March 15, 2026 District Letter

I am looking forward to Friday’s first day of Spring. Two weeks ago, I wondered whether that storm’s snow would remain with us until April, but thankfully it is almost gone. In this week’s letter I will discuss a bill to introduce ranked choice voting.

A. The Problem of Multi-Candidate Races

In high school civics, we are taught that the purest form of democracy is majority rule. In a two-candidate election, the winner will achieve this ideal. When there are more than two candidates, however, many states (including ours) decide the election based on the candidate with greatest plurality of votes, even if it is not a majority. I became quite familiar with the vagaries of this system in my first campaign for this office in the Democratic primary. The results of that five-way race were as follows:
As you can see, I was elected by fewer than one-third of the voters. What is more, the two candidates who finished second and third believed that they were effectively splitting the votes of the same constituency which (they believed) would have preferred either of them to me; therefore, had either of them chosen not to run, the other would have received 47% to my 31% and thus won the primary.

These concerns can be magnified in a three-way race. Consider the 2022 Democratic primary for governor, which had three major candidates (and two minor candidates). That race had the following results:
These results, in the opinion of some, frustrated the overall preferences of the voters, as the second and third place candidates arguably split the vote of 56% of the voters who wanted to see a change.

B. Ranked Choice Voting

In light of the limitations of pure plurality voting in multi-candidate elections, some jurisdictions have adopted a practice called “ranked choice,” in which voters are given the option of going beyond naming a single first-choice candidate to adding, in rank order, their preferences of the remaining candidates. A typical ranked choice ballot can look like this:
Once all of the votes have been recorded, they are tabulated in stages. If the first choices of voters yield a majority winner, the contest is over. If not, the first-choice ballots of those who selected the lowest finisher are redistributed to the candidates who were the second choice of those voters. If that yields a majority, the race is decided. If not, the same redistribution occurs of the ballots of the new last-place finisher, continuing in successive rounds until one candidate receives a majority. In this way, the ultimate winner will have gained a form of support from a majority of the voters.

C. Alternative Non-Plurality Voting Systems

In light of my own tenuous first election, I asked Senate leadership to form a study commission on the issue of non-plurality voting. They graciously agreed. The commission ultimately produced this Report. It analyzes a variety of alternative systems, including ranked choice voting. If you have time, the Report contains an extended discussion of the policy advantages and concerns raised by ranked choice voting and other non-plurality voting systems.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the Report concludes that while each of these alternative systems could improve on pure plurality voting in some ways, each also introduces complexities. For ranked choice voting, those complexities included a more elaborate ballot, the need to educate voters and election officials, and the reduced transparency of multi-state vote counting. Many of these complexities can be addressed over time.

D. Trying Out Ranked Choice Voting In The 2028 Presidential Primary

The Senate has considered this issue in different forms over the past few years. This year I introduced S-2590, which would introduce ranked choice voting for the 2028 Presidential primary only. I believe the Presidential primary can provide the best possible “test case” for Rhode Island voters to try out this system for these reasons:

  1. There is only one set of candidates for voters to rank. This also reduces the complexity of the ballot.
  2. The candidates will have well-funded campaigns to educate voters about how ranked choice works.
  3. The election officials will have more than a year to develop their system, and tabulations will only involve two races (one for each political party).
  4. Given Rhode Island’s likely smaller role in deciding the outcome of the party nominations, it will not be catastrophic if election officials need extra time to complete the tabulation correctly.

In short, the 2028 Presidential primary could provide Rhode Islanders with a low-risk trial run of this system. Given the weaknesses of our current system, as highlighted both in my own primary election in 2021 and the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2022, I believe we could have much to gain and relatively little to lose.