Election Day Fallout and Rank Choice Voting
BY COLLEEN O'DEA
The largest margin of victory of the three new U.S. House members New Jerseyans voted to send to Washington Tuesday night Tuesday was Adam Hamawy’s in the Central Jersey’s 12th District – 42 points or close to 100,000 votes as of Friday morning. He won more than 70% of the vote.
But to get onto the general election ballot, Hamawy, a doctor from South Brunswick who served as an Army combat surgeon, had to defeat a dozen other Democrats in the crowded primary. He won with fewer than 23,000 votes, or 28.6% of those who turned out. According to the nonpartisan group FairVote that supports voting reforms, only two other new congressional representatives who will take office in January won their primaries with smaller pluralities – La Shawn Ford of Illinois has the smallest win, 23.7% of primary voters.
FairVote and others say plurality victors mean the seating in Congress of people who may not represent the beliefs of at least a majority of voters. They argue for reforms, including ranked choice voting, to create a fairer electoral process that ensures the views of more voters are properly represented.
“Plurality wins in primary elections are problematic for voters, democracy, and even our political parties,” the authors of the analysis wrote. “When a fraction of a fraction of voters decides who represents everyone, it is no surprise that we get distorted and polarized outcomes.”
“Regardless of who wins or loses any given election, the most important thing is for the election results to accurately represent what voters want to see from their government, and that voters have confidence in that fact,” said April Nicklaus, education coordinator with Voter Choice NJ, a group pushing for ranked choice voting in New Jersey. “When a candidate wins an election with far less than a majority, we don't have to look hard to find people casting doubt on the result. In a ranked-choice election, even if the same candidate were to ultimately win, you would see far fewer people questioning that they won fair and square.”
In its analysis, FairVote estimated that plurality primary winners – as opposed to those winning with an outright majority of the vote – would make up at least a quarter and as much as 40% of incoming House freshmen.
The group listed the 50 candidates who won with the lowest percentage of the vote. Democratic Rep. Analilia Mejia of the 11th District, who originally won a similarly crowded special primary last February with just 29.3% of the vote, ranked 8th on that list. She went on to easily win the special general election to fill Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s term and won a full term this week by about 23 points. At the bottom of that list is another New Jersey representative-elect: Surprise 2nd District victor Zack Mullock, a Democrat, who won four-person June primary with 39.8%.
New Jersey is one of 38 states that allows for candidates to win at the state and federal levels without capturing at least half of the votes cast. On top of that, the fact of gerrymandering means that in most districts – including the 11th and 12th – the primary winner of the party with the registration advantage is essentially guaranteed to win the general election. This year’s blue tsunami was an exception, leading to Mullock’s shocking win in the red 2nd District in South Jersey and a double-digit victory for Democrat Rebecca Bennett in the swing 7th District.
“The abolishment of the county line likely has a lot to do with the crowded primary
fields we are seeing and, in turn, the vote splitting among several candidates,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling and a professor at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. “With a lot of individuals vying for a seat, a nominee could possibly win with under 30% of the vote. Furthermore, primaries are also mostly low-turnout elections, so only a small percentage are voting in the first place, and some of these primaries are in fact the most competitive part of the election cycle if the seat is considered safe in the general.”
Julia Sass Rubin, associate dean of academic programs and a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, was one of the experts whose testimony in the 2024 court case helped topple the county line in New Jersey. She said ranked choice voting seems a sensible response to crowded primaries that yield low plurality victors.
“It is very likely that these three candidates would have won even if we had ranked choice voting as they did well in multiple counties,” Rubin said. “However, to ensure that the winner reflects the preferences of the largest number of voters, it would make sense to adopt ranked choice voting.”
In a ranked-choice voting system, voters rank each candidate according to preference from one to however many candidates are on the ballot or some set number. If, after all the votes are counted, no candidate wins more than 50% of the total votes when ranked as first choice, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and his votes are then apportioned to the other candidates who were ranked second. The process continues, with sometimes third or lower choices receiving votes, until one candidate gets more than half of the total ballots cast.
Five bills currently are pending in the Legislature to allow or mandate ranked choice voting in some elections. Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-Middlesex) is sponsoring three of them: One to allow a ranked-choice system for local and school elections, another to require it for presidential elections and the third to require it for federal and state-level races. None of the bills have moved so far.
Zwicker supports ranked choice voting. But he also said he is open to other alternatives to improve the electoral system. For instance, he said the first reform he would like to see would be the rotation of candidates’ names in the block ballot that New Jersey counties are now using in primaries, because there is evidence that placement in the top position of the block provides a candidate with an advantage. A bill that would permit county or municipal clerks to rotate candidate names is also pending in Trenton and has not had a hearing yet.
“I've been out with RCV (ranked choice voting),” Zwicker said. “Some people criticize it and say there are better systems out there. I am agnostic in that way. I just want to make sure that the majority of people have their vote count.”
Getting lawmakers to agree to a system other than the current plurality count is going to be difficult.
Said Rubin, “The challenge for any voting change in New Jersey is the resistance of the county party organizations and the legislature.”
