Action in state legislative sessions are proving that ranked-choice voting is as unpopular as ever.

After last year’s string of losses on state ballot measures, some progressive activists claimed they would fare better with lawmakers than they had with voters. Yet legislatures are not enacting ranked-choice this year — instead, they are banning the convoluted scheme.

The idea behind ranked-choice voting is to get voters to express “preferences” about multiple candidates, rather than just voting for one. This raises questions about one-person, one-vote, but that’s only the beginning of the problem. The system makes elections more difficult from start to finish, slowing the process and introducing new possibilities for errors and irregularities.

It starts with the ballot. In a normal election, a voter can vote once for each office. If there are six offices up for election, that means voting for six candidates — one for each office. With a ranked-choice ballot, however, if there are five candidates running for each of those offices, then a voter is supposed to “vote” 30 times, ranking all five candidates for each of the six offices.

This requires a longer,........

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