Opposing Ranked Choice Voting Is Opposing Representative Democracy
Examply of a Maine Ranked Choice Ballot for the 2020 Presidential Elections. via Wikimedia Commons
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) should be the bare minimum for a society interested in the most representative and responsive government. It is extremely frustrating to see our legislative leaders, particularly republicans, actively work against a more balanced and representative approach to democracy. Especially since there is never any reason given, no citation provided, simply a staunch adherence to “the way its always been done” alongside fear mongering about some amorphous specter of fraud despite the method of counting votes having nothing to do with fraud or misrepresentation. In addition to this, First Past The Post (FPTP) voting (what we currently have) is one of the worst ways to have a voting system and can be directly traced to the gridlock many governments face, both state and federal, and the extremism we see from many candidates.
First, lets break down why FPTP, is so inherently harmful to democracy. Primarily, FPTP voting inherently leads to a two-party winner-take-all system that incentivizes voting for a majority party that may not represent the voter and turns every election into a “lesser of two evils” campaign. This means that voters are often forced to vote against their interests on many positions because of the necessity to ensure their least favorite candidate never gets past that post, lest their vote be wasted.
Much criticism is leveled at the two major US political parties for having a tight grip on American politics, but this is as much the fault of the ballot method as it is the parties themselves. They are each incentivized to fund “spoilers” to the other party or frame their opponent negatively rather than provide a more representative platform or candidate pool. This is an inherent and consistent result of FPTP voting rather than any specific party platform: the “traditional” voting method will always lead to a two-party system with no real representation outside of the duopoly.
This leads us to a second and salient reason FPTP voting is harmful: due to this spoiler effect, it effectively bars any challenge to the two primary parties. We have all heard that “voting third party is a wasted vote” and this is true under a FPTP system, regardless of your politics. If any vote count for any given candidate or party doesn’t reach critical mass, it is essentially wasted and can actively support the opposition to your position as it robs the party closer to your position of a vote. The data is in on this, this is not new information, it is a well-documented phenomena that has had real effects on elections. If one is to believe in democracy and a responsive government, why would they support a system that intentionally disenfranchises or subverts the vote of the citizens? To make this perfectly clear: This means that there are many places in a representative democracy where the people are represented by someone that most voters did NOT wish to represent them. This is not a good representative democracy and some could argue that if this is true, it ISN’T a representative democracy.
Good examples of this particular effect can be seen in recent local elections in Polk County, Iowa where candidates for Mayor and certain Wards of Des Moines actually had more votes against them than for them, yet they still won their respective races. For example, in one ward, a candidate received only 42% of the vote, not a majority, yet will represent the ward as if they had because there were more than two candidates that were running for that seat. Regardless of your position on the candidates, why should a system that tosses out the vote of most of the voters be preferable to one that does not? Is the government still a representative democracy if most voters are actively voting against who wins elections?
This is just scratching the surface of why FPTP is a poor system for representative democracy. There are many more issues with FPTP such as:
- making it easier to gerrymander voters and creating regional voting blocs that can then be diluted. Gerrymandering can still happen, but is much harder to do if every vote is counted equally.
- creating “safe seats” that push balances of power to marginal seats instead of representing all voters. It is inherently unrepresentative because an election won by 1 vote or 10000 votes has the same result, leading to less engagement and responsiveness.
- “tactical voting” where voters are pushed into voting for positions and candidates they don’t like in order to stave off a worse candidate or position. Governments with FPTP are inherently unresponsive to the public because the representatives have to worry less about responding to voters, and worry more about spoiling any challenges to incumbency -it makes elections less about voting FOR candidates, but AGAINST others.
- FPTP has a long history of disenfranchising large swathes of the voting population and many disparate ideas. It forces a homogenization of thought without nuance since “hot button” issues can derail entire elections and blur the will of the electorate by forcing a binary choice based on one or two issues.
This list can go on, we are by now familiar with most or all these negative aspects of FPTP. Now let’s look at why Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is not only a superior voting method but is actually a requirement for a representative democracy.
