Sooner or later this was going to happen. Since democrats are finding it harder and harder to win by honest debate and appeal, another election system needed to be proposed that would widen their chances of winning. In other words, since the Mueller scheme isn't working, this other means will suffice. The prospect of ranked-choice voting encouraging "more moderate politicians" strikes fear in the hearts of those who view not so much the election system as "broken" but much of our great country.
1
Putin stooge Trump just dissed American allies and demanded to have Putin back in the G7. He's a traitor who could only "win" due to Russian Putin-directed interference in American elections and Comey's stupid decision to send that letter 10 days before the election. Not to mention Faux Noise, hate radio and far right social media sites enabled by Cambridge Analytica funded by the Mercer oligarchs who are also in bed with Putin. Appealing to deeply ingrained racism also was a "win" for Cadet Bone Spurs.
3
Wow, so just about any popular fool can be elected? Watch out America, you may get what they wish for.
Some of the benefits of ranked choice voting could be achieved immediately with no changes in voting procedures or ballots. Simply allow each candidate for an office to provide a ranked-ordered list of the other candidates for the office. After the election, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and his or her votes are reallocated to the candidate who is at the top of their rank-ordering. The process is repeated with candidates eliminated one at a time and their votes reallocated until winners are determined. Each candidate’s rank-ordering is public information, so that voters know what happens to their vote if their first-choice candidate is eliminated.
This system is nearly costless to implement. Given the vote totals for each registered candidate and their rank-ordering of opponents, winners can be determined in a few minutes using nothing more than simple addition.
2
“voters who don’t rank all the candidates can be effectively disenfranchised if their top picks are eliminated” — in the current system, voters who vote for long-shot candidates are disenfranchised, since they get no chance to affect which still-viable candidate wins.
10
Ranked choice is undemocratic, because people can be disenfranchised in later rounds of counting the votes, when their votes won't count. Run-off voting has its problems, but every voter has a say in a run-off election.
Robert Callwell
San Francisco
2
You cited LePage in Maine as benefiting from the ranked-choice system in 2010, yet he’s governed like a right-wing wacko who has stood in the way of Medicaid expansion. Maybe it’s not the systems we set up, but the people themselves who are partial to extremists.
1
Had Florida used ranked-choice voting in 2000, Al Gore would have won, since most Ralph Nader voters would have listed him Gore second. There'd be no Iraq war and its awful aftereffects -- if we had a better voting scheme. Think about that.
11
"What if we’ve been electing our politicians the wrong way this whole time?"
.
Yeah. Stupid us. We've been doing elections all wrong. So, when there was a distinct possibility that 3 California districts would go Republican, in a primary, didn't anyone consider, having at least one Democrat on the ballot was a good idea?
Yes please! I'm tired of trying to convince people whose top-choice candidate can't win to vote for the best one who can. Ranked-choice would let them both "vote their heart" _and_ participate in the still-undecided part of the race.
17
I have a better plan. Subject every American voter to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test and eliminate those who fail to pass it. It didn't work last time on account of cheating, but that was an anomaly that could be eliminated by instituting appropriate safeguards.
2
"It works like this: Rather than checking a box for just one candidate, voters rank all candidates in order of preference." Voters can select as many candidates as they choose. They do not have to rank them all.
3
Ranked choice voting—where the candidate with the least number of votes is thrown out and then the second ranks of those ballots go into effect, etc, etc, until someone has a majority—is the best. (Of course, if someone has a MAJORITY, not plurality, of the votes, that person wins. There’s no instant runoff.)
There are so many benefits:
It allows you to vote your conscience without worrying about throwing your vote away. This is key!
There’s no way to game it. Just list your candidates in the order you prefer.
It eliminates the need for a primary, saving money.
I do not know if it encourages more civil elections or moderate candidates, but it does better reflect the will of the voters. For example, if Candidate A has just 30% of first ranks, and Candidate B has 29%, but Candidate B has nearly everyone’s second rank, while Candidate A has no second ranks, shouldn’t Candidate B win? Wouldn’t that better reflect what the populace wants? I think in most places that Candidate B is probably more moderate, though that may not be the case here in SF. I’d frame it more as selecting the candidate with the BROADEST appeal, which is slightly different. But still a good thing.
The only downside is that people don’t understand it. I had very smart people telling me they didn’t rank a 2 and 3 here in SF because they thought it could hurt their 1. That’s impossible! You can never hurt your 1 by ranking others. But with public education, I think that problem could be overcome.
11
Looks like a positive direction to take our "out of control" election process.
I look forward to seeing how this works.
Moving ever closer to truly free democratic elections, we need to:
Stop Gerrymandering -
Stop disenfranchising segments of the electorate -
Limit big corporate and super-pac contribution limits.
