R Street Testimony in Support of RI SB 2590, Ranked Choice Voting for Presidential Primary Elections
Testimony from:
Dr. Jonathan Madison, Governance Fellow, R Street Institute
In SUPPORT of Senate Bill No. 2590, “AN ACT relating to elections — primaries for election of delegates to national conventions and for presidential preference”
April 7, 2026
Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman LaMountain and Members of the Committee:
My name is Dr. Jonathan Madison, and I am a governance fellow at the R Street Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization. Our mission is to engage in policy analysis and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government in a variety of areas, including election administration. This is why we support Senate Bill 2590.
SB 2590 establishes a clear statutory framework for using ranked choice voting (RCV) in Rhode Island’s presidential primary elections, including rules for tabulation and reporting. It ensures that ballots are counted in rounds, with voters’ preferences redistributed until a candidate achieves majority support or meets party allocation thresholds.
This is a particularly well-suited application of RCV. Presidential primaries often feature large candidate fields within the same party, where vote splitting can allow a candidate to prevail despite lacking broad support. RCV addresses this directly by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring that the eventual winner reflects a broader consensus among voters. Just as importantly, RCV allows voters to express their preferences more fully. Voters can support their preferred candidate without concern that doing so will inadvertently help elect their least preferred option. This produces outcomes that better reflect the electorate’s true preferences.1 Experience with ranked choice voting in other jurisdictions shows that voters are capable of using the system effectively and that election administration can accommodate it with clear rules and procedures.2
Another important consideration is that Rhode Island tends to host its presidential primary election in April after many other states have already hosted their primaries and many candidates have either been eliminated or chosen to withdraw from the race.3 So, RCV could pay dividends for the Ocean State and its voters by ensuring they can still have the opportunity to contribute to the overall selection of the winner, even if their first-choice candidate is no longer competing.
RCV improves presidential primaries by efficiently allowing voters to more accurately express their will in a crowded field. By codifying tabulation standards and providing a structured framework, this bill helps ensure that any implementation in Rhode Island is transparent, consistent, and easy to administer. For these reasons, we respectfully encourage a favorable report of SB 2590.
Thank you,
Dr. Jonathan Madison
Governance Fellow
R Street Institute
385-500-7537
jmadison@rstreet.org
[1] Drew Johnson and Matt Germer, Ranking Presidents: How Ranked-Choice Voting Can Improve Presidential Primaries, R Street Policy Study (R Street Institute, 2022), https://www.rstreet.org/research/ranking-presidents-how-ranked-choice-voting-can-improve-presidential-primaries/.
[2] Matt Germer, An Analysis of Ranked Choice Voting in Maine (R Street Institute, 2021), https://www.rstreet.org/research/an-analysis-of-ranked-choice-voting-in-maine/.
[3] 2024 State Primary Election Dates (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2023), https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/2024-state-primary-election-dates.