Group hopes to change the way Oklahomans vote

Oklahoma City, Okla — A new idea to Oklahoma could change the way you vote after the 2020 election.

It's called ranked choice voting and would allow you to rank your top choices instead of only voting for one person.

We've got your back with what this might mean for your ballot and the future of the state.

This concept would make huge changes to Oklahoma electoral system.

Not only would the state need new equipment for counting those votes, but it would eliminate the need for runoff elections.

A public, non-partisan forum committee has a plan of action.

"Rather than just sit back and watch the world go by, we've got to do something different," According to Bill Clifford, who is part of the group, and helped organize the forum on Saturday.

The group is fighting for change in all corners of the political ground of Oklahoma, from updating legislative process, to rural health care and municipality funding, to education funding.

Clifford said, "Things just aren’t the way they ought to be."

He added, the group is also shifting their gaze to Oklahoma’s electoral system.

"This is not really thinking outside the box, it's trying to make the thought box bigger."

According to Oklahoma City University Professor of Social Ethics, Mark Davies said, “You get to vote your first choice, without worrying about it hurting your second choice or about it helping your least favorite choice."

It would allow voters, instead of just voting for one candidate, to rank their preference from favorite to least favorite. on a scale of one to three.

One huge selling point is that it would eliminate the need for runoff elections because someone would always end up with at least fifty percent of the vote.

"Nobody can be elected without having at least fifty percent of the people having a vote for them. Now it might not be the first vote, but they would at least have the second or sometimes it might even be the third vote. But at least fifty percent actually approve of that person being elected," Davies explained.

He said if no candidate has a majority of first preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first preference votes will be eliminated. Then, the second preference choices left from the eliminated candidate's ballots will be distributed to the other two. This process is repeated until a winner is chosen. This is also known as an instant runoff which is said to be cheaper than the current system.

According to Davies, "Those runoff elections are very costly and every time you have a runoff election, you have to have the poll workers payed for it, you have to have all of the ballots printed, so there's a number of costs involved in those runoff elections."

It would require some upfront cost because polling places would have to get equipment that could read the new system.

the group says they're hoping to get enough supporters for ranked choice voting to sign a petition in Oklahoma. If they have enough signatures, this could become a state question in the 2020 election.