Arlington County Board members decided to switch elections to ranked-choice voting. So Arlington County Board members should be in the forefront of informing the public about the switch.
That’s the view of the secretary of the Arlington Electoral Board, who says she has been in touch with the county’s leadership about doing an improved job in 2024 about explaining the switch to the public.
Kim Phillip said she is hoping for a “much better ranked-choice-voting outreach effort this year,” and has said as much to the County Board and County Manager Mark Schwartz.
“Per [the Code of Virginia], it is their responsibility,” she said. “We want to make sure [outreach] is much more robust. We want to make sure it is successful.”
At the May 20 Electoral Board meeting, Phillip – the lone Democrat on the three-member Electoral Board and as secretary arguably its most powerful figure – said county officials had been responsive to her comments. Outreach efforts are ramping up, she and county elections director Gretchen Reinemeyer said.
In late 2022, County Board members used a change in state law to move the June 2023 Democratic County Board primary from the traditional winner-take-all format to the ranked-choice alternative. But apparently because it impacted a primary rather than a general election, county officials didn’t do much heavy lifting to inform the public; much of the work was left to the small elections-office staff.
Voters in the 2023 Democratic primary often came out of the experience dazed, confused and in some cases angry about their experience. As a result, County Board members scrapped the idea of using ranked-choice voting for the November 2023 County Board general election, but for 2024 approved it for both the primary and general election.
(Elections for governing bodies are the only ones in Virginia allowed to be run under ranked-choice voting. So far, Arlington is the only locality to move forward.)
Reinemeyer – who works for the Electoral Board, not Schwartz or the County Board – said having the county government fully behind the engagement effort would help.
“They have more contacts with community organizations,” she said.
But Reinemeyer at the May 20 meeting said it was likely most of that outreach would be for the Nov. 5 general election, not the June 18 primary, where five Democrats are vying to win nomination for the seat being vacated by Libby Garvey.
Legislation permitting ranked-choice voting for Arlington was patroned by Del. Patrick Hope (D-Arlington) during the brief window when Democrats controlled the governorship and both houses of the legislature. The measure, and another that expanded the option statewide, do not include provisions that any change be approved by voters in a referendum, instead giving that power to a locality’s governing body.