Finite & Equal Time for Top Candidates.
More importantly, we need an equally bipartisan oversight election "referee".
Just like in major sports, there are rules, and penalties for breaking them.
If any particular candidate goes on a negative and slanderous campaign against his opponent. The referee gets to fact check these allegations and found to be unwarranted - the candidate is penalized - "publicly" - where they actually sacrifice something - like lose air time and/or go to the election with a visible scorecard on how they ran their election.
We never ever need to see the horrific slanderous lies we witnessed during the 2016 election.
6
I like your idea of slanderous score card :) A lot of the ugly false personal attacks keeps a lot of smart, ethical people from running for office.
3
Prior to Tuesday's election, an observer of the mayoral candidates' campaign signs displayed in the windows of homes and businesses in San Francisco neighborhoods might have reasonably concluded that the contests were significantly tribal in nature — based on demographic clustering rather than candidates' policies or records.
Local media commentary rarely fails to mention the finalists' racial identity, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, and the milestone that the candidate's victory would represent: first African-American or Asian-American woman, or first gay man elected mayor in the city, state, or country. Ranked-choice voting does not appear to have increased focus on the issues, nor diminished the role of big bucks.
An old-fashioned run-off election between two finalists might help us know what they might actually do, and how that would impact our lives. With the two finalists' vote totals, after nine rounds, of less than 0.4%, a second, public contest might serve us better than RCV arithmetic. Its cost should not be a deal-breaker, given SF's $10 billion annual budget.
As for SF voters making 8x more errors on the traditional gubernatorial ballot than on the RCV-based mayoral one, graphic design failure may explain this. Both displayed candidates' names in three columns, but gubernatorial candidates' names constituted a continuous thread, whereas the mayoral ballot displayed identical side-by-side lists differentiated only by their headers: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice.
It never fails to amaze me the number of people who proclaim something as impossible or it can't work.......................................despite all the evidence otherwise. True conservatism, not of the Republican type.
Universal health care?
Run off voting?
Women voting? (Did so for about 50 years in Western states before nationally.
I'm sure there are many, many more that I'm missing.
5
This is an utterly terrible solution. Ask Oakland, CA how that worked for them a few years back.
1
The article says : "That’s precisely what happened last week in San Francisco, which, in 2004, became the first American city to use ranked-choice voting." In fact, the city of Cambridge Massachusetts has been using a ranked-choice voting system for both its City Council and School Committee elections since 1941.
3
After living in San Francisco, ranked choice is the worst system. It guarantees that candidates campaign for second place basically thwarting the will of voters. It elected the most unqualified candidate for Oakland’s mayor and in the current San Francisco race produced two ultra liberal candidates who entered into a corrupt pact to support each other for second place.
2
This reflects a misunderstanding of how RCV works. If Leno prevails, it will be because he appeared on more ballots than Breed. How does that thwart the will of the people? Look, you may disagree with what the will of the people, but that doesn’t mean it was thwarted. Please separate the process from the candidates.
8
Minneapolis has been doing ranked choice voting for over a decade and it has been a disaster.
Rarely do we have enough acceptable second or third candidate. Mayor - yes, all other seats - no. People run because they think they can get enough second and third place votes to win. This last election, we had 18 candidates for mayor. I found two in any way acceptable.
It undermines political party endorsements. No candidate wants an endorsement because it means they can’t go for second and third place votes against the Party. Last time, the endorsing convention was a kubuki theater of running out the clock by all candidates.
The person who won got 25% of the first place ballots. Not exactly a mandate to govern. The previous mayor elected this way lasted for one term. 20% of ballots were exhausted and had no say in the final decision.
It suppresses voting in minority and immigrant communities.
There is gamesmanship. Two candidates coalition, which skews the outcome.
No one wants to say anything bad about another candidate in fear they will lose second or third place votes. This substantially reduces debate.
No one understands multi-seat races.
This is being pushed by a rich donor who gives hundreds of thousands a year in Minneapolis just for this.
Normal voting is better.
1
I like that the candidates are simply listed alphabetically for each office. No party designation. So a voter can’t go in and just vote a straight party line.
Our recent election in Santa Fe for mayor used ranked choice. The very desirable effect of the system was that no negative campaigning occurred. The reason why is that among the four candidates, there is no reason to suppose that attacking one opponent would cause a lost vote to accrue to you. Instead it is likely that the attacker and the attached would both lose support. It was a very positive campaign.
8
Paul,
Positive campaigning would be a welcome change. Do you know what influence this election model has on campaign fund raising? If this process could introduce civility while removing the excessive influence of corporate and big money donors like the Koch brothers I'd welcome it.
Anything that creates an equitable election process would be preferable to our current model.
