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By Alex J. Rouhandeh
National Political Correspondent
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Last year Newsweek spoke to an array of politically involved young Democrats about what went wrong with the 2024 election. From Georgia to Ohio, they complained that the Democratic Party was too top-down, too Washington-centric. A dispute over ranked choice voting this week at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) meeting in Austin, Texas, is showing how that rift continues to divide a fractious party.
In May, the DNC’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) advanced a proposed amendment to the 2028 presidential primary rules that would, if a state chooses to use ranked choice voting, effectively ignore any candidates not ranked number one on ballots. On Saturday, that amendment will go before the entire DNC, which will vote whether to formalize the rule, as well as settle on the presidential primary calendar.
Ranked choice voting—the practice of ordering candidates by preference and then reallocating the votes for the candidates with the fewest votes—has been touted by Democrats nationwide as a reform that’s empowered voters. It’s how Democrat Mary Peltola was elected to Congress in deep-red Alaska. It’s how Democrat Jared Golden won his deep-red district in Maine. In response, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has opposed ranked choice voting in its party platform.
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Proponents of the amendment argue that the practice suits a winner-take-all system and does not align with the DNC’s presidential primary rules, which use proportional allocation of delegates to candidates according to their vote share. State party leaders where ranked choice voting is enshrined into law disagree. They also believe the RBC did not adequately allow them to argue otherwise and is thus operating counter to the overall state party-first strategy of DNC Chair Ken Martin.
“There's no question that the DNC under this chair has been very supportive of state parties and of our efforts to mobilize our voters locally,” Maine Democratic Party Chair Charles Dingman told Newsweek. “We did not have an opportunity as states that use ranked choice voting to engage with the Rules and Bylaws Committee on this specific issue this year.”
The matter of state party autonomy comes at a sensitive time for Democrats. Martin has funneled $1 million each month to the state parties at the expense of the DNC’s balance sheet. Though DNC fundraising has outpaced 2018 levels, it has just $16.3 million in cash on hand and over $18 million of debt, a reality that doesn’t make for favorable headlines when compared to the RNCs $128 million war chest. While state party representatives—who comprise a plurality of DNC members—have stuck by Martin, Washington consultants and liberal media commentators have called for him to step down.
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In turn, the RNC has portrayed Martin as an ineffective leader, and though he does not sit on the RBC, Republicans cast the issue as a product of his doing. “For the party that’s hedged its entire midterm strategy on propping up state parties, it’s ironic that Ken Martin and the DNC continue to sabotage states by rigging the presidential primary calendar, stomping on ranked choice voting, and kneecapping candidates who threaten their tight-fisted control,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre told Newsweek in a statement. “There’s a reason Ken Martin is on the outs, but if he needs some words of encouragement he can look to the RNC where we think he’s doing a fantastic job.”
Despite the heat surrounding the amendment, the issue manifested in a rather dry setting, with its backers framing the proposal as a matter of practicality. At a May 29 RBC meeting in Washington, D.C., DNC member Frank Leone of D.C. proposed an amendment to rule 14A, a provision reading: “Delegates shall be allocated in a fashion that fairly reflects the expressed presidential preference or uncommitted status of the primary voters or, if there is no binding primary, the convention and/or caucus participants.”
His amendment added the sentence: “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.”
Leone said at the RBC’s May meeting that certain state ranked choice voting laws run contrary to the DNC’s delegate selection rules. Additionally, if the ranked choice ballot narrows the field to two candidates, lower ranked candidates would not receive presidential delegates, a second violation of DNC rules because up to seven presidential candidates can receive delegates.
“I could and I probably have talked at length about why I have a problem with ranked choice voting, but what we’re talking about here is just does it work with our process, and rather than just wait until state plans come up and tell them they can’t do what state law tells them to do, I think it’s helpful to provide guidance to states,” Leone said at the time. He did not return Newsweek’s requests for comment.
Elaine Kamarck, a DNC member from Virginia, said while she favors ranked choice voting broadly, she supported the measure because ranked choice voting is better suited for a winner-take-all system. “If we moved back and we allowed states to be winner-take-all, okay, then I think possibly this would work,” she said. “But right now, in this system, with proportional representation, which is outlined in rule 14, I just don’t think it works.”
After more than an hour of debate and a failed 22-24 motion to postpone, the committee voted 28-14 to advance the amendment. Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada and Wyoming have used ranked choice voting in the presidential primary since 2020, and Maine started in 2024. Of those states, only Nevada has representation on the 33-person committee, with two members.
Dingman of Maine, Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Lucas Fralick and Alaska Democratic Party Chair Eric Croft responded to the amendment in an August 7 letter to DNC members, shared with Newsweek, asking them to vote against the measure: “Our Party thrives when we let states decide and empower each other to be competitive in ways that make sense in our states.” Despite having six members on the RBC, D.C.—which also uses ranked choice voting—subsequently saw 34 members of its state committee sign a letter of their own, also shared with Newsweek, opposing the measure.
“With [President Donald] Trump declaring war on state election rules and trying to federalize them, we don't want our Democratic leaders to join that,” Croft told Newsweek. “I am very worried if the DNC decides to lock arms with the RNC in opposition to this reform that we get grouped in with the bad guys because up to this date, they've let the states decide.”
Alaska and Maine are two Senate races this cycle that Democrats are hoping to flip if they want to win the upper chamber. Part of the argument candidates in these states will make centers on their abilities to act autonomously from the Democratic Party when it suits the interests of their voters.
How the roughly 450 members of the DNC feel about that concern in relation to the arguments of Dingman and Croft will shape ranked choice voting’s fate in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary. And ultimately, it’s these individuals who will signal whether as a body, the DNC favors state autonomy or nationwide standardization.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Edward T. Cummins.
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