Wisconsin state Sen. Pfaff sees benefits in ranked-choice voting but still undecided

A group of bipartisan lawmakers in Wisconsin want to adapt a new way to vote for US Congress.

A ranked-choice voting bill got a rare committee hearing in the state Senate on Tuesday. It’s failed to reach committee twice before. There are 21 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle signed on as co-sponsors.

The, what’s called “Final Five” system, would be used for US House and US Senate races — not the state Legislature.

Wisconsin state Sen. Brad Pfaff, (D-Onalaska) had not signed onto the bill.

“This is a way, in order to try and get people more engaged in the process,” Pfaff said Tuesday on La Crosse Talk PM. “This is also a situation where we’re trying to pull the extreme partisanship out of our politics. But, to be honest with you Rick and to be honest with the listeners here, I gotta learn a lot more about it.”

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La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ranked-choice allows voters to pick their candidate without fear of what’s often referred to as “wasting” your vote on, for example, a third-party candidate.

“I think there’s a lot of good concepts to it, but I also want to make sure people have confidence in the voting system right now,” Pfaff continued. “And, one of the sad things that happened as a result of the 2020 election, is that their doesn’t seem to be a lot of trust right now in our voting process, and that’s very concerning.”

Under the Final Five system, candidates in the primary would not be tiered under a political party. Voters would simply pick their favorite among however many candidates there are.

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Then, in the general election, voters rank their Top 5 candidates for an instant runoff election.

The votes are counted, but if nobody gets over 50 percent, the person in last place is eliminated.

Votes for those who ranked that person first, would get counted toward their second-ranked candidate, and the count happens again, until that 50-percent-plus mark is met.

Opponents say the system is too complicated. And Republicans in Wisconsin are trying to amend the state constitution to ban it altogether.