2
Maybe in Santa Fe your mayoral race, in your view, did not have any rancor, but here in Maine in the Democratic Party primary race for governor it is the same old, same old of attack ads from the candidates and out of state groups.
So, please do not sell us on the notion the ranked choice eliminates negative campaigning, because it clearly does not.
Maine made the change to ranked-choice because twice in a row the governor was elected in a three-way race without winning a majority of the vote. That the man in question, LePage, is every bit as odious as the man in the WH surely had an impact on the referendum question the voters approved favoring ranked-choice. The legislature was not happy with it and has been trying to reverse it. I guess some of them are afraid they will lose their seats if the voters have a real choice. Don't let them win, Mainers. Keep your very wise choice.
3
Ranked choice voting will help fix our politics and bring better representation to constituents. This is not a partisan issue. Congress should pass this.
3
We need this nationwide.
5
Anything to dilute the vote. Anything to get rid of the political parties. Anything to prevent strength in numbers and form a majority. Anything to avoid candidates adhering to a party platform. How is it done? Run it like a PTA election as Times is advocating. This undemocratic system just puts even more money into the system. Put more celebrity status in to the system. I don’t vote in other
parties I don’t agree with. I don’t agree with Raider Primaries or so called Open Primaries. I get involved and get up on the issue, know my parties platform and vote in my own party. Then I vote in the general election. Just like my parents did and just like their parents did.
In edition, it was never the intent of our democracy to elect “moderate” candidates or one certain type.
And to this end who and what is a leftist in this country? The political lines have already been so successfully and purposefully blurred in these last forty years via news outlets, apolitical strategist, Big Money, expensive ad wars, the elimination of serious debate, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, that to hear what candidate is of what stripe and representative definition is an American fallacy and a sick joke. It’s this diluted system that has brought us to where we are today and now to add another layer of dilution is dumb.
Let the voter vote their conscience and not be dissuaded by inaccurate labeling and another
fix-all delusional “operation”. Have Safe primaries
and democracy will grow.
1
Thank you for understanding that in real change does not occur without the strength of political parties.
And that means committment from the voter to a political party and its cause, not the “committment” of an undecided independent who simply is a human ping-pong ball.
Because, our growing ping-pong ball politics is how our nation got in this mess in the first place and why it is so difficult to enact positive change in this country.
1
The same arguments were made for "top-two" voting.
Then people became aware of the unintended consequences and did a little research and found that the backers of the system were Republicans ( most notably the worst governor in the history of America, Arnold Schwarzenegger ).
This is a horrible system, easily gamed.
I found this article from the Santa Fe - New Mexican very helpful in understanding ranked-choice voting. Additional information can also be found at fairvote.org
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/ranked-choice-voting-ex...
2
Please check out my comment on the Santa Fe mayoral election. Very positive change.
2
Will do.
The best way for a true democracy and better representation for the American people is to 'eliminate' and ban the Republican-Conservative criminal party, any fascists, racists, Trumpists, Donald Trump criminals.
Anything to rid Maine -- and the nation -- of Paul LePage is welcome.
1
The article states just what's wrong with this policy- it's designed to pick "moderate" (Republicrats?) candidates. Now more than ever we need to pick strong progressives to lead the electorate- not centrists concerned about picking up weak Trump support as their first concern (anyone thinking of the Democratic National Committee? )
Does gerrymandering skew the results of this type of voting, too?
1
One problem with the ranked voting system is that San Francisco mayoral candidate London Breed, who should win by getting more first choice votes (think Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote), but Leno wins (like Trump getting to be president after winning the electoral votes). It sucks to witness another election get hijacked by outsiders like the Supreme Court, or the electoral college, or collusion between two candidates to out rank another.
1
I’m a San Francisco resident, and a London Breed supporter. I want her to win (the good news is that she’s ahead again, as they verify provisional ballots). Regardless, it’s wrong to judge a voting mechanism based on whether the candidate you supported won. Ranked choice voting is a more stable system. It lets more than 2 candidates run, and still makes sure that the person who wins is the candidate with the broadest support. I hope that’s Breed this time around. But it’s a close election. If more people prefer Mark Leno, that’s the correct outcome. Blame the voters, not the voting system.
5
I agree with this - consistent support of majority rules is as vital to the strength of American democracy as consistent support of the 1st amendment and other values we hold dear.
And, just to be clear, it's Trump who won with a plurality of the vote just as George Bush did before him and Bill Clinton before him. It's time to fix the system that discourages more than two candidates running for a single seat because to do so might split like-minded voters among like-minded candidates as happens far too often.
It's no wonder that voters feel disconnected from a political process that regularly delivers outcomes they did not support.
Breed may still win. Would you still dislike RCV then? In any case, if Breed has 35% of #1s and Leno has 25% of #1s but the overwhelming number of #2s, isn’t Leno more reflective of the will of the people? I say this as someone who ranked Breed first and Leno second.
