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Last week, voters in half a dozen Western states rejected ballot measures that would have overhauled how elections are conducted.
Four states — Oregon, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada — resoundingly rejected ranked-choice voting initiatives. Alaska is still awaiting a final verdict on whether it will keep or repeal its own ranked-choice voting system. And in Arizona and Montana, ballot measures mandating open primaries were also defeated.
The results are a serious loss for election reform advocates, in a year that had been hailed as a history-making one for creating a ranked-choice alternative to the traditional two-party voting system. Whereas the current system holds separate primary elections for Democrats and Republicans, ranked-choice voting lists all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, on a single ballot, and tallying the winner through multiple rounds of counting.