I urge you to pass SB1009. It clarifies which elections can use ranked choice voting. Last November we had five candidates for mayor. I really wanted to indicate my first and second choices but no one could give a clear answer on whether the mayor was a city council person. This bill settles the question. It does not require any locality to do anything. It simply enables local governments that want to do so to use ranked choice voting for mayors and school boards as well as city council and board of supervisors. Please pass SB1009.

BigMOneyOutVA, a good governance non-partisan all volunteer group, supports Sen Salim's Ranked Choice Voting bill. It simply allows local communities to expand RCVing to mayoral or schoool board races. RCVs has been successfullly implemented in jurisdications around the country and has been proven to be an easy way to ensure that candidates who win are supported by the majority of voters. It allows citizens, like myself, who worked overseas to feel confident that our votes won't be lost when candidates pull out. For those who believe it is too complicated, in Maine, they tried it out with M&Ms with kindergarteners who understood the concept.

On behalf of the R Street Institute, we would like to submit the attached long form testimony in support of SB 1009.

My name is Rashad Rivera, and I appreciate the opportunity to address the concerns raised about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in SB1009. RCV is an innovative electoral method designed to give voters more choice and ensure majority support for elected officials. While I respect the diverse opinions on this bill, many concerns are based on misconceptions or fears of what might go wrong. My goal today is to clarify these misunderstandings, provide facts from successful RCV implementations, and encourage a more informed dialogue about how this system can strengthen our democracy. Alaska and Arlington County, Virginia, offer excellent examples of how RCV has been successfully implemented, enhancing voter representation and maintaining election integrity. My letter addresses key concerns—such as audits, fairness, and voter confusion—and explains why RCV is both secure and beneficial when implemented with proper voter education and transparent procedures. I urge you to approach this topic with an open mind and a focus on improving voter engagement and confidence.

Ranked Choice Voting is one of the only proven methods for Americans to fight the current hyper-partisan situation we are currently stuck in. All counter arguments essentially amount to calling voters "too stupid to understand" with gross oversimplifications for easily solvable problems. Growing pains are always to be expected, but the ability to actually pick your preferred candidate as #1 without risking throwing away your vote will be worth it in the end.

I oppose SB1009. Please vote "No" on SB1009. Ranked choice voting has a lot of issues to work out before it should even be potentially considered for use in in elections at any level. The execution of ranked choice voting (RCV) is currently flawed. It has not been perfected and standardized enough to ensure its fair use in elections. I urge all VA General Assembly members to vote "No" on this bill and request much more research be done on RCV about how to fix all its issues and make it simple to use and fool-proof to count so it *may* possibly be used with confidence in the future. As it stands, RCV is terribly broken in its execution and will only cause issues with elections. Unnecessary and dangerous issues that can be avoided if we stick to current election and voting standards until RCV has been reviewed and fixed. For your consideration, one of the issues with RCV: 'In traditional elections, every submitted ballot that follows the instructions is counted towards the result, but this isn’t the case with RCV. “Exhausted ballots” in RCV elections do not count towards the final tally. While many RCV ballots are thrown out due to voter error in following convoluted instructions, ballots that follow the instructions to the letter can also be thrown away because the voter ranked candidates who are no longer in contention.10 As candidates are eliminated through multiple rounds of tabulation, voters have their ballots exhausted if they only ranked candidates that have been removed during successive rounds.11 In other words, for a voter’s voice to fully count in every round of an RCV election, he must vote for all candidates on the ballot, even those he may not support. Because of ballot exhaustion, winners of RCV races do not necessarily represent the choice of all voters who participated. RCV claims to protect majority rule, but in reality, RCV creates an artificial majority by eliminating the votes of the lowest-scoring candidates during successive tabulations. One study of Maine elections found that, of 98 recent RCV elections, 60 percent of RCV victors did not win by a majority of the total votes cast' . source: https://thefga.org/research/ranked-choice-voting-a-disaster-in-disguise/ ... ..And here's another source for review in regards to problems with RCV: https://electionscience.org/research-hub/the-limits-of-ranked-choice-voting ;

I oppose SB1009 . Ranked Choice Voting should not be expanded in Virginia. 1. Rank Choice Voting is not auditable, nor can a proper recount occur. 2. Ranked Choice Voting will increase voter confusion, errors and and disenfranchises voters. 3. Ranked Choice Voting causes delayed election results. The first round of results is available election night, but the second, third, fourth and fifth rounds of voting reiterations causes the “final Ranked Choice Voting results” to be delayed by days and weeks. 4. Ranked Choice Voting is not fair. Some voters get just one vote and other voters, who initially choose a losing candidate may get two, three, four or five votes. The standard should be one voter gets one vote. Do not expand Ranked Choice Voting in Virginia.