Having a government that is responsive and accountable is key to any functioning democracy which should be supported, not pulled away from. RCV voting allows every vote to be considered and applied to the ballot, so no vote is wasted. This is done by applying a 1st, 2nd, and so on choice to the candidates listed so the most popular candidates win elections. Voters will list their preference on their ballot and the candidates with the least votes is eliminated (if under a certain threshold). Those ballots that had the 1st choice eliminated will then have their 2nd choice counted to the vote tallies and distributed out to those candidates then they are counted again. This continues until all remaining candidates are over a threshold and then a winner can be declared. What this means is that no vote is wasted, if a voter wants a minority party to win an election, they can still vote for them as the 1st choice while still being represented by their 2nd or 3rd choice instead of their one-and-done vote being discarded in favor of the candidates they actively do not want to win. This allows for far more nuance in the outcome of elections where candidates are forced to campaign FOR their positions rather than constantly hedge against their opponents. It also still leaves open the possibility of leaving boxes blank for candidates that they would refuse to vote for, eliminating the “lesser of two evils” and “tactical” voting that we see today.
After this analysis, in every measurable way, RCV is not only a superior voting method in general, but it also serves democracy better. It serves all political positions better. It makes all our representative governments better. Having every vote count and every voice heard makes for a better democracy.
So why is it so unpopular? Why is this tried-and-true method not seeing broader support in our state government? Why would a party actively work to ban the best way to improve our democracy? Why isn’t this a more popular position across the entire political spectrum?
The answers, like all points above, are well documented and simple: ranked choice voting is bad for unpopular policies, parties, and candidates. One of the most well-established facts about opposition to RCV isn’t that it is somehow bad or problematic, it’s that the incumbent parties that benefit from the negative aspects listed above and are incentivized to keep the status quo. Basically, they are less interested in democracy and more interested in keeping their power and enjoy the idea of minority rule, so long as it benefits them. The only real way to make this change is if the electorate demands something better and embraces the idea that their government should represent all voters, not just those that are best able to game the system.
It should also be noted that while this is a bipartisan problem – democrats AND republicans– the majority opposition to a better democracy continues to come from the ideological right, as it always has. Just this legislative session, republicans in the Iowa statehouse have acted to ban ranked choice voting on top of state statute that already bars ranked choice voting. There is no reason given other than “instill trust in the process”, despite no evidence that this is the case and as noted above, there is plenty of evidence the other way. Time and again, conservative idealogues have done whatever they can to make our government less representative and less responsive by adhering to the demonstrably undemocratic nature of FPTP voting. We also have to place this in the context of the same party limiting voting times, methods, and increasing hurdles to voting such as purging rolls and creating barriers to vote (but strangely not run) for public offices.
If you’re tired of voting for the lesser of two evils or seeing extreme policies driving your government, then embrace candidates and groups who agree that our democracy can and should be better. Examples include groups like Better Ballot Iowa or RCVresources. Educate yourself and your legislators on what it means to have a more responsive democracy and believe that it can be better. Ask the republican legislators why they are so unanimously opposed to improving our democracy and why they are afraid of more voices being heard. If these representatives don’t have an answer to these questions, then we have to conclude they aren’t interested in democracy or representative government, they are much more interested in power and minority rule. The very thing the country was founded to oppose.
What’s more unAmerican and undemocratic than that?
https://makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post/
https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting/
https://aceproject.org/main/english/es/esd01b.htm
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SSB3161
https://www.betterballotiowa.org/
Well written and well researched. I predict many of our most staunch conservative commenters will recoil from their own positions in responding – if they choose to respond at all.Report
Florida couldn’t handle a butterfly ballot in 2000.
I’m not sure that RCV will succeed where other stuff has failed. Is this one of those things where we can put it in Chicago or Minneapolis or Los Angeles or something for a few years and establish that the “in practice” is somewhere in the ballpark of “in theory”?
Because if we establish it and, it turns out, 86% of respondents only fill out one circle, I’m going to say that the problem might not, in fact, be FPTP.Report
There is actually quite a substantial data set on RCV voting in the US – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_StatesReport
I can’t help but notice this part:
Why did they replace RCV?
Going through the rest of the page, I was reminded that San Fran already does this for, among other offices, the DA.
