LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Ranked-choice voting, a system favored by Michigan’s Democratic Party where voters rank candidates by their preference on their ballot, has been kept alive via Senate Bill 401 in the state Legislature. However, it is a very narrow implementation of it.

The bill was on the House floor as of Monday at 4:30 p.m. but had yet to be put up for vote. The bill would not allow ranked-choice voting for general elections in Michigan. But it does allow judges to use ranked-choice voting during election disputes.

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Chris Swope, the city of Lansing’s clerk, brought up ranked-choice voting as being a problem in the bill.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would ever testify in opposition to anything called a voting rights bill, I would have laughed in your face,” Swope told a Legislative committee. Swope is also president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks.

Swope’s problem was that the bill allowed ranked-choice voting to be used to settle legal disputes on elections when it is not allowed under state law.

Democrats introduced bills in Michigan that would have implemented rank-choice voting in 2021. The nonprofit Rank MI Vote is trying to get ranked-choice voting implemented in 2026.

Ken Braun, senior investigative researcher for the nonprofit Capital Research Center, said that ranked-choice voting is “disproportionately funded by left-leaning and Democratic aligned donors.”

“We have seen from expanded use of absentee ballots, same day voter registration, mail in ballots, drop boxes, opposition to the electoral college and other measures that voters not voting for Democrats causes Democrats to propose new voting systems,” Braun said. “Republicans generally—and perhaps too often—share the Democratic belief that changing the voting rules will change the behavior of voters to favor Democrats.”