From Duane Zimmerman

Monroe

To the Editor:

A recent Monroe Times featured an op-ed article on a bill before Wisconsin Legislature on ‘Final Five Voting’, otherwise known as Ranked Choice Voting. The article promoted a positive tone of this proposal, but failed to disclose the vast negatives of Ranked Choice Voting method.

Since we do not have the experience of RCV locally to speak from you might say that we cannot condemn this proposed process. The arguments against RCV are many. Ballots are more complex and confusing causing lower voter turnout plus increased numbers of ballot mistakes, thus ballots discarded. It will be much more difficult to know about all the candidates, especially when larger numbers of candidates are on the ballot as seems to occur when this method is adopted. Because you have to rank all candidates on the ballot you are forced to vote for someone that you otherwise would never vote for. Along with this happening a person can be elected, and this does happen, that wouldn’t have gotten enough votes otherwise to have a vote majority. In some cases by the ballot exhausting process there are more ballots discarded than counted (no such thing as 1 person 1 vote). The vote counting process becomes much more difficult resulting in multiple layers of tallying thus delayed final results. To this point there have been days and even weeks of counting to determine the final vote count which also adds considerable cost in man hours. By dragging out this process there is also opportunity for impropriety and fraud.

The proposal before the Wisconsin Legislature is aimed to change this method for election of Congressional Seats only. Why would we want to have to try to accommodate two different voting systems, sometimes in the same election day, depending on what election is going on.

Many states and/or local communities that have tried RCV have rejected it. My research shows that states of Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota have banned it. I hope Wisconsin soon follows. Contact your Wisconsin Representatives to say NO to Final Five Voting.