And it’s how Chesa won.
Huh.Report
Toggling through to the citation that’s attached to that statement, It appears to have been a seen as less efficient at the time – and probably was with hand counts of paper ballots. Given how many states and municipalities are back to using it in some form, I’d say modern computer voting systems can handle it just fine.Report
If I felt better about modern computer voting systems, I suppose I’d be in 100% agreement with how they’re obviously better than hand counts.Report
What is it about such systems that gives you pause?Report
They’re not open source and there is a shocking amount of resistance to auditing the machines. An expert showed how the machines could be tampered with in court, for example. The defense was “these vulnerabilities are merely speculative”.
Here’s a relevant XKCD comic.Report
Making them open source won’t actually increase their security. And the machines are audited and calibrated by each jurisdiction before each election. All the ones that are digital only – as opposed to digital scans of paper – also produce a paper printout as a back up. And that expert showed what could be done, not what has been done. Big difference.
But in sum – you don’t trust them because you can’t run the code yourself. Tell us – what other modern software based transaction systems do you distrust similarly?Report
It won’t increase their security and I don’t mean to imply that it would.
It would, however, make their security *LEGIBLE*. Heck, it might even allow for the machines to be improved. And not even for a whole lot of money. There are crazy people out there with Asperger’s who will work on it nights and weekends for free.
you don’t trust them because you can’t run the code yourself. Tell us – what other modern software based transaction systems do you distrust similarly?
Do you see the difference between what you said and what I said?
Because I do.
If voting machines were similarly inaccurate when it came to the difference between the input and the translation, would that give you pause?Report
Based on what’s known publicly, voting machines have lower error rates then self-checkouts in grocery stores, and are significantly safer then credit card readers on gas pumps. Among other software driven transaction systems we encounter every day. Do you trust those systems more or less then electronic voting systems?Report
It just depends on whether you consider what the expert demonstrated in court to be “known publicly”.
If you consider it to be a secret, then it’s probably poor form on my part to put it out there in the open.
My bad.Report
I consider it public. I also know that a single demonstration of what could happen – absent any proof it has happened – doesn’t mean any of this is insecure.
Do you trust ATMs? Self Check outs? Gas pump card readers? Voting machines are, statistically more secure.Report
No, the fact that it *COULD* happen and it’s *THAT EASY* is what makes it insecure.
The definition of “insecure” applies before the fact, not only after the fact.
And, for what it’s worth, I do check for, for example, card skimmers when I use a card reader. I suggest that you do as well.
Report
But I should also note: This is a criticism of voting machines rather than RCV.
If the argument is that we will need to switch away from paper ballots to computerized voting machines due to the added complexity of RCV, then that’s an argument against RCV… but not, you know, RCV-in-theory.Report
Yes, the voting machines COULD be hacked. They haven’t been.
Credit card machines COULD be skimmed – and they are. Hence your video. Again, one of these has theoretical vulnerabilities that have not been exploited so far. The other has known vulnerabilities which are exploited regularly. My conclusion is one is far more worrisome then the other.Report
The proper comparison is electronic voting machines to paper voting systems.
Each one CAN be hacked just as easily the other, but neither has to any degree.
If one were concerned about election integrity, the numerous attempts by the Trumpists to overthrow elections are several orders of magnitude more worrying.Report
Yes, the voting machines COULD be hacked. They haven’t been.
I agree with the first sentence.
I have to say that I wish I had your confidence about the second sentence.
I don’t, because of… well. What I’ve already pointed out.Report
What you’ve pointed out is one guy who said what COULD be done. No reporting it has been done, and a general discomfort with proprietary software.
What I’ve pointed out is what HAS been done with other similar systems, which also use proprietary software. And yet you seem to be ok with those systems despite, again, reporting of what HAS BEEN DONE.
Where you and I differ is you are more worried about a Theoretical threat then a real one.Report
It’s possible to ward off the theoretical threat, though.
Just make it open source. Hell, if you insist on keeping it closed-source, give it to one of the slot machine guys who have contracts with the Strip in Vegas. I trust those guys a hell of a lot more than I trust any other folks who make interactive tally machines.
