For nearly a decade, I’ve been arguing that ranked choice voting would improve Hawaii’s elections by increasing competition, strengthening representation and encouraging voter participation. Last week, the Honolulu Charter Commission gave us our first real chance to test ranked choice voting as a permanent feature of how we select our officials.

Let’s take a closer look at what that means.

Every 10 years, the City and County of Honolulu convenes a Charter Commission to review the city’s foundational document, which sets out the structure, powers and rules of government. That commission is coming to the end of a two-year process that involved community input, research, discussions and the crafting of amendments meant to improve how the city runs. One of the amendments moving forward would replace the city council’s current nonpartisan jungle primary and general election run-off system with a ranked choice election in November.

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Under the proposed system, voters would rank candidates in order of preference. If no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest is eliminated, and those ballots shift to their voters’ next choice, continuing in rounds until one candidate has majority support or two remain. Essentially, you only need to vote once because you’ve already listed your backup options on the ballot.

Put that way, it doesn’t sound like a very big change. So, can it really deliver the benefits ranked choice voting can offer?

Ranked choice voting’s best-known benefits are eliminating the spoiler effect and freeing voters from feeling they’re wasting their vote. In a traditional winner-take-all system, two similar candidates splitting a race can hand victory to someone neither of their supporters preferred.

It happens in our primaries all the time — voters pick the person they think can win, their first choice. Ranked choice removes that trap. Voters rank their true first choice, and if that candidate doesn’t advance, their vote moves to their next preference.

So, when a lesser-known, independent or a third-party candidate is on the ballot, voters can cast their ballot without worrying about whether or not they’re throwing away their vote. Naturally, that opens the door to a whole new group of candidates who may have a better vision but less name recognition. These are real advantages.

In Honolulu, though, the current system already provides a partial workaround. A nonpartisan jungle primary with a top-two runoff means every candidate enters the same field regardless of affiliation, and if no one wins a majority in August, voters get a second chance to weigh in come November.

That does limit the potential increase in candidate diversity and ideologies that other cities experience with winner-take-all, partisan races. What is does, however, is ensure that races are decided by the most voters possible during the general election. Our current system requires all but two candidates to be eliminated in the August primary, when turnout is lower, and the electorate is smaller and less representative. If the race isn’t decided outright in the primary, which is possible, our top two system means that the vast majority of voters don’t actually get the full range of choices.

The commission’s proposal would fix that, and on its own, that should increase participation and representation in our city offices. But it’s unlikely to deliver the most transformative results in partisan primaries where incumbents are truly vulnerable, or in multi-member districts where proportional representation encourages coalitions. I’m sure that’s why Camron Hurt of Common Cause Hawaiʻi, one of the most consistent advocates for election reform in the state, proposed pairing ranked choice voting with islandwide at-large council seats. That would have been a big, transformative change.

This current proposal is a small change, but a good one. Why?

As Hurt explained in an interview, “It may be just laying a brick that doesn’t fundamentally change a lot, but we can start laying things on that to build a foundation.”

I happen to agree. I would even argue that this incremental approach is the best way forward. Amongst my friends and family, very few of us enjoy revolutionary changes in our lives. We know there are problems that need to be fixed in our communities, but rapid reform brings risks that things will get worse, not better.

An overhaul of our system, which I do believe we need, requires us to start with something. As a state, we have been talking about election reform for years in legislative sessions, in community hearings, in columns like this one, and making very little progress. A tangible, workable first step that voters can actually take is not nothing.

The real prize for ranked choice voting in Hawaiʻi remains our state races, where it would be truly transformative in partisan primaries and general elections. But, in an environment where new ideas tend to stall before anyone gets the chance to see how they work, proof of concept matters. That’s the opportunity the Honolulu Charter Commission has presented.