Interest in ranked choice voting has been spreading fast in communities across the country, with Seattle, Evanston, Ill., and Fort Collins, Colo. due to vote in November on whether to join New York City, Minneapolis, Portland, Me., and the 20 or so other localities that already use it. A key legal obstacle for communities that want to try out the method, however, can be in obtaining the needed go-ahead from their state governments. So it’s relevant to point out that from a small-government, individual-liberty perspective, the discretion to employ RCV if voters want it looks to be one of the most innocuous home-rule powers a municipality can request.

As I wrote five years ago in a different context, there isn’t really a strong reason for libertarians (or for that matter progressives or conservatives) to take an always-or-never view of municipal home rule powers. Should towns be free to set different street parking rules than the next town over? Probably yes. But what if a town wants to enact rent control? Ban the construction of any house worth less (or more) than $10 million? Make it illegal to serve alcohol to guests at home? How you feel about each of these probably has a lot to do with how you feel about the substantive laws involved. In other words, over a wide range, it’s okay to treat different home rule requests differently, based on both principled and prudential considerations about each proposed power.

For advocates of limited government and individual rights, a couple of categories of home rule law deserve at least especially intense scrutiny, if not automatic rejection:

  • Laws that threaten to impair basic rights, such as the rights of property ownership or the right to keep and bear arms.
  • Laws that dump costs on out-of-towners. Zoning rules, for example, often exclude land uses that as a result get foisted onto other communities. Restrictions on ride-share services may inflict costs both on tourists and on drivers who live in other towns. There’s a real public choice problem here, since so many of those who lose out don’t get a vote.
  • Finally, some local laws, it should be conceded, do come at an unacceptable cost in statewide uniformity – which is one reason states mostly don’t let municipalities issue their own drivers’ licenses with added local requirements.

All that said, home rule principles do advance genuine values of decentralization in many situations. They may allow law to be tailored to genuine differences in local preference and – like federalism generally – make room for useful experimentation. They may enable higher levels of government to stay out of a given program area or avoid entering some divisive conflict.

On this checklist, local power to adopt ranked-choice voting scores extremely well. It doesn’t violate the rights or impair the legitimate interests of the town’s own citizens, much less of outsiders, on whom it has no direct effect at all. It allows procedure to be tailored to real difference in local preference, and allows experimental innovation at relatively low stakes. Finally, when adopted in local elections, it is typically consistent with important uniformity interests; for example, if a town acquires tabulation equipment geared to local RCV, that equipment still works for the methods used in races for governor and president. (Admittedly, things can get slightly more complicated if, for example, the law provides that a state agency needs to pre-clear all use of election equipment.)

It’s unfortunate that legislatures in Tennessee and Florida this spring enacted, and governors signed, measures banning local use of RCV, which had previously been approved by voters in Memphis, Tenn., and Sarasota, Fla. Both bans passed mostly or entirely on party lines, with Republicans in favor. Many on the right seem to think that because localities like Cambridge, Mass., and San Francisco have helped popularize the method, it must somehow favor progressive or left candidates in its workings.

That’s a baseless fear, I argue in a new syndicated opinion piece:

right‐​leaning parties have done quite well in Australia and Ireland, both of which have used ranked choice voting for a century (and are among the world’s most stable democracies). In August, Canada’s Conservatives used ranked‐​choice to pick Pierre Poilievre to fight the next election against Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party.

In Virginia, the GOP scored a standout win after using ranked choice voting to pick Glenn Youngkin as its candidate for governor in 2021.

It’s encouraging, therefore, that some other states have moved toward resolving the home rule issue the right way. In Virginia itself, where home rule powers are sharply limited under what’s known as the Dillon Rule, a new law passed last year opened the door for municipalities to give RCV a try. In Maryland, where both Montgomery County and Baltimore City have requested enabling legislation, next year may be the session in which the General Assembly grants the request. That’s the best way to go.