If you insist on having the insecure systems in place when you’re also arguing that I switch to RCV, I think I’m going to be fine with saying “nah, let’s keep paper ballots”.
Lemme know when you’re interested in making voting machines about as robust as slot machines.
Maybe we could compromise and say “about as robust as ATMs”.Report
Other then a theoretical threat analysis, what evidence exists that electronic machines are less secure them ATM’s? In otherwords – wat’s the reported rate of fraud at ATMs (via skimmers or other threats) and how does that compare to similar data for voting machines?
What I’m getting at Jay is you are continuing to assume electronic voting machines are ALWAYS insecure because one guy showed once they COULD be. But you aren’t presenting any evidence they actually are – which would show up somewhere now wouldn’t it?Report
Other then a theoretical threat analysis, what evidence exists that electronic machines are less secure them ATM’s?
Other than the evidence, what evidence is there?
Would a government-issued vulnerability advisory from 2022 count or is that just another theoretical thing that hasn’t been proven to have happened?
What I’m getting at Jay is you are continuing to assume electronic voting machines are ALWAYS insecure because one guy showed once they COULD be. But you aren’t presenting any evidence they actually are – which would show up somewhere now wouldn’t it?
No, I’m assuming that they are because one guy showed that they *WERE*. Look at the date of that story. Was it… 2018? 2016? Go back and look at it.Report
One guy showed how they COULD be. To show that they still ARE you need data showing compromise in actual elections. Like we have data regarding actual ATM skimmer activity.
That aside, your CISA advisory contains this statement:
People are already doing things to make this a more secure method of voting. There is no evidence of what was once shown COULD happen has ACTUALLY happened.
Unlike ATMs where Skimmers are caught all the time.Report
To show that they still ARE you need data showing compromise in actual elections
This is not how “vulnerabilities” work.
Do you have a sysadmin somewhere in the office? Ask him who his ISSO or ISSE is. Talk to the ISSO/ISSE about Risk management and whether a vulnerability can exist even if it has not been exploited.
His answers may surprise you.
CISA has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections.
This is a good thing, I guess.
But that doesn’t mean that the vulnerabilities don’t exist.
Especially given the date of the article of the guy who demonstrated that they were still there.
Did you look at the date? Tell me you looked at the date.Report
The existence of the vulnerabilities is not relevant unless and until they are exploited. Given the age of the article you cited, and the fact that in 2022 CISA noted that mitigations he recommended are, in fact, in place in many jurisdictions, tells me these machines are in fact secure. Certainly more secure then the ATMs that get hacked and skimmed on the daily. Yet you have not – to my recollection – advocated tossing ATMs and relying on barter.
Thus I remain befuddled why you are so afraid of electronic voting, much less electronic voting for ranked choice.Report
The existence of the vulnerabilities is not relevant unless and until they are exploited.
Say this to your sysadmin’s ISSO/ISSE.
Watch what their face does.
Be prepared to say “DUDE I WAS JUST KIDDING!”
And the “age” of the article I cited was from FREAKIN’ JANUARY. OF THIS YEAR.
THE GUY SHOWED THE VULNERABILITIES OF THE MACHINES MERE WEEKS AGO.Report
Why are you so afraid of 21st century technology?Report
Because I am a sysadmin who does stuff like “harden systems” as part of how I put food on the table.Report
A Luddite for a sysadmin. What are the chances.
I’ll make you a deal – we can go fully paper for federal elections if Congress fully funds it AND makes election day a national holiday. Oh, and you’d have to give me a plan to address the fact that nearly all historical and modern voter fraud occurred on paper ballots.
Sound good?Report
No, me saying “we need to make it open source” is not being a luddite.
Sure. Make it a national holiday. Close the bars! Make the vote counting transparent!Report
You saying you want to revert the voting systems which have not been compromised back to fully paper because they won’t open source their code so you can play with it is you being a LUddite.
I do wonder though how their sysadmins and ISSO/ISSE’s would feel about being so easily and lightly tossed under the bus by one of their own.Report
No, I’m saying I want to revert the voting systems that are vulnerable.
