FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patrick Snow
Communications Director, Heartland Impact
PSnow@heartlandimpact.org
Heartland Impact Applauds Governor DeWine for Signing Ranked Choice Voting Ban into Law
SCHAUMBURG, IL – Heartland Impact today applauded Ohio Governor Mike DeWine for signing Senate Bill 63 into law, prohibiting ranked choice voting (RCV) in all Ohio state and local elections. The law also withholds Local Government Fund payments from any municipality that attempts to adopt RCV.
Heartland Impact has worked to combat ranked choice voting for years. In October 2024, the organization published Ranked Choice Voting: A Major Threat to Free, Fair, and Secure Elections, a policy brief documenting how RCV disenfranchises voters, disproportionately harms minority communities, causes administrative errors that can result in the wrong candidate being certified as the winner, and erodes public confidence in elections. In March 2025, Executive Director Cameron Sholty testified before the Ohio Senate General Government Committee in direct support of SB 63.
“Ohio made the right call,” said Cameron Sholty, Executive Director of Heartland Impact. “Proponents of ranked choice voting are dead wrong and the evidence against it continues to mount — confusing ballots, multi-round counts that drag past Election Day, and thousands of voters whose ballots simply don’t count in the final tally. The right to vote means the right to have your vote counted. RCV puts that at risk, and it does so most severely in the communities that can least afford it. Governor DeWine and the Ohio legislature took a hard look at that evidence and chose to protect their constituents.”
In his testimony, Sholty highlighted Maine’s 2018 primary, in which more than six percent of voters who cast ballots saw them go uncounted due to RCV’s “exhausted ballot” problem, as well as the experience of Minnesota municipalities where RCV produced low turnout, unresolved Election Day results, and at least one city moving to repeal the system just three years after adopting it.
Samantha Fillmore, Senior State Government Relations Manager at Heartland Impact, called on other state legislatures to follow Ohio’s lead.
“Ohio has set a model for the rest of the country,” said Fillmore. “Heartland Impact has the research, the policy resources, and the advocacy experience to help state lawmakers understand why ranked choice voting is bad for voters — and what they can do about it. We encourage legislators everywhere to reach out and take advantage of those resources.”
Heartland Impact’s full policy brief and additional RCV resources are available at heartlandimpact.org/policy/ranked-choice-voting.
###
Heartland Impact is the advocacy and outreach affiliate of The Heartland Institute, a nearly 40-year-old free-market policy research organization. Heartland Impact specializes in providing state lawmakers the resources to advance free-market solutions toward broad-based economic prosperity.
