What would ranked choice voting look like in Idaho? This Boise election offers glimpse | Opinion

Another term for the ranked choice voting system that Idaho voters could be asked to approve in November is “instant runoff.”

It is perhaps more instructive to look at ranked choice voting through the lens of a runoff election.

And we have a recent example of how it would look: the 2019 Boise mayoral election .

You might remember that in 2019, Boise had a crowded field for mayor , with six candidates challenging then-incumbent Mayor Dave Bieter.

Most notable among the challengers were now-Mayor Lauren McLean, Rebecca Arnold and former Boise Mayor Brent Coles.

In the first round of voting on Election Day in November 2019, McLean received the most votes, but she didn’t receive a majority.

The first round of voting looked like this:

• Lauren McLean: 23,669, 45.7%
• David H. Bieter: 15,711, 30.3%
• Rebecca W. Arnold: 6,863, 13.2%
• Brent Coles: 3,804, 7.3%
• Three other candidates: 1,795

Under city ordinance , if no candidate receives a majority, it goes to a runoff between the top two vote-getters.

On Dec. 3, McLean and Bieter faced off.

Runoff election

The second round of voting looked like this:

• Lauren McLean: 30,306, 65.5% (6,637 more votes than general election.)
• David H. Bieter: 15,998, 34.5% (287 more votes than general election.)

So how would this have looked if it were an instant runoff election?

It’s reasonable to assume that most voters who voted for Arnold probably had Coles as their second choice, and vice versa. Although it’s a nonpartisan race, Arnold and Coles are Republicans and presented similar, more conservative campaign platforms.

In that scenario, after the “first round” of voting on Election Day in November, Coles would have been eliminated because he received the fewest votes. If we assume all of the votes for Coles would have gone to Arnold, Arnold would have had 10,667 votes after the “second round,” meaning she would then be eliminated because she still had fewer votes than Bieter.

That would take it down to the final round of voting, with Bieter and McLean going head-to-head.

In this case, that final round of voting would have been that runoff election in December.

McLean next choice for many

It’s pretty clear from the December runoff results that most of the people who voted for Arnold and Coles had McLean as their next choice. You can tell this by the fact that McLean picked up nearly 7,000 new votes in December, while Bieter didn’t even add 300.

Many of those residents who voted for Coles or Arnold in November showed up again at the polls in December to cast their ballots for McLean. Sure, maybe McLean was their third choice, but it’s clear they preferred her over Bieter.

In an instant runoff with ranked choice voting, you wouldn’t need to go back to the polls a month later; you simply would have marked down your second, third and fourth choice on your ballot on Election Day.

Ballot exhaustion

As for ballot exhaustion — the idea that if someone doesn’t mark a second, third or fourth choice and their first choice is eliminated, their ballot is “wasted” — an instant runoff is actually better, because you wouldn’t have to show up at the polls yet again a month later to cast your vote. An exhausted ballot isn’t a wasted vote, it’s just an instance where a voter didn’t support any of the candidates with a shot at winning — something that happens all the time in every kind of election.

About 5,500 fewer people cast ballots in the December 2019 Boise mayoral runoff than cast votes in November. But that doesn’t mean their ballots were wasted or not counted in November. It just means they didn’t feel compelled enough to vote again in December.

In the coming weeks leading up to the November election, Idaho voters are going to have to learn more about the open primaries initiative that’s on the ballot.

No doubt, the latter part of the initiative — ranked choice voting — is the more complicated for some to understand and arguably the more radical change to how we choose our elected officials.

But put into the context of a runoff election, the concept isn’t so foreign.