Or, you know, make them open source.
I do wonder though how their sysadmins and ISSO/ISSE’s would feel about being so easily and lightly tossed under the bus by one of their own.
You can go ask them! I AM BEGGING YOU TO ASK THEM!!!
Go to them and say “The existence of vulnerabilities is not relevant unless and until they are exploited, right?”
Please. Ask them that question.
I am asking you to go to your ISSO/ISSE and ask them that question.
Then, after you hear their answer, see if anything has been reframed for you. If not, explain to them how I have thrown them under the bus and tell me what they say about that.
Hell, tell them about this site! Maybe we could have another computer guy show up and complain about stuff from time to time.Report
You realize the irony of you of all people appealing to the authority of experts, right?Report
I’m comparing that irony to the complete lack of irony of someone saying “The existence of vulnerabilities is not relevant unless and until they are exploited” and I’m not particularly blown away.Report
This illustrates what I pointed out before, the flickering on-again off-again authority of experts depending on what outcome is desired.
Over here, a rando on the internet is more trustworthy than the FDA but over there, a computer technician is to be trusted because well, he is an “expert”.Report
Oh! I see what you’re doing. An expert on *WHAT*, may be the important question.
Are the people at the FDA experts when it comes to whether Marijuana has medicinal applications?
The devil’s lettuce is Schedule 1… so I’d say that they are not, in fact, exports.
They’re merely Authorities.
When it comes to Risk Management, I trust someone who has earned the title of ISSE or ISSO when it comes to the question of whether the existence of vulnerabilities is relevant unless and until they are exploited.
I would trust a rando ISSE from middle-of-nowhere Montana on that question.
Maybe you should ask why you wouldn’t.Report
If the ISSE in question is saying things generally in line with the consensus of other experts in the field, I am happy to trust them.
I mean, we don’t even need to take a single ISSE’s word for it.
The general consensus of experts have found that the Georgia systems from Dominion were vulnerable, which is why the court is suggesting security improvements to the systems.Report
Well, let’s ask you, a layperson.
Take this statement: “The existence of vulnerabilities is not relevant unless and until they are exploited.”
You’re an architect, right? What would you say to someone who said this about a draft they were working on?Report
There are reasons that when experts rank the states’ voting systems for accuracy, security, and ease of use, the top few positions are dominated by vote by mail states.
One of the reasons is that the scanners that tabulate the votes are part of a system that has audits from beginning to end. The scanners are audited almost continuously. Hackers don’t have to hack just the scanners; they have to hack the system. Including the manual parts.Report
It should also be pointed out that all systems have vulnerabilities so we are just left with picking the one with the least, or most manageable vulnerabilities.
And the most vulnerable link in any system is the people running it.
The voting system in the Soviet Union or any banana republic weren’t particularly different than in the United States but the people running them were and that made all the difference.
When the people running an election have declared that any outcome they don’t like is to be discarded, it really doesn’t matter what system is used.Report
RCV is for people who want to vote third-party and claim that absolves them of moral culpability for whatever the winner does but still not risk having the Wrong Guy win because he didn’t get enough votes.
Like, “well, sure, Biden’s supporting the Genocide, but technically I didn’t vote for Biden, I just ranked him higher than anyone else except for Liz Warren, so it’s not my responsibility to Witch Test all my current friend group…”Report
There’s nothing wrong with absolving oneself of moral culpability.
And you could *STILL* do Witch Tests.
“Yes, Jaybird. You voted for Earl Dodge in first place despite the fact that he’s dead. You voted for Jo Jorgensen for second place. WHO DID YOU VOTE FOR THIRD PLACE, JAYBIRD? DONALD TRUMP OR JOE BIDEN?”
Plenty of opportunities to Witch Test.Report
No, they don’t want to Witch Test, is the point, they like having friends, but if they voted for The Guy Who’s Doing The Thing they feel compelled to go to extreme lengths to prove that despite their vote they’re Not A Bad Person…Report
“Elizabeth Warren, of course.”
“Okay, who did you vote for FOURTH place?”Report
Although it occurs to me that the opposite is true, in a way; RCV lets us claim that there was a Massive Public Statement Of Support for a candidate (as evinced by the fact that they ended up with some high percentage of the vote…eventually.)
