By STELLA GARNER
Ranked choice voting has been a topic of much debate nationwide — as well as in Hyattsville. In late August, Hyattsville City Councilmembers Danny Schaible (Ward 2), Sam Denes (Ward 1) and Joanne Waszczak (Ward 1) submitted a nonbinding referendum to the council that would allow citizens to weigh in on ranked choice voting in the 2025 municipal election. Takoma Park is the only city in Maryland that uses ranked choice voting, but Washington, D.C., voted to implement the system on Nov. 5, a large step forward for local organizations and another incentive for the ongoing discussion of its implementation in Hyattsville.
Silver Spring-based coalition Ranked Choice Voting Maryland hosted a “Ranked Choice Voting Basics” event at the Hyattsville Busboys and Poets on Oct. 30 to spread awareness about the potential for a future ballot measure supporting ranked choice voting. A week later, at its Nov. 4 meeting, the Hyattsville City Council placed the referendum on the agenda for discussion, though it was later tabled.
The notion of ranked choice voting has drawn both bipartisan ire and support nationwide; at its core, the measure changes election systems by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference, rather than choosing only one. In this system, whichever candidate wins over half of the first-choice votes wins the election. However, if nobody is able to reach that threshold, the subsequent votes are continuously added in rounds until a candidate reaches a majority.
At their event, Ranked Choice Voting Maryland discussed how implementation of the measure could create higher voter turnout in local elections which, according to their discussion, peak at 30–40% voter turnout, an impact which the organization says was recorded after Takoma Park implemented ranked choice voting. Hyattsville, by comparison, has had 10–30% voter turnout in recent elections.
But some critics of the measure say that ranked choice voting has little to no effect on election outcomes. When looking at the record of election results in Takoma Park since ranked choice voting was implemented, an instant runoff to decide an election hasn’t been necessary since 2017; most candidates in Takoma Park run uncontested or only have one challenger. In Hyattsville, however, municipal and mayoral elections historically have more than two candidates running, though the most recent election in 2023 saw almost completely uncontested candidates.
At the Oct. 30 event, Michelle Whittaker, executive director of Ranked Choice Voting Maryland, described how candidates in the current system can often have one-track minds when speaking to voters — if a constituent supports another candidate, conversation often stops altogether. “We should be engaging and having conversations, because that goes back to the policy conversations on what issues matter most,” Whittaker said.
Despite its decades-long history, ranked choice voting is currently in use in only 60 jurisdictions across the U.S. Because of its limited use, correctly assessing the impact of ranked choice voting is a challenge. As Ranked Choice Voting Maryland fights to get the measure included on ballots across the state, they must also contend with the labor and technology costs that come along with implementation of a new voting system, something which can be difficult to estimate.
Councilmember Schaible discussed the idea in his latest newsletter for constituents, The Schaible Scoop, describing how the referendum would need two-thirds of the council’s support in order to be placed before voters in May. The referendum itself lists some positive aspects of ranked choice voting, including that it “empower[s] voters to select their candidate of choice while eliminating the ‘lesser of two evils’ dynamic.”
At the city council’s Nov. 4 meeting, Councilmember Joseph Soloman (Ward 5) motioned to postpone discussion of the ranked choice voting referendum to the next general meeting. Schaible asked that it be recognized as a time-sensitive item due to its potential impact on the 2025 municipal elections. The council’s next general meeting is Nov. 18.
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Stella Garner is an undergraduate journalism major at the University of Maryland.
