The implications of MAGA radio host Frank Morano’s dominating win last month for a seat on New York City’s woke city council could extend far beyond mere city politics if conservatives are willing to learn the lessons. That’s because the election system under which he won - ranked choice voting (RCV) - has long been pilloried by Republicans as some sort of evil leftist plot, when the reality could be quite the opposite.
Morano isn’t just a conservative, he’s probably one of the most conservative members of New York City’s council elected in at least a generation. Sure, he had name recognition as WABC’s overnight talk radio host. He ran in Staten Island, a relatively conservative district by New York City standards. Still, Democrats have shown themselves to be more than capable of winning special elections in the past in red-leaning areas, especially ones where multiple conservative candidates divide the vote and Democrats back a ‘moderate’ and sneak in. So the ability of the good guys to hold onto this seat shouldn’t be discounted. Make no mistake, had Democrats won it would have been national news for weeks.
This election, however, featured RCV, a system New York City has used exclusively for primary and special elections since 2021. In it, voters rank their preference on the ballot from 1st to 5th. If a candidate wins over 50% of first-choice votes, that candidate wins outright. If they win less than 50%, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to their second-ranked choice. The process repeats until only two candidates remain, and the one with the most votes is declared the winner.
In this case, while Morano managed to garner a 59% share of the vote and win outright in this one, the RCV system likely indirectly affected his win by encouraging a broader field of candidates, which is exactly the kind of system you want if you want good ideas to have a fighting chance to win. Using RCV also means that, even in a field with multiple Republicans, Democrats wouldn’t have been able to sneak a candidate through as long as GOP voters selected Republicans as their second and third choices.
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Indeed, the beauty of a ranked-choice election is that it stops the spoiler, a sore topic Republicans are all too familiar with. For decades, conservatives have lost elections at the local, state, and national level because some random Libertarian or other third-party candidate siphoned off just enough votes to allow a Democrat to sneak into office with less than half the vote.
Awful outcomes like that are impossible in a ranked-choice election. Instead, when there are more than two candidates in a race, voters are granted the power to rank them in order. If a candidate wins 50% of first choices, that’s it, just like in any other election. But if no one reaches 50%, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and those voters have their vote count for their second choice. In reality, it’s a form of vote protection for conservatives, since everyone knows Libertarians often siphon up to three times as many votes from Republicans as Green Party nutjobs take from Democrats.
Under the current system, Republicans consistently lose winnable national elections. In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada, three states won by Donald Trump in 2024, a Democrat won the Senate elections with less than 50% due to Libertarians and other third-party spoiler candidates. And in House races in Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina, Democrats won by a smaller margin than the number of votes earned by the Libertarian candidate, many of whom are helped by dark money groups with Democratic ties.
In truth, there is no logical reason for Republicans to oppose ranked choice voting. None of the arguments hold water. And despite unfounded claims that it helps Democrats or moderates, Republicans have consistently won with it, most recently with Morano, Alaska Rep. Nick Begich, and the entire GOP ticket in Virginia.
MAGA can insist on stopping “the steal” by Democrats, and we should, but laying down and allowing Libertarians to spoil elections for Republicans is its own form of theft, and it’s entirely preventable. For a recent example, with RCV weeding out the spoiler candidates, Republicans likely keep both Georgia Senate seats in 2020 and prevent Biden from holding both houses of Congress.
Finally, in a primary, RCV can ensure that the best candidate, ideally a candidate with enough umph to pull off a general election victory, emerges from a crowded field. Not so long ago, Virginia Republicans gained a newfound appreciation of the system when it gave them Glenn Youngkin after six rounds of vote counting, who was then able to win an important gubernatorial victory against a well-known Democrat in a blue state.
It’s time to put an end to the nonsense. Republicans, especially the populist version under Trump, are the majority party with majority ideas. If we run with ranked choice voting, we win. Just ask the New York City Council members who are about to be forced to debate one of the sharpest MAGA voices in the city.
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