“How can you criticize Biden’s plan to eliminate Student Debt? He got 85% of the vote! Clearly that shows people agree with his policies!”
“So you agree with him that more illegal immigrants should be detained?”
“Well, my vote for him wasn’t like a vote vote, it was a Ranked Choice, so, my personal preference is for Bloomberg’s plan…”Report
Yeah, Chesa won San Fran DA through RCV and he won on the third round.
“Are you using that as an argument for or as an argument against RCV?”
“What does it immediately present as?”Report
considering your abiding dislike of Chesa I’d say you are presenting it as against.
But hard to know since you seem to loathe direct statements unless prodded.Report
A statement of fact is as direct a statement as one could possibly make.
Only crazy people would argue against a statement of fact.Report
By my count, there are three sentences. The first is a statement of fact. The other two, in quotation marks, aren’t. Nobody is confused by or arguing about about the first sentence. The question is what, if anything, the other two mean.
But you already know that.Report
Well, then. Let me just get rid of the last two things and just put the two relevant parts out there.
DD: “RCV lets us claim that there was a Massive Public Statement Of Support for a candidate (as evinced by the fact that they ended up with some high percentage of the vote…eventually.)”
JB: “Yeah, Chesa won San Fran DA through RCV and he won on the third round.”Report
If you’re willing to retreat to saying, essentially, nothing, there’s no disputing that.Report
Yeah. It’s a retreat to “I agree with the statement.”
But I would like to also communicate my amusement at people who would demand that my agreement with the statement also either be an argument for RCV *OR* an argument against it and, if it is neither, to be saying essentially nothing.Report
What statement is it you agree with, that Chesa won the election on the third round? Do you imagine that anyone disagrees with this? If not, then what was your point, if you had one? It’s hard to know because you seem to loathe direct statements unless prodded.Report
The statement that I agree with was the other one that I quoted.
Here, I’ll just put the line here by itself.
DD: “RCV lets us claim that there was a Massive Public Statement Of Support for a candidate (as evinced by the fact that they ended up with some high percentage of the vote…eventually.)”
That’s the line that I was agreeing with.Report
Was that so hard?Report
Apparently.Report
Was he in 1st place after round 1? If so, the RCV had no hand in his winning the election.Report
That’s not how RCV works, though.
It doesn’t matter who’s in first or second until somebody breaks 50%.
He did have a plurality in each round, if that’s what you’re asking.Report
I understand that. Let’s presume that election was plurality takes it, in which case he’s still elected. He was just an electoral mistake according the SF electorate and they later made that feeling known again at the ballot box. In either system of voting he’s the DA.Report
Isn’t that just an argument that we don’t need to switch to RCV? The guy with the plurality will just probably win anyway?
I mean… that’s a fairly good argument for maintaining the status quo.Report
If probably is in play, then RCV is something worth exploring.
Illinois once had an interesting system where each voter had 3 votes for a General Assembly race. The 3 could be cast all for one candidate or spread out. It was done away with when the idiots in Springfield voted themselves a giant pay raise.Report
I remember GWB declaring, mind-bogglingly, that he had an electoral mandate to do some of the stuff he did, after having won by the grace of some bits of paper in Florida and a friendly Supreme Court.Report
Hell, I remember arguing against people who claimed that Clinton had a mandate in the early 90’s.
If you want a guy who will argue “I will sit on my hands. I do not have a mandate.”, you probably should look someplace other than the presidential primaries.
Well, maybe the Libertarians have a few…Report
Right? We haven’t had a mandate prez since Ronnie.Report
And anyway, the thing about FPTP is that there’s supposed to be a lengthy, public-facing, and public-driven process of selecting the candidates in the first place, and that’s where the issue-driven negotiation and campaigning is supposed to happen.
