"While I am happy to see towns and cities able to utilize ranked-choice ballots in future elections should this bill become law, I am aware that this is just the first step needed to
bring advanced voting methods like RCV to every race on the Georgia ballot.
If we had ranked-choice voting in the US Senate race last year, voters would have been
saved time and millions of dollars."
Ranked-Choice Voting Bill: Former Libertarian Senate Candidate Chase Oliver shows support for Georgia House Bill 200, which grants municipalities the option to adopt and use instant runoff voting for their elections. “It saves the taxpayer's money, it saves time, and it prevents the drop-off of voters from a runoff,” says Oliver. “Paired with ballot-access reforms, we will see more choices on the ballot, bringing more voters out to vote.”
Oliver received more than 81,000 votes in the Georgia Senate election forcing a runoff between
Republican and Democrat candidates. Oliver was the only candidate advocating for ranked-choice voting and ballot-access reforms. Oliver says ranked-choice voting leads to better outcomes, removes the third-party voter's fear of spoiling, helps to decentralize power, and can lead to more honest and transparent governance.
With ranked-choice voting, sometimes known as “instant runoff voting,” candidates are elected with the greatest consensus of the electorate. Voters rank their preferences of all the candidates, not just one. If a voter’s top choice receives more than 50 percent of the vote, their choice is declared the winner. If there’s no clear winner in the first round, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and voters’ secondary choices are retallied until there is a winner. Elections are decided automatically, without the time and expense of a runoff election.
With ranked-choice voting, we could have saved weeks, millions of taxpayer dollars, and avoided millions of dollars of attack ads.” Oliver says, “Passing RCV needs to be a priority for elections throughout the country.
Oliver launched his presidential exploratory committee following the December 5th runoff election. Delegates will choose the Libertarian presidential candidate at the party’s national convention on May 24-26, 2024 in Washington D.C.
To learn more about Chase Oliver, donate, or volunteer, please visit votechaseoliver.com.
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