Michigan GOP Boots Ranked Choice Voting Advocates From Convention After State Rep Maddock Calls Them 'Communists'

A ranked choice voting advocacy group that paid to attend the Michigan Republican Party convention said it was escorted from the Novi convention center by security after heckling from party members and state Rep. Matt Maddock.

Rank MI Vote said the Republican lawmaker from Milford repeatedly called volunteers "communists" and threatened one volunteer by indicating that if he were in the parking lot he would "kick your ass."

"We were having a productive day meeting like-minded, politically engaged convention attendees until Rep. Maddock chose to bully our volunteers and anyone who stopped to speak with us," said Jennifer Umphress, conservative working group director with Rank MI Vote.

Maddock, when asked whether he threatened the volunteers, said via text: "I threatened to expose them and I did."

State Sen. Jim Runestad, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, expressed some remorse for allowing the group to attend the convention.

"It was a regrettable decision to permit them to have a table," Runestad said. "Once concerns were brought to our attention, we revoked their table privileges and will be issuing a refund."

"I am not personally familiar with the Rep. Maddock situation," he added.

Maddock is a fourth-term lawmaker who serves as the majority vice chair for the House Appropriations Committee. His wife, Meshawn Maddock, is the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Rank MI Vote last year tried to gather signatures for a ballot proposal that would usher in ranked choice voting, which allows people to rank candidates for a particular office, with the ultimate winner required to get a majority of the support.

The group stopped collecting signatures late last year and the proposal is not expected to appear on the November ballot.

"We are well aware that the Republican leadership is largely opposed to ranked choice voting, but the group decided to inquire about a table at the convention in a good-faith effort to discuss the matter with delegates," Umphress told The News.

The group paid $500 for its table and had a total of 11 volunteers throughout the day inside Novi's Vibe Credit Union Showplace, where the convention took place.

The group said it had a good morning of engagement and debate with convention attendees until Maddock showed up at the table shortly before noon.

Maddock accused of making derogatory remarks against group

The lawmaker made repeated derogatory remarks, including referring to volunteers as communists, then set up a chair directly in front of the table to heckle and block individuals visiting the table, Rank MI Vote said.

Around noon, security removed Maddock's chair, and the staff attempted to block Maddock from the table until the lawmaker retreated.

At 1:15 p.m., Maddock returned with about 20 people who surrounded the table and shouted "communists" and "shame" at volunteers, the group said.

Maddock, at one point, told a volunteer that "If we were in the parking lot, I'd kick your ass," Rank MI Vote said in a statement.

Security returned and then, later, at the request of the party leadership, asked Rank MI Vote to leave and escorted volunteers from the building.

At that point, Umphress said volunteers were told there were safety concerns and that calls had been made to the national party.

Umphress said Runestad and the Republican leadership "were gracious and attempted to intervene to keep us safe."

Maddock calls Rank MI Voting members communists

Maddock on Tuesday posted video on social media that he appeared to have taken at the convention, in which he referred to the volunteers as "straight up communists."

"None of us are communists," one volunteer responded, trying to argue that ranked choice voting benefited all voters.

"We stopped you guys dead in your tracks," Maddock told the volunteers, referring to the group's ballot proposal.

The incident raises questions about how Michigan Republicans view voting reforms. The state Republican Party leadership has long opposed ranked choice voting, asserting the system is designed to benefit Democrats or the left.

However, ranked choice voting has been used by Republican Parties in other states. A few days after the Michigan GOP convention, the Lynchburg Republican City Committee in Virginia elected to move forward with a firehouse primary and use ranked choice voting to determine party nominees.

These types of primaries were banned in Virginia under a 2021 law, but the Lynchburg Republican City Committee can conduct one if it can ensure remote voting for out-of-state voters.

The state's Republican Party has used ranked choice voting in its conventions to select party nominees. It is how former Gov. Glenn Youngkin advanced to the general election in 2021.

The center-right think tank R Street Institute supported the passage of HB 630 in the Virginia Legislature this year, which expands the local option on ranked choice voting. The bill was approved by state lawmakers and is on the governor's desk.

"While some people worry that implementing a new system will confuse voters, the R Street Institute's research suggests that voters can navigate ranked-choice voting without difficulty," wrote R Street Institute's Robert Melvin in a letter to Gov. Spanberger.

"In 2024, the Republican Party in the U.S. Virgin Islands used ranked choice voting in its presidential caucus that President Donald Trump won. In doing so, it became the first Republican Party to use RCV in a presidential caucus or primary."

Rank MI Vote pushed for a 2026 statewide ranked choice voting initiative. However, in December the group sent an email out to volunteers announcing that it was "pausing signature gathering efforts, but we aren't pausing the campaign to bring ranked choice voting to Michigan."

The group says it is now aiming to re-launch a campaign in April 2027 for a 2028 initiative.

The incident in Michigan illustrates how voting reforms are often shoved into the same red versus blue narrative that envelops every political issue in the United States.

But ranked choice voting advocates assert that it is not a Democrat reform or a Republican reform. Republican Parties have used it. Democratic Parties have used it. Republicans have been elected under it, as have Democrats.

Leaders of both parties have also opposed its usage. For example, Democratic officials in Maine, Washington DC, and New York City were resistant to or actively tried to block implementation of ranked choice voting systems approved by voters.

A bill to allow ranked choice voting in gubernatorial and state legislative general elections in Maine was brought before the state Supreme Court on April 1 and the state's Democratic attorney general wants the court to declare it unconstitutional.

Democratic leaders in Colorado and Nevada opposed measures on the 2024 ballot to adopt more choice elections that included both nonpartisan all-candidate and all-voter primary elections and ranked choice voting in general elections.

In both cases, they focused their objections on ranked choice voting, relying on some of the same arguments Republican leaders in Michigan use against the reform.

The most common argument they used is that it is too confusing for voters.

For example, in 2024, Democrat-aligned groups in Nevada who opposed Question 3 pointed to a University of Pennsylvania study that they say shows 1-in-20 ballots under ranked choice systems in the United States are rejected.

But this isn't true. The study stated that about 5 percent of ranked choice ballots in elections researchers looked at had some kind of error on them. But most of these errors could either be corrected or were so innocuous that they did not affect the counting of the ballot.

The study found that rejection rates under ranked choice voting rose to about half of 1 percent at most – which is not uncommon even under choose-one voting and is a smaller rejection rate than mail-in ballots in Nevada.

Multiple research groups, including the R Street Institute, have found that most voters understand ranked choice voting where it is used.

A 2025 exit survey of New York City primary voters showed 96 percent of respondents found ranked choice voting to be simple and 97 percent found it at least somewhat easy to understand.

But there is a reason why ranked choice voting is only used in closed primary elections in New York City, and that is because the Democratic Party and aligned interest groups won't allow its implementation for the general election.

As long as the most critical elections in the city remain closed, the party with the most power is okay with systemic reforms that are reserved only for their members.