If you want candidates to build coalitions and address many different concerns and suchlike, then what you want is a massive expansion of the primary voting system; legislation mandating time off to vote in them, standardization of practices across elections so that voters understand what to do (none of this “caucus” business), that kind of thing. (It so happens that I feel this way, and would support it.)Report
You and I agree on these approaches. All of which could be used to implement RCV as well, and with likely increased success on getting people to engage in their civic responsibility.Report
Why would mandating time off to vote in primary elections have anything to do with RCV?Report
I support mandating time off for voting regardless of method employed. It’s often the biggest barrier to participation.Report
I have always thought that was a no brainer too, if nothing else than for pure civic mindedness.Report
A great many politicians would find themselves out of jobs with increased participation …Report
I have questions:
Is that what a RCB would actually look like? You don’t think that would be confusing to a material portion of the populace?
Is a ballot invalid if say you leave off a Sixth choice? Or if you vote for one candidate as your 1st thru 6th choice?
If a vote is thrown out for one of the reasons above: How is it democracy to compel someone to vote for someone they don’t want to vote for under any circumstance?Report
If you mean the illustration at the top of the article – that’s how Maine did it in 2020 and with a 78% voter turnout I’d say it was just fine.Report
We have answers, at least in NYC, where our most recent mayoral race had ranked-choice voting:
1. I haven’t been able to find and reproduce a copy of the ballot, but it wasn’t confusing to any noticeable portion of the voters. NYers aren’t shy about complaining, and there wasn’t any to speak of.
2. No.
3. Not applicable.Report
It resulted in Eric Adams, so while it may have worked, I’m not sure it turned out fine!
(I kid, sort of… I was hoping Kathryn Garcia would have prevailed. And she almost got there. But imagine the controversy if Adams – who was the leading vote-getter through 7 rounds lost in the 8th and final tally to a candidate who was the 3rd choice on the 1st count.)
I think RCV is ideal for primaries, but still not convinced it is something the populace will accept after a general election. At least not in the current environment.Report
The way to think about it is this: if you vote for Candidate A and ONLY Candidate A, in the event that Candidate A is eliminated you have no further say in the matter. You voted for Candidate A who was eliminated. Thanks for voting.
That’s more or less how it works now. If Candidate A does not prevail, your vote for Candidate A was a dead end.Report
According to Wikipedia, in that NYC Mayoral Primary, 800k ballots were counted in the final round and 140k were voided.
The incentive being created is to compel people to provide a confidence vote for every single candidate regardless if you know anything about them or actually support their policies.Report
And that’s bad why, exactly?Report
How is creating a forced or uniformed false choice a good thing, exactly?
Keep in mind, these are the votes that are putting a candidate in office. They are essentially the tie-breakers.Report
Two things…
First, we don’t have a unified election process… at best we have 50 election authorities with varying degrees of complexity and competence. I hinted in my longer response below that some entities have done poorly with change; and some of those entities do poorly with change purely on the technology side in FPTP processes. It’s one of the reasons I advocate for incremental adoption… the election agencies in all the states/jurisdictions have to manage the change.
Second, as I said above, you’re not required to rank anyone. Period. You can simply vote your only choice. Accidentally spoiling votes is a concern for any voting system, and something that a hybrid electronic/paper system can alleviate with a rules based interface. That is, if you put two candidates as ‘second’ the electronic system requires a change before submitting. I’m in favor of hybrids that then print paper ballots.
Either way, the goal is effective voting and neither objection is an impediment to RCV, just a process that needs to be managed.Report
I’m not against RCV in theory. As I said, I think it is something that can work really well in a party primary as a way of selecting a consensus candidate.
But I don’t think the country is ready for RCV in a general election where the choices are so philosophically disparate and the stakes are so much higher. The first time a candidate leapfrogs their way from 3rd place into office, it’s going to get ugly.
I think a reasonable approach is to let citizens acclimate themselves to RCV in primaries for a decade or so and see how it was all received after a variety of outcomes.Report
Sure, I think primaries are a great place to start too.
On the philosophical question, I think the disparity of choices is partly (mostly?) an artefact of the reverse polarization in voting … which RCV would de-escalate over time.
Regarding the 3rd place person winning, that’s not really how it works. Imagine it’s a series of run-offs. If A and B are 1 and 2, then C is eliminated. C’s votes are divided between A & B. C can’t win *even if* they were the #2 choice of 100% of A & B voters.
