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How to deal with ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a critical question about the National Popular Vote interstate compact (NPV). Would first- or final-round results, or perhaps some intermediate round, be used for national vote tabulation? And who decides?

For several years, many of us have pointed out that the compact itself is silent on the first question. It does, however, answer the second: the chief election official of each NPV member state (often a state’s Secretary of State) has the discretion to choose which vote totals to use from other states, including those using RCV. Because the difference between first- and final-round vote totals could be significant, this “choose your own vote totals” power could give these officials power to alter the outcome of a close national election.

Lobbyists for NPV have vociferously disputed this, claiming that it is simply “preposterous” (pp. 917-918 in the book Every Vote Equal) that anything other than final-round results could ever be used:

“Indeed, it would be preposterous to interpret an RCV-for-President law to mean that a state would hand voters a ballot enabling them to rank candidates according to their first, second, and other preferences—but then would ignore everything on the ballot except the voter’s first choice.

Using only the first-round count would negate the purpose of having an RCV-for-President law in the first place—namely to give voters the opportunity to rank candidates and have those rankings matter.”

A powerful rebuttal to this came from the Rules & Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as it set the process for choosing delegates to its 2028 convention, where it will nominate its candidate for president and vice president. As the Maine Morning Star reported, the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee proposed to ignore the final-round results from any state where RCV is used in the primary, caucus, or convention:

Ahead of the full Democratic National Committee meeting Aug. 13-15, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee has met several times to finalize the 2028 presidential primary delegate selection process. 

That included a meeting in May where the committee voted 28-14 to add new language to the section governing “Fair Reflection of Presidential Preference” that states: “No ballot used for purposes of allocation of delegates among presidential preference shall permit voters to express more than one presidential preference. Where state law provides for multiple presidential preferences in a primary, only the first round will be considered for delegate allocation purposes.”

The reason for this was simple—the DNC’s nomination rules include a provision that a candidate receiving 15% or more of the votes in a primary, caucus, or convention is entitled to receive pledged delegates to the national convention. Under the RCV process, however, a candidate might surpass the 15% level in early rounds but not finish among the top two, reducing their reported vote share to 0% and thus depriving them of delegates. Discarding the final-round results in favor of first-round vote totals solved this problem.

Ultimately, the full DNC rejected this proposed rule (it still isn’t clear how those results will be used for delegate selection). According to one member of the committee, states that want to use RCV will need to spell out the details to the DNC and get its approval. 

Regardless of whether and how the DNC incorporates RCV results, the debate shows that rather than being “preposterous,” there are good and valid reasons for not using the final-round results. Perhaps more importantly, it shows that states using RCV are powerless to control what those beyond their jurisdiction do with the results.

A state can, by its own laws and for its own purposes, use RCV in presidential primaries and its election of presidential electors. It has no power, however, to prevent a national political party from ignoring final-round RCV results and instead using first-round results. In the same way, a state cannot control other states that have joined the NPV compact and must therefore decide which results to use from an RCV election. One state’s law cannot control another state.

Two states and D.C. currently plan to use RCV in the 2028 general election (although Alaskans will vote on whether to repeal RCV this fall). NPV gives the chief election officials of member states the same power the DNC has to decide which vote totals to use, which could be the power to determine the winner in a close election. That’s too much power to give to a handful of state officials.