Why Ranked Choice Voting Is the Wrong Choice for Maryland

By Michael Phillips | Maryland Bay News

Maryland’s election system doesn’t need a flashy overhaul — it needs clarity, trust, and fairness. Yet advocates are increasingly pushing ranked choice voting (RCV) as a cure-all for political dissatisfaction. While RCV may sound appealing in theory, in practice it introduces real risks that Maryland should not ignore.

Here are the top reasons ranked choice voting is not right for Maryland.

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1. Maryland Voters Deserve Simplicity, Not Confusion

Maryland already has some of the longest and most complex ballots in the country. Ranked choice voting requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference, fundamentally changing how ballots are completed and counted.

That added complexity disproportionately harms:

• Seniors
• First-time voters
• Lower-information voters
• Voters with disabilities or language barriers

When voters are unsure how their ballot works, confidence in elections erodes. Democracy depends on clarity, not clever math.

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2. “Exhausted” Ballots Quietly Disenfranchise Voters

Under RCV, ballots can become exhausted — meaning they are discarded from later rounds if all ranked candidates are eliminated.

In plain terms:
Some voters’ ballots stop counting before a winner is chosen.

That violates a basic expectation Maryland voters have always had — that their vote counts through the end.

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3. RCV Can Produce Counterintuitive and Unfair Outcomes

Ranked choice voting is vulnerable to non-monotonic outcomes, where:

• Ranking a candidate higher can actually hurt them
• Ranking a candidate lower can help them win

This defies common sense. In a healthy election system, supporting a candidate more strongly should never backfire.

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4. High Implementation Costs, Ongoing Administrative Burden

Statewide RCV would require:

• New voting equipment or software upgrades
• Extensive voter education campaigns
• Retraining election workers
• Rewriting election regulations
• Slower vote counting and delayed results

All of this comes at a time when Maryland already faces fiscal pressure and administrative strain. There is no evidence RCV delivers enough benefit to justify the cost.

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5. Slower Results Undermine Public Trust

Maryland voters are used to clear election night outcomes. RCV often requires multiple rounds of counting, sometimes over days.

Delayed results:

• Fuel suspicion and misinformation
• Invite legal challenges
• Undermine public confidence

In a polarized era, adding uncertainty is not reform — it’s risk.

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6. RCV Doesn’t Fix Maryland’s Real Voting Problems

Maryland’s most serious electoral issue is not vote-splitting — it’s voter exclusion.

Nearly one million unaffiliated voters are locked out of closed primaries. Before redesigning ballots, Maryland should fix access, not distract with complexity.

RCV does nothing to:

• Open primaries
• Increase turnout
• Restore trust in institutions

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7. RCV Is Often Pushed for Strategic, Not Neutral, Reasons

National advocacy groups like FairVote promote RCV aggressively, but the benefits are often politically asymmetric, favoring certain coalitions depending on turnout patterns.

Election rules should be designed for voters — not engineered outcomes.

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8. Local Experiments Do Not Justify Statewide Adoption

Some Maryland municipalities, including Greenbelt, have experimented with RCV in small, low-turnout elections.

But a municipal test is not proof of success for:

• Statewide primaries
• Gubernatorial elections
• Federal races

Maryland should not rush into a permanent statewide change based on limited, low-stakes trials.

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Conclusion: Reform Should Strengthen Trust, Not Gamble With It

Ranked choice voting is often sold as modern, fair, and innovative. But in Maryland’s real-world electoral environment, it introduces confusion, cost, delay, and unintended consequences.

Maryland doesn’t need experimental voting systems.
It needs:

• Transparent ballots
• Equal access
• Faster results
• Stronger voter confidence

Until RCV can prove — not promise — that it delivers those outcomes, it remains the wrong choice for Maryland.

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