What RCV is doing in this case is ‘polling’ C’s voters as to *their* second choice and allocating the loser’s votes. Sometimes RCV is called ‘Instant Run-off’ voting for that reason.
The Sarah Palin episode in 2022 is a pretty solid example of how Palin lost in a 3-way race when 42% of the voters who voted for a republican in round one decided that a Democrat was preferable to Palin… so she lost. The point is that we shouldn’t simply count a vote for one R as a vote for all R’s (or vice versa).
I mean, I’d also be fine with downplaying Parties and Primaries and just having an open Presidential Election with a run-off 2-weeks later between #1 and #2 (if no-one gets 50% + 1). That’s the French system.
This is also Georgia’s system… you have to get 50% to win and a run-off in meat-space automatically happens. I’m ok with this too… but I don’t think it’s quite the same as RCV from a secondary benefit of allowing more preferences to be expressed to signal electorate desires. The irony is that RCV would (probably) have delivered 2 R senators in 2020, but the run-off and subsequent Trump nonsense delivered 2 D senators.Report
I happened to be in British Columbia in the early oughts shortly after municipal elections. There were then three parties of any significance, the conservatives, the liberals, and the NDP. The NDP never won, but always got a significant percentage of the vote. The NDP would be the 2d choice of the liberals and the liberals would be the 2d choice of the NDP. The conservatives would always be the third choice of either. The liberal-NDP combined vote usually greatly exceeded the conservative vote. What often happened, though, was that modest increases or decreases in the NDP vote would swing the election, often drastically. In the most recent election, the conservatives swept most of the city legislative seats in Vancouver, when the liberals had held most of the seats before the election — largely because of a fairly large bump in NDP votes at the liberals’ expense. Considering the preferences of most of the voters, this was a quirky and undesirable result, which RCV would likely have prevented.Report
If you’re going to rewrite election laws specifically to make the NDP irrelevant, then why not just declare that only two candidates are permitted in an election?
Just do the thing you’re going to do instead of laundering it through some nonsense about how knocking out a third of the election votes is “representing the will of the voters”!Report
I’m a big supporter of RCV and when I talk to young folks dismayed that there’s ‘nothing they can do’ about politics, I suggest that advocating for RCV has a lot of benefits that they can pitch in a ‘non-threatening’ way to gain support:
1. It doesn’t require a constitutional amendment
2. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn’t make your vote a spoiler for a worse outcome, and
a. While it makes 3rd parties possible, it doesn’t automatically fragment the electorate (a’la proportional)
3. The effects of RCV would be slow and probably only impact a small subset of races initially
4. Over time, real preferences and voting strength would be revealed for politicians/parties to alter direction
5. It weakens the duopoly only in so far as other parties present good policies/candidates
6. It weakens National messaging in local elections.
7. Advances in technology make RCV simple and fast (ahem, well… once we invest in it)
8. The elimination process is public evidence of voter preferences, even when your candidate doesn’t win (see #4)
9. Future candidates/parties can target these preferences
10. and more!…
In some ways, I almost think RCV is better for primaries than general elections… IF general elections then went with a mixed proportional model. Absent any proportional models, I’d settle for RCV in Generals as a first step.
I doubt we’ll win any converts with a combination of ‘silver bullet’ or ‘you must be stupid or fascist to not agree with us’ rhetorical approaches. The biggest selling point is that the change would be incremental and the effects diffused over time as politicians and voters adjust; the biggest payoff is reduced incentives for bi-polar negative partisanship.Report
It’s so weird when people’s arguments basically come down to “American’s are too dumb to handle RCV.”
Like, Aussie’s and Ireland basically have a system of RCV with some adjustments, and they seem to do fine. Sure, there’s the occasional weirdness at the edges, but that’s every electoral system. If a bunch of drunkards and bogans can handle it, so can American’s.Report
The big reason to not do it is it’s complexity. The people need to have a lot of faith in the voting system. We’ve already had a lot of bad faith demagoguery and this system is a big step in enabling that sort of thing.Report
These two things are unrelated to voting method, and unrelated to each other.Report