Abe Hamadeh Calls for Ranked-Choice Voting Ban

In a recent social media post responding to a court ruling in Maine, Representative Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) pushed to ban ranked-choice voting nationwide.

For additional context, Maine approved of implementing a ranked-choice voting system in 2016 for statewide elections, with a 2017 Maine Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling limiting the use of ranked-choice voting to congressional races and party primaries.

The Pine Tree State's Democrats sought to expand the system further to include the gubernatorial and state legislature elections, but the SJC has recently ruled this proposal unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by its judges.

"Because of the Maine Constitution's language, there are strong and convincing reasons that LD 1666 is unconstitutional, and we conclude that the presumption of constitutionality has been overcome," the opinion stated.

On X, Rep. Hamadeh's office responded to the ruling, writing, "The Maine Supreme Judicial Court just ruled that Democrats’ latest attempt to force Ranked-Choice Voting on governor and state legislative races is unconstitutional."

"Ranked-choice voting creates chaos, disenfranchises voters, and destroys trust in our elections," Rep. Hamadeh's office expressed, adding, "That's why it fails everywhere it’s tried, and exactly why Congressman Hamadeh introduced the Preventing Ranked Choice Corruption Act to ban this corrupt system once and for all in all federal elections."

The Arizona congressman introduced the Preventing Ranked Choice Corruption Act last April, which bans ranked-choice voting.

Hamadeh previously called the system "flawed" and argued that it gives the minority party an unfair advantage when the majority party is split between two favorites, further saying that "the same Democrat pawns who support allowing non-citizen voting without voter ID and same-day voter registration also want to turn our democracy into a rank choice voting scheme."

"Their motives are clear – they do not want to help Americans vote - they only want to help corrupt politicians win," Hamadeh concluded. "In Arizona, we see tremendous amounts of liberal out-of-state dollars pour into our state every year to try to alter our election processes."