The data is clear. A majority of Arlington voters like RCV and want to use RCV in future elections, including elections for Mayor and School Board. Young people are especially supportive of RVC. Sincerely, Mike Cantwell Virginia Task Force Leader - Veterans for ALL Voters

As a chief election officer for 4 years, I oppose SB1009. Reasons as follow: 1. Forces the voters to rank candidates they don’t support. 2) Will cause confusion for the voters which may lead to high percentage of spoiling ballots especially if they mistakenly selected two candidates as first choices even though the instructions are presented. The complexity of how it works will frustrate the voters. Voting should be simple and understandable. 3) Does not treat Voters fairly or equally. Some voters get one vote, other Voters (who choose a losing candidate) get two, three, four and more votes. Every time a candidate loses, all the losing votes get reassigned and can eventually change who the original majority voted for. Elections should be one vote for each eligible voter! 4) If the voter does not rank all candidates, most likely their ballot will not move forward to the next round which causes the voter’s ballot to be discarded which is not the American democratic way and their voices are silenced. 5) Particularly damaging to vulnerable voters (military, seniors, mail voters) who are unable to immediately correct mistakes. 6) Hinders recounts and audits. Risk Limiting Audits cannot be conducted on the final results of a RCV election, (hence SB1009 making it OK to just audit the first round of results in RCV and not requiring the final results be audited).7) It will take longer to find out who wins, especially when it takes several rounds to determine the winner since the first round no one received most of the votes. 8) Voting should be an easy process not a difficult one that will discourage voters to participate. Thank you, Carmen Torres-Nisbet

Here in Arlington VA we’ve experienced Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) firsthand - in the June 2023 Democratic Primary for County Board, and then in the November 2024 election for County Board. While proponents will say it all went smoothly, I can attest that, while the Arlington Election Office did the best it could, RCV created many problems. First, RCV complicated an already burdensome election system that includes 45 days of in-person voting, mail-in ballots, same day registration, and precinct level reporting. In addition to the existing requirements, media sticks with voter data had to be removed and transported from 58 scanner/voting machines to a central location where they in turn had to be decrypted, before being put into a computer where RCV tabulation took place using an uncertified third-party tabulation software - creating multiple opportunities for chain of custody and tabulation errors. Second, RCV has no established standards for conducting a recount and/or audit and is unable to report election results by precinct as required by VA Code - leaving it susceptible to legal challenges. Third, RCV resulted in delays which in future elections could extend to ten days - given the need to process ALL mail-in ballots, same day registrations and provisional ballots before tabulation. Fourth, it was estimated that up to 4500 ballots were “exhausted“ or eliminated in the June ’23 primary, resulting in potential voter disenfranchisement - a known and documented effect of RCV (see “Minority Electorates and Ranked Choice Voting“, Nolan McCarty, Princeton Univ., 1/10/24). Comments from a voter survey on RCV in Arlington included: "I remember when things were simpler - you pick a candidate and get results the same night. No shenanigans." “Results should be election night to avoid mischievous behavior“ “Tabulation seems opaque“. For these reasons I don’t recommend RCV in Arlington or elsewhere in Virginia. Members of the Virginia General Assembly should vote no on S.B. 1009. Thank-you

Rank Choice Voting has been shown to disenfranchise voters! It is a terrible idea. It is highly complicated for the average voter to understand when the details for tabulation are spelled out. Vote results are nearly impossible to audit. It is clear that when a final winner is selected, there can be many voters whose votes simply don't count. For example, if a voter only ranks one or two people out of multiple choices on their ballot, if the various iterations rule out those two. that voter is not given an opportunity to select between the actual finalists during future iterations. That's disenfranchisement, plain and simple! Please vote NO on this well intentioned but badly flawed idea. Voters have to trust their elections... Rank Choice Voting clearly undermines that trust. Thank you for your consideration.

I strongly oppose this bill. Ranked Choice Voting disenfranchises voters, creates additional chain of custody issues that impact election integrity, and creates unnecessary delays in tallying election results. Please vote no on SB1009.

I oppose this bill. Ranked choice voting is a unnecessary way to rank voters' strength of support for candidates. Consider replacing "ranked choice" with "weighted choice" voting. This allows for a single calculation at the end of the votes to determine the rank of the candidates. If there are 5 candidates, each is rated with a 5 (highest) -1 (lowest) rank by the voter. At the end of voting, the totals for each candidate are summed to find a winner. All voters votes are counted and it is an auditable way of gauging voters' choice.

SB 760 - The League of Women Voters supports SB760. As we all know, the US Postal Service is not as reliable as it was in the past, particularly for deliveries in the morning hours. This simple adjustment to require delivery of the ballots to the local elections offices, from noon to 5 p.m. on the Friday after the election, will help ensure that voters’ ballots will be counted. SB 813 - By allowing a local jurisdiction to adopt an ordinance to convert one or more at-large seats of such body to single-member districts, this bill would provide the much-needed clarity to localities that are subject to court ordered establishment of single member districts. SB 1009 - The League of Women Voters of Virginia supports SB1009, which includes the expansion of ranked choice voting to any race for a local office. We believe that ranked choice voting, or RCV, would make our elections more accessible, would promote nominees with broad support, and would ensure that every voter’s voice is heard, particularly with the specific rules provided in this bill for conducting such elections. SB1174 - The League supports SB 1174, relating to referendum elections, for the same reasons that we support a prohibited zone for all election activities outside a polling location. Voters deserve this protection for all types of elections.