The second one and the third one are similar to each other, but they’ve split the vote, so now the guy that fewer people like gets elected,” podcast host Daryl Huff explained.

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Republican opposition

Local Republicans are campaigning against the proposal. State Rep. Elijah Pierick, R-District 40, said the system would have affected his own election.

“If you just did ranked choice voting, I wouldn’t have even become a state representative because everybody on the left (Democrat) side of the primary all had more votes than me,” Pierick said.

The proposal would only affect nonpartisan county races, but Republicans say the current system of primaries and runoffs gives GOP-leaning candidates a chance in a state that leans liberal.

“I think it might be harder to get conservatives at the finish line serving the people,” Pierick said.

Hawaii GOP Chair Shirlene Ostrov said the system “introduces confusion to a ballot.”

“We believe that a voter should have one vote per voter without having to rank support candidates they don’t want to support,” Ostrov said.

The ranked voting proposal is one of 20 charter amendment questions for Honolulu voters. Other counties have their own proposed amendments, and there are two state constitutional amendments on the ballot. The Fans of Democracy podcast reviewed all of the proposals and is available on Hawaii News Now’s digital and streaming platforms.

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