EAST LANSING, MI – Bill Gelineau knows how frustrating being a third-party candidate can be. Six years ago, he was the libertarian candidate for governor of Michigan.
His campaign was remarkable in that he offered a broad range of interesting and innovative ideas, such as a plan to break up Detroit’s failing public school system into smaller districts. Despite not having the millions for advertising the major party candidates did, he began drawing favorable attention.
But he then suffered the fate of innumerable minor candidates. Many voters who liked Gelineau ended up casting ballots for one of the two major party nominees, because they knew he couldn’t win.
“So many times, I heard people say “I wanted to vote for you, but …” he told me. In the end, he got a mere 56,606 votes, barely one percent of the total.
But the system that has stymied third-party candidates and innovative views may soon change. Now, there’s a movement gearing up in Michigan that would both ensure someone could cast a vote for an independent, a Green or Libertarian without having to worry they wasted it, and hopefully encourage consensus and cooperation.
It’s called Ranked Choice Voting, (RCV)) and here’s how it works. Voters would not just choose a single candidate but rank them– first, second, third, etc.
Then if no one has 50 percent, the candidate getting the fewest votes would be eliminated and their second choice given those votes, and on and on till someone has a majority.
That, supporters say, would mean that nobody has to worry about “wasting a vote,” and that the eventual winner would represent people with at least something in common.
“This would also encourage candidates to talk about issues instead of slinging mud,” said Ron Zimmerman, who is the current head of Rank MI Vote, the non-profit, non-partisan group that is working, largely under the radar, to get a state constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot in 2026.
He, by the way, is not your typical young political organizer, but a 59-year-old retired product engineer and corporate executive who felt inspired to try to create a better system for his sons.
“Candidates would have an incentive to be less toxic, because they would have to build a broad majority. We’d get better campaigns,” and, ultimately, better government, Zimmerman said.
Ranked Choice Voting, sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, has been slowly catching on. Maine and Alaska have been using it in statewide elections, and will use it in presidential elections for the first time this year.
New York City uses RCV to elect its mayors, Hawaii uses it in special elections, and many other cities use it as well.
Two years ago, in perhaps the best-known use of RCV, Mary Peltola, a Native American Democrat, led Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor and vice-presidential candidate 39.7 percent to 31 percent, in a special election for a seat in Congress.
Most of the rest of the vote went to another Republican, Nick Begich, and most of those made Palin their second choice. Most, but not all; in the end, Peltola prevailed, 51.5 to 48.5 percent.
The result was similar in a race for the full term in November. But despite the fact that RCV enabled her to narrow the margin, Ms. Palin denounced the system, as have other Republicans, with U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas calling it a “scam to rig elections.”
Voters, however, seem to like it. Last year, the use of RCV for local elections was on the ballot in three Michigan cities: Royal Oak, Kalamazoo and East Lansing. It passed everywhere, but authorities haven’t attempted to use it because of concerns as to whether it is legal under current Michigan law.
Rather than challenging it in court, Zimmerman said, the best solution would be to pass a statewide amendment. That won’t be easy. Getting it on the ballot would take 446,198 valid signatures of registered voters, all collected within a six month window.
Because some are inevitably invalid, they really would need to collect at least 600,000, which is both expensive and labor intensive, but not impossible. Six years ago, Katie Fahey, an unknown political activist in her late 20s, created a non-profit organization called Voters Not Politicians (VNP) collected signatures, survived court challenge after court challenge, and got an amendment passed to end gerrymandering in the state.
Now, she is working with Rank MI Vote. The group is currently holding 40 town hall meetings in all parts of the state to gauge support and to get advice on fine-tuning the ballot language for the proposed Michigan amendment.
“We need volunteers,” Zimmerman said, and eventually, money. Gelineau, who has left politics and is focusing on kids, grandkids and his title business in Grand Rapids, would very much like to see RCV succeed.
“The best argument for RCV is consensus building. Over time, the smarter of the two dominant parties will attempt to build coalitions with the middle,” something the nation badly needs.
Expect to hear a lot more about Ranked Choice Voting when the current election is finally over.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
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