Bill to ban ranked choice voting passes Ohio House

SANDUSKY — A bill by state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, to ban ranked choice voting has passed the Ohio House and may go to the governor soon. Senate Bill 63, which had earlier passed the Ohio Senate 27-5, won approval in the Ohio House 65-27 last week. The House added an amendment stating that candidate petitions submitted by people running for office are public records, so the measure has to go back to the Ohio Senate before it can be sent to Gov. Mike DeWine. Gavarone said last week she expects that to happen soon. The Ohio Senate's options are to accept the House amendment, sending the measure to DeWine, or to reject it, sending the measure to a conference committee. Gavarone expects the Senate to accept it. "I'm hopeful the Senate will concur next week, but I don't have the actual timeline," Gavarone told the Register Friday. If it's signed into law, Gavarone's bill would enforce its provisions by cutting off money from the state government's Local Government Fund to any local government that adopted ranked choice voting. Apparently, it hasn't been used in Ohio yet, although some local-level governments have discussed it. What is it? While there are different forms of ranked choice voting, the term is generally understood to mean that voters in each race with multiple candidates don't just vote for one candidate. Instead, they rank all of the candidates in order of preference. There are different methods of ranking the votes, but under one method, if a voter's first choice has been eliminated for having the fewest votes, the voter's second choices are then counted as votes. This continues until a candidate gets a majority of votes. The process is known as an "instant runoff." A Gavarone press release on her bill offers this description of how it works: "Ranked choice voting is a voting method that continuously eliminates candidates in a series of rounds until a winner materializes. Under this election method, voters rank candidates in order of their personal preference instead of choosing just one. "Ranked choice voting distorts election outcomes, which inherently leads to uncertainty in our results," Gavarone said. "If this idea came to Ohio, it could, as it has in other states, delay election results, decrease voter turnout and create confusion among voters, diluting their voices at the ballot box." Supporters of ranked choice voting argue that in elections with multiple candidates, it would result in the election of a politician supported by more of the voters. A case for ranked choice Andrew Yang, a businessman who ran for president in 2020, is a proponent of ranked choice voting. The Register interviewed Yang when Gavarone earlier introduced a similar bill. "Right now, too many people in America feel like they're forced to vote for the lesser of two evils," Yang said. With ranked choice voting, everyone can vote for whomever they want, "without being told they are a spoiler and they are wasting their vote," he said. Yang said he disagrees with criticism that ranked choice voting is too hard for voters, because they have to know all of the candidates well enough to rank them. "I've got a 7-year-old, and he can rank his favorite ice cream flavors one, two, three," Yang said. "Saying that it's going to be tough for voters is ridiculous." Local Ohio House members who voted in favor of the ban included Gary Click, R-Vickery; Kellie Deeter, R-Norwalk, and D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron. When the Ohio Senate voted on the bill last year, state Sen. Bill Reineke, R-Tiffin, and state Sen. Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville, joined Gavarone in supporting the measure. Although it would have been new to Ohio, ranked choice voting has been used in other states, including municipal elections in Salt Lake City and Seattle, and in political primaries in some states.