ORLANDO, Fla. — Loki Mole is a 19-year-old senior at the University of Central Florida, majoring in political science. He also wants to completely upend how Florida does its elections.
Mole, who was born in Winter Park and grew up in Palm Bay, is spearheading a proposed ballot amendment that would create what’s known as ranked-choice voting in all general elections in Florida.
It’s the longest of long shots, experts say. But for Floridians, it’s an introduction to an innovative yet controversial voting method that’s becoming increasingly popular across the nation.
“I think it’s great,” said Matt Isbell, a Florida elections expert who runs the MCIMaps website. “It’s no different than a runoff system that just happens to be done the same day. … It allows voters to say, ‘I like this person. But I’m also cool with this person.’”
Ranked-choice voting would give more power to third-party candidates by allowing voters to cast a ballot for them without worrying about throwing a vote away. And if it were in place in 2000, it likely would have changed the results of the presidential election in Florida.
The voting method, most notably used in Maine and in the recent New York City mayoral race, would allow voters to rank all the candidates on the ballot in order of preference.
Here’s an example of how it works: In a race of five candidates, the candidate with the least amount of votes, John Smith, would be eliminated after the first round.
But then, all of Smith’s votes would be redistributed to the candidates listed as second on his ballots. The process continues as more candidates are eliminated until one candidate gets a majority of 50 percent-plus 1 votes and wins.
“To me, it’s really simple,” Mole said. “I think that most people are just fed up with the two-party system. … The voices of independents and third-party people are not being really recognized.”
Mole, a Democrat and a supporter of independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s presidential campaigns, said ranked-choice would “allow for more ideological diversity, allow for more minor party candidates to win and allow more non-party-affiliated candidates to win.”
Gore might have won instead
Florida’s greatest election folly would have looked different if ranked-choice had been in place.
It could have led to Democrat Al Gore winning the state, and the presidency, over Republican George W. Bush in 2000.
Bush won in Florida by 537 votes. But with ranked-choice voting, the more than 97,000 people who voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would have had their second-choice votes redistributed after Nader was eliminated. The vast majority of those people were likely progressives who almost certainly would have made Gore their No. 2 on the ballot.
But ranked-choice doesn’t mean that the more liberal candidate would always win.
In Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2018 governor’s race win over Democrat Andrew Gillum, decided by fewer than 33,000 votes, there was a wide range of third-party and independent candidates of varying political philosophies.
More than 47,000 votes went to Reform Party candidate Darcy Richardson, one of the progressive founders of the “New Democrats” in 1989. But another 24,000 votes were cast for former Republican Lt. Gov. candidate K.C. Richardson, and another 14,000 votes for independent Bruce Stanley, whose Twitter bio currently reads, “Not vaccinated. Resist #MedicalTyranny.”
Mole argues that more people may have voted for their preferred third-party or independent candidates as their first choice if they knew they weren’t throwing their vote away.
“Voters (wouldn’t be) scared of voting for them anymore,” Mole said. “Because even if they do come in last place? Well, if their vote could have changed the outcome of the election, they can still vote for one of the major party candidates who has perhaps a better chance of winning.”
In practice, though, ranked-choice voting has more often decided which of the two major parties wins than it has led to third-party candidates taking office.
Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, said since Maine voters approved ranked-choice in 2016, third-party candidates there “are the first ones to get eliminated.”
Even before ranked-choice, Brewer said, Maine had a strong record of electing independents and third-party candidates, including two recent governors and current U.S. Sen. Angus King.
“But so far, ranked-choice hasn’t done anything to increase that,” he said. “The final two standing so far have always been the D and the R.”
Maine was also the scene of the biggest ranked-choice controversy.
Democrat Jared Golden defeated Republican Bruce Poliquin in 2018 for a congressional seat despite being 2,000 votes behind during the first round of voting. But after independent and third-party voters’ second choices were redistributed, Golden won by 3,509 votes.
Poliquin sued, claiming ranked choice was unconstitutional. But Golden ultimately prevailed.
“It’s still a relatively partisan issue,” Brewer said. “But the controversy level has gone way down just because we’ve now had more elections … and it seems to work without any major glitches. I wouldn’t say it’s universally beloved at this point, by any means. But it’s certainly become less controversial over time.”
Not a ‘jungle’ primary
Ranked-choice voting has often been compared with “jungle” primaries, a different type of election method in which the top two vote-getters in one large, all-inclusive primary face off against each other in the general election, regardless of party.
A ballot question to approve jungle primaries in Florida, the “All Voters Vote” amendment, got 57% of the vote in 2020 but failed to reach the required 60% mark for approval.
Mole stressed that ranked-choice would avoid some of the issues with jungle primaries, such as the potential for two candidates of the same party to face off in a general election.
“With ranked-choice voting, there’s no chance that that happens,” Mole said. “Democrats, Republicans and third parties can do their own primary process however they want to do it. It has no effect on the primary process, and it has no effect on who ends up on the general election ballot. It simply changes the way that voting happens in the general election.”
The ultimate question, though, is whether such a grass-roots ballot question actually has any chance of getting on the ballot, to say nothing of whether it has a chance of getting 60% of the vote.
The failed jungle primary amendment was backed by more than $7 million, largely from Mike Fernandez, a billionaire Miami insurance executive.
So far, Mole’s group, Floridians for Free and Fair Elections, has just $350, with its largest single contribution listed as $100 from a Publix cashier.
Need for big bucks
To have any chance of success, Isbell said, “you need somebody who’s willing, whether it’s one person or a group of people, to spend millions. … If I don’t hear something mid-next year about money being pushed into it, then I’m not holding my breath on it.”
To get on the 2024 ballot, which Mole is targeting, a ballot measure needs 891,589 confirmed signatures by early 2024. It needs about 223,000 signatures to trigger a judicial review by the state Supreme Court, which has the power to reject it.
Steve Vancore, a spokesman for the All Voters Vote campaign, wished Mole well but was extremely skeptical.
“Give the kid credit for getting out there and everything,” Vancore said. “Because it’s going to be very, very, very difficult, [if not] impossible.”
The recent restrictions on signature gathering and canvassing, included in this year’s controversial election law, make getting on the ballot even harder, he added.
“It has to get started so soon, so you can raise the money and get the signatures up,” Vancore said. “And if the Legislature doesn’t like the idea, and they probably won’t, they could easily start pushing against it.”
Mole, however, remains unswayed.
“It’s all grass roots,” he said. “That involves getting out on the streets, tabling, canvassing, whatever we can do to meet people and talk to them. Just building it from the bottom up.”
The campaign has already been endorsed by organizations ranging from the Brevard County Democrats to the Orange County Libertarian Party and the People’s Party of Florida, he said.
“Is it sort of a long shot?” Mole said. “Is it going to be difficult? Of course. … But I don’t think it’s impossible.”
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