Rob Richie:

One of the most surprising developments of the year is that Democratic National Committee insiders are poised to ban the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in selecting the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028 – overriding presidential primary laws in Maine and Washington, D.C, and squashing great interest in this use of RCV among state legislators and the many state parties who run their own primaries.

Earlier this year, I spotlighted this compelling use case for RCV. Presidential primaries draw crowded fields of candidates that voters get to know and are eager to rank rather than be limited to one. Parties need to bring together their big tent of voters, and RCV rewards unifying candidates. The sequential nature of contests is a problematic fit with early voting – in 2020, for example, more than three million Democratic voters cast a ballot for a candidate who had withdrawn before that vote was counted.

But the senior citizens who dominate the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) reflect the conservatism I’ve found among many older people on adopting RCV. The age gap in support for RCV is breathtaking. While that makes me optimistic for the future of RCV as a reform, it reflects a short-term challenge in a nation that too often looks and acts like a gerontocracy….