Utah's ranked choice voting experiment is on life support after a Senate committee balked at extending the controversial pilot program, setting the stage for its demise after the 2025 election cycle.
Lawmakers approved the use of ranked choice balloting for non-partisan municipal elections if a city opted in. Before the measure won final approval, legislators added a provision to end the program in 2026.
SB127, sponsored by Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, aimed to extend the program for another 10 years, but the members of the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee didn’t want to stick their necks out on the issue Wednesday afternoon.
“Judging from the emails and texts and the number of people who want to speak to this, this bill either saves democracy forever or destroys the universe. There seems to be very little daylight between the two,” Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, joked.
Since that initial approval, RCV has become a political hot potato. Opponents have claimed it’s too confusing and the lack of transparency in the tabulation process erodes voter confidence.
Under RCV, voters rank candidates from first to last place on a ballot. The first-place votes are tabulated and if a candidate gets a majority, they are the winner. If not, the candidate in last place is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to the second place choice. That process continues until a candidate receives a majority.
Just a dozen Utah cities used RCV during the 2023 municipal elections, which was down from a high of 23 in 2021.
A 2022 bill extending the sunset date for the RCV pilot program was yanked from a House committee agenda at the last minute and died without consideration. Last year, a Senate committee killed a proposal to end the RCV pilot program a year early.
Weiler’s bill is technically not dead. The committee could resuscitate the proposal on a future agenda before the session ends in March, but given the chilly reception it received on Wednesday, it’s difficult to see that happening.
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