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TITLE: ranked choice voting; presidential preference |
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SPONSOR: Dunn |
STATUS: As Introduced |
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PREPARED BY: Maggie Rocker
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Description
The bill would establish ranked choice voting (RCV) in presidential preference elections (PPE). In addition, the bill would require the Secretary of State (SOS) to include an explanation of RCV with each early ballot and conduct an education campaign to familiarize voters with RCV.
Estimated Impact
The bill would have 2 separate fiscal impacts: increases in the cost of election administration and the cost of the bill's mandated voter education campaign.
Under current law, the state is required to reimburse the counties for the cost of conducting the PPE election, with county reimbursements subject to a limit of $1.25 per registered voter. Because PPE expenses already exceed this permanent law threshold, counties would pay the incremental cost of RCV implementation unless the state elected to also reimburse these costs. In terms of the potential county costs, the Arizona Association of Counties (AACo) indicated that the total county implementation cost is unknown. However, AACo estimated that the cost of creating a new RCV ballot would be approximately $97,500 in aggregate for 13 Arizona counties (excluding Maricopa and Pima). AACo also confirmed that counties would likely need to contract with a third-party vendor to perform voting system upgrades.
The cost of the voter education and outreach portion of the bill will vary depending on discretionary decisions involving the magnitude of the effort. Only the state of Maine has experience with fully implementing RCV, and their efforts appear limited to the provision of online resources. The Arizona SOS estimates that their cost to conduct the campaign would be $5 million.
Analysis
Under the bill, the State's PPE would be conducted using RCV when three or more candidates qualify for a party's ballot. RCV is an electoral system in which voters can rank candidates by preference on their ballots. In the event no candidate is ranked the highest preference by a majority of voters in the first round, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and tabulation of ballots occurs in sequential rounds.
As noted above, the bill would require additional county election administration costs to implement RCV. The implementation costs would include modifying voting machine processes to tabulate RCV, along with additional printing costs from the bill's requirement that RCV explanations be posted at all polling places and be included with each early ballot. At present, 13 Arizona counties use voting machines that do not have the ability to tabulate RCV ballots while 2 counties (Maricopa and Pima) use their own systems. AACo indicated it has limited information regarding these separate Maricopa County and Pima County systems.
Based on a vendor quote, AACo estimates that the cost to produce a new RCV ballot layout for the 13 counties would be $7,500 per county, or potentially $97,500. This partial estimate does not include the cost of tabulation, for which counties would need to contract with a third-party vendor, nor does it include any costs associated with Maricopa and Pima counties, which would also require a new ballot layout.
Two states, Maine and Alaska, have adopted ranked-choice voting. Because Alaska's RCV changes were approved at the November 2020 election, Maine is the only state that has fully implemented RCV. However, given potential differences in election systems, Maine's reported RCV costs cannot be reasonably extrapolated to estimate Arizona's potential costs under the bill.
(Continued)
SOS would be required to conduct a public education campaign explaining RCV to voters in all languages in which the ballot is produced. Based on the cost of the voter education campaign conducted as part of the November 2020 election cycle, SOS estimates the education campaign component of the bill would require $5 million. In preparation for Maine's first election using RCV (June 2018 Primary), the Maine Secretary of State appears to have used mostly online resources such as an RCV-specific website, an RCV Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and an online explanatory video.
Local Government Impact
As noted above, AACo has estimated the bill would present a minimum cost of $97,500 for counties. This figure does not include potential costs associated with printing and tabulation, and does not include any costs associated with Maricopa and Pima Counties.
2/26/21