Utahns prefer traditional voting, but don’t exactly oppose ranked-choice
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- Weber State University professor Ryan Cain speaks with students on the Social Issues Team on Feb. 9, 2022. The student team recently completed a study on ranked-choice voting in Utah, commissioned by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
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- Weber State student Allana Soriano speaks with other members of the Social Issues Team on Feb. 9, 2022. The student team recently completed a study on ranked-choice voting in Utah, commissioned by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
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- Weber State’s Social Issues Team, shown here, recently completed a study on ranked-choice voting in Utah, commissioned by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
OGDEN — As the experiment with ranked-choice voting in Utah continues, Utah voters seem to prefer the traditional winner-takes-all voting system.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they dislike ranked-choice voting, though. They just seem to like the traditional format more, maybe because it’s familiar to them, according to results of a survey into the matter by Weber State University.
“A greater proportion had a positive impression of the existing system,” said Ryan Cain, an assistant professor of teacher education at Weber State who helped with the survey. “However, the majority in both cases were positive, responded positively. It was just there was more positive for the winner-takes-all system.”
Twenty-three Utah cities used ranked-choice voting in balloting last year, most of them in Utah and Salt Lake counties. No locales in Weber or Davis counties have implemented the alternative vote-tallying system, though officials in some cities have discussed it.
It’s new in Utah, though, so in a bid to get a clearer sense of public sentiment toward the format, the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office asked Weber State to conduct the survey. Cain, Weber State Assistant Professor of Communication Alex Lancaster and students from the university’s Social Issues Team presented the findings to state officials last month.
“I think the hope is they can have some concrete data moving forward to see if this is something that will stay a beta test or if it will be more widely adopted,” Cain said.
With ranked-choice voting, voters rank each candidate for a post from their first preference to their second preference on down. After counting ballots, if no candidate garners 50% of the first-place votes in the first round, the last-place candidate is eliminated and the second-place preferences of those who voted for that candidate are distributed to the hopefuls still in the running. The process continues until a candidate garners more than 50% of the votes, winning.
In the traditional system, voters cast ballots for just one candidate, with the hopeful who garners the most votes typically winning.
So far in Utah, the reach of ranked-choice voting has been limited, used only in nonpartisan races, like city council contests. House Bill 35, passed in 2018, allows locales to use the system, if local leaders so choose. A measure emerged during the just-concluded legislative session to require use of ranked-choice voting in multicandidate races across the state, House Bill 178, but it faded, didn’t even get a committee vote.
Among the benefits, proponents say, is the elimination of primary balloting, cutting election costs. Voters make a final pick via one ballot, precluding the need for two rounds of voting. Furthermore, Cain says using ranked-choice voting can make campaigning more civil since hopefuls typically vie to be voters’ first or second preference.
However, the survey found that the alternative system can be complicated to some — or at least seem complicated, Lancaster said. “Is it something that someone like you or me — any person that’s just voting in an election — is going to understand and is going to be able to utilize correctly?” he said.
Cain thinks the outcome of the survey had a lot to do with what people were accustomed to.
“I would have to say it has to do with familiarity with the system. It’s not that there was a bunch of bad talk about either system,” he said. The “intricacies” of the ranked-choice voting system, though, can be confusing to some “because there is a little bit more that goes into it, especially on the back end.”
Around 70 Utah candidates who went through ranked-choice voting campaigns were surveyed. The researchers also polled 700 Utah voters — 350 who took part in ranked-choice voting elections and 350 who took part in traditional, winner-takes-all votes.
Interestingly, there were differences between respondents depending on their political affiliation. “Specifically, candidates affiliated with the Republican Party perceived the ranked-choice voting system significantly less favorably than did candidates affiliated with the Democratic Party,” reads a summary of the survey.
Surveys elsewhere have indicated “mixed support” for ranked-choice voting. The Weber State survey is the first time the matter was studied in Utah.
The system is “still definitely in beta” in Utah, said Lancaster. That is, it’s still a focus of study and deliberation.
As such, the Weber State researchers recommended that state officials create more educational materials about ranked-choice voting — like fliers and videos — to get the public up to speed on the system.
The Utah cities that have used ranked-choice voting include Elk Ridge, Genola, Lehi, Goshen, Payson, Springville, Vineyard and Woodland Hills in Utah County and Bluffdale and Draper, which seep into both Utah and Salt Lake counties. The Salt Lake County cities include Cottonwood Heights, Magna, Midvale, Millcreek, Riverton, Salt Lake City, Sandy and South Salt Lake.
Moab in Grand County has used the system as has Heber City in Wasatch County and the Cache County locales of Newton, Nibley and River Heights.