Quick summary:
We didn’t only vote for a ‘what’ or a ‘who’ this week, we also voted for ‘how’. Beyond filling open seats, the structure of the vote itself was on the ballot in many states. From measures about noncitizens to ranked choice voting proposals, a negotiation between the status quo and how the next four years could evolve took place at the ballot box. This weekend, we unpack the context of these pivotal decisions and take a look at their futures, featuring reporting from PushBlack, Sahan Journal, and Documented.
What else did we decide on Election Night?
Hey, y’all,
… It’s been a week, that’s for sure. Like us, you’ve probably been fixated on the two individuals whose names appeared first on ballots this Tuesday. The nation went to vote, and now, we have our next president.
But that’s not all we got on Tuesday. Beyond electing any one person to fill any given seat, dozens of decisions were made in each state via ballot proposals.
Some are promising signs. Others may be more of a warning. As PushBlack puts it, many of them are life-changing.
Today, if you’re up for it, let’s dive into two of the measures, each one with potentially sweeping consequences on how we elect people going forward: noncitizens voting clauses, and ranked choice voting systems.
‘Every’ to ‘only’
Eight states passed ballot proposals that revised their constitutions to make one thing clear — only citizens can participate in elections.
The measures sailed through in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin. In some cases, the change was as simple as changing text that previously stated “every citizen” to now read “only citizens”.
Thing is, someone without citizenship casting a vote is already against the law in most of the nation. According to Ballotpedia, just three states and Washington, D.C. open the floor for noncitizens to vote, and that’s only in select municipalities for local councils and school board elections.
So, why the paranoia? It comes down to the narratives being promoted — largely by the Republican Party — about undocumented migrants in this country and the allegedly rampant voter fraud they commit.
In reality, the issue rarely happens.
Instead, these ballot measures open the door for those in power to challenge the rights of temporary residents or those with Green Cards in private elections, such as homeowner’s groups or parent-teacher associations.
Most of all, they stoke the already hot anti-immigrant sentiment in these states that, as the Sahan Journal argues, has no shortage of reasons to call out.
D.C. approves RCV, states say no
The citizen amendments weren’t the only preemptive measures taken at the ballot box this election. The question of ranked choice voting (RCV) was also posed to the public in nine states and the District of Columbia.
Under this system, voters can rank multiple options instead of just picking one candidate versus another. If no candidate wins a true majority of first choice votes, then the person with the least amount is eliminated, and the second choice votes from those ballots are redistributed to the other candidates. This process repeats in rounds until a winner is reached.
The idea is not new. It has been used by the military overseas for decades and is now starting to gain traction in city councils and party primaries. It’s already used in 50 jurisdictions that span two states, three counties, and 45 cities, according to FairVote.
Yet when given the chance this Tuesday, proposals to try out the system were rejected in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Another measure to explicitly prohibit the system was passed in Missouri, and Alaska, which previously adopted RCV, may now have repealed it, though the race is still too close to call, Reason reports.
However, the RCV bid in Washington, D.C. was a landslide success, with a 73% majority voting in favor of the system being used for all elections starting in 2026.
The District will become a good case study of the system’s benefits, which are abundant. RCV allows voters to express their full preferences, enables the results to capture a more true majority, and compels candidates to reach and appeal to a wider swathe of the population, not just a niche corner.
Ranking first, second, and third choices also addresses the common establishment fear that a more radical candidate will spoil another’s otherwise like-minded bid by drawing away votes — think Jill Stein this year, as Documented reports. A similar fear is that candidates within the same party will split the vote and lose — think Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Instead, under RCV, all of those nuanced preferences can come to the surface, be heard, and have an impact.
Plus, RCV relies less on party support than the current way of doing things. Research has shown that this means historically underrepresented groups are more likely to run for office and win, including women and people of color.
Sound refreshing after this past week? We’re with you. So, why the resistance from the states?
Groups on both sides of the aisle have argued against RCV, but the main opponents are on the right. You might think these politicians would get behind a policy that pushes candidates on the left to be more moderate, and vice versa. Yet one of their main complaints of RCV is that it doesn’t favor more extreme candidates in either party. It may be easier for them to get on the ballot, but it’s harder for them to win in the long-run.
“If you’re a political candidate who’s extremely polarizing, you cannot effectively manipulate a ranked-choice election to your advantage,” Josh Daniels, a former Republican election official in Utah, told the LA Illuminator. “It just favors whatever party can appeal to a majority of the people. And that’s good for democracy.”
Another less common argument against RCV is that, while it’s a good thing to need a wider base of support, actually reaching more people means actually having more money. This means there can be an even bigger bias toward well-funded party candidates than there already is.
Opponents also take issue with the fact that a losing candidate’s first-choice ballots will be discarded and votes redistributed to second and third choices — even though that candidate has lost.
Still, the biggest complaint used to strike down the alternative vote counting system is that the public is not smart enough to research multiple candidates, know how the process works, or understand the results.
Don’t get me wrong — voter literacy and turnout are crucial and should be protected. Yet giving people more agency and a shot at fuller representation is very different than overcomplicating or over-intellectualizing the ballot.
Tuesday’s RCV turning point didn’t collect many wins, but how the system plays out in high-visibility Washington D.C. could bring more awareness and consideration to the rest of the nation.
For now, we are left with ballot results that got out in front of issues that may or may not actually be issues — a kind of premature guardrailing in front of the country’s direction over the next four years.
What do you think? Do the noncitizens voting clauses and RCV restrictions stoke unnecessary fear? Are they signs of what’s to come? Or do they even matter in light of the bigger races this week? Let us know at editor@url-media.com.
