Voters in Clark County, Wash., will get the opportunity in 2022 to decide whether to move to ranked-choice voting for future elections.
The county’s Charter Review Commission, which is empowered to put initiatives on the ballot, voted Tuesday to move forward with an RCV proposal after surveying residents.
Clark, the fourth largest county in Washington, is the second to put RCV on the ballot next year. The charter commission in San Juan, one of the state’s smallest counties, made the same decision earlier this year.
“We are so glad the Charter Review Commission took this step to allow voters to decide how they want to elect their officials,” said Lisa Ayrault, executive director of FairVote Washington, which advocates for RCV. “FairVote Washington looks forward to working with community organizations to educate voters about how ranked-choice voting can improve Clark County elections.”
Ranked-choice voting is an alternative to the traditional method of casting ballots. Rather than the candidate with the most votes being declared the victor, an RCV election uses an instant runoff system to ensure the winner has a majority of votes.
How it works: Voters can rank multiple candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, the person with the fewest is eliminated and their support is redistributed to voters’ second choices. That process continues until someone has a majority.
Advocates for RCV say the system gives more candidates an opportunity to compete and it encourages a more civil election because candidates must appeal to a broad collection of voters in order to get second- and third-place votes.
Opponents claim the system is too complicated, although voters who recently used it for the first time in other jurisdictions have given RCV positive reviews.
President Biden won Clark County by 4 percentage points in 2020. Democratic candidates carried it in three previous elections as well, but by just two-tenths of a point in 2012 and 2016, when no one cracked 50 percent. Its largest city, Vancouver, borders Portland, Ore.
Elsewhere in RCV news
- A new coalition is trying to get open primaries and ranked-choice voting on the ballot in Nevada next year. The proposed ballot initiative has been filed with the secretary of state. Following a legal review, proponents would then need to gather petition signatures to put their concept in front of voters. As a proposed constitutional amendment, it would need to be approved in both 2022 and 2024 before taking effect.
- In Eureka, a city of 27,000 people on the Northern California coast, the local government voted to move to RCV elections, possibly as soon as 2022.
- And in Utah, where more than 20 cities used RCV for the first time this year, legislators blocked an effort to allow additional voting options, such as approval voting. In that system, voters can support multiple candidates but do not rank their selections.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.