Utah’s ranked choice voting pilot won’t be cut short
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The bill aimed at ending Utah’s ranked choice voting pilot program failed to pass the legislature on the second-to-last day of the 2024 session.
On Thursday, lawmakers in the Senate voted 12-15 against House Bill 290, which would have sunsetted Utah’s ranked choice voting experiment two years early. This came after the bill cleared the House last week on a 43-26 vote.
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Proponents of the bill cited low participation rates by cities and confusion over the process as reasons to end the pilot before the next round of municipal elections.
“I think many people, when they are asked to fill out a ranked choice voting ballot, don’t really understand how they are doing it,” said Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden, the bill’s floor sponsor, during the Senate debate.
The pilot program was initiated in 2018, allowing cities to try ranked choice voting, should they choose. The process has saved some cities money from not having to hold primaries.
Under this system, voters rank candidates on a ballot in terms of preference. If no candidate initially gets a majority of the votes, there are rounds of tabulation, where in the lowest vote-getting candidates are eliminated each round.
If a voter’s top choice is eliminated, their ballot counts toward their second choice and so on until someone gets a majority of the votes.
Critics of HB290 said the pilot project is already slated to end in two years, and it’s been successful in a number of communities. In the last round of elections, twelve cities used it, including Salt Lake City, Kearns and Magna.
Sen. Mike McKell (R-Spanish Fork) said that although he’d never want to adopt ranked choice voting as a statewide program, communities in his area have saved money through it.
“I think it’s important to see the data and let the pilot program run,” he said. “Let’s re-evaluate it once it’s complete.”
Kelleen Potter, the executive director of the nonprofit Utah Ranked Choice Voting, told ABC4 that she believes the bill was defeated because Utahns reached out to their senators, telling them they liked ranked choice voting and wanted their cities to have the ability to decide.
“So it was a local control issue,” she said, adding: “Surveys show that the majority of people like it, and I think [the senators] heard that loud and clear from the voters.”
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