It’s important to separate your personal preference for candidates from your critique of the system. They are different things. Perhaps next time YOU will favor a #2 and feel differently.
2
Ballots mailed to all registered voters well in advance, and returned by mail, are a wonderful option in the two great states where I’ve lived. It’s possible that every state could use this technological miracle to enhance their voter turnout. Just saying.
1
Taking this approach may solve one of our problems but it fails to deal with one which should be considered to be of equal or possibly greater importance and here is what this real problem is: Once elected into the US Congress seemingly every then elected official will spend (and this focus begins when they arrive in DC) around one half of their time crossing the street and going after more money to make certain they can be re-elected. If 1/2 of their focus in on the next election how can they even begin to earn our respect. This option to campaign for more re-election funding must also be changed and if that means they cannot ever run for re-election the better off most of us will be.
We can debate the merits of ranked-choice voting. However, I have to challenge the underlying assumption. Ranked-choice advocates believe ranked-choice voting promotes more moderate candidates. Why are more moderate candidates desirable? No one ever seems to make the case for the product they are actually selling. More moderate governance doesn't actually mean more representative governance.
As we witnessed in California's primary, these policy implementations are dubiously effective anyway. However, I think we've clearly demonstrated more moderation generally aligns with less democratic and more republican inclinations. I used the lowercase spellings intentionally. I'm not referring to parties specifically. I'm saying politicians in general prefer a limited electorate wherever possible. Never trust them to redesign the rules to your benefit.
Even ballot initiatives need to come from somewhere. The concerned members of the political populous always have a finger in the pie at some point. These ballots don't promote themselves. As a simple example, consider the ballot sample shown above. Basically every statistically survey ever done has shown choice order heavily influences the respondent's ultimate decision for ranking. Who decided which order the names would appear on the ballot? I can guarantee there weren't any voters involved.
I’m not sure if ranked choice results in more “moderate” candidates (probably doesn’t here in SF), but it does better reflect the will of the people. FYI, California does not use RCV, it uses a different and far inferior “top-two” primary system that is far inferior. RCV cannot be gamed and eliminates the need for a primary altogether.
1
I love rank choice voting. There is a version that I especially like that is easier to understand where you can vote for as many candidates as you want but only one vote per candidate. You are essentially voting to say who you don't want. It is a way to pair down a bunch of candidates to 2 for an overall election.
Ranked choice voting would allow voters to support a third party candidate without the danger that doing so would throw the election to their least favorite candidate. I hope we can eventually have this at the presidential level.
8
Excellent comments here in general, but how do we possibly get this implemented at the national level given the layers of gatekeeping that seem virtually impermeable? Constitutional amendment?
They are also using this in the San Francisco mayor’s special election right now...
5
Imagine 22 candidates vying for one congressional seat, and why wouldn't there be 22, not in the primary, in November? Then imagine people who couldn't figure out the Florida ballot in 2000 facing this challenge, and facing the ranking of a huge number of candidates, probably, in multiple races on the ballot. How many people would choose their favorite as #1 and then randomly pick a #2, #3, etc. or just rank all the other 21 candidates as #2 or not at all, just to get the exercise over with? How would this make charges of "vote rigging" less and not more likely? Now, any American who can count can determine how many votes any candidate in an election should get from their precinct. Alternatively, a good high school math student could program a computer to simply count individual electronic marks for each candidate and print out a total. This system will result in, "We can't prove to you in language you can understand that the votes are being electronically counted fairly, but just trust us." Finally, how long did it take for the final number of seats for each party in both houses of parliament to be determined last election in Australia? I don't mean the final official tallies, just the number of seats won by each party. Didn't quite rival the five weeks that the Bush/Gore election in 2000 took, but it certainly wasn't over Election Night, or the next night, or the next week. This not being Australia, a month dominated by shouts of "Vote fraud!" would follow.
In SF we just rank 3, not all of them
Ranked Choice voting is a true double edged sword. A front runner in a crowded field, could have 45% of the first place votes, but someone who has 15% and is ranked third, could end up winning the election. Just ask the people of Oakland Ca who ended up with Jean Quan, probably the most incompetent mayor in Oakland's recent history.
3
Yet that person who received only 15% in the first round is still the candidate preferred by the majority when compared to the one who got 45%.
2
Ranked choice voting, combined with a jungle first round will break the hold of the crazies that brought us Trump and that of the monied classes that bought us Hillary Clinton. In a country this large we can do better than those two grifters.
2
Hillary Clinton didn't need the Russians and Comey to get her the popular vote by 3M. You're insulting the Clinton voters. She would have made an excellent president, who wouldn't have appointed Gorsuch to the SC resulting in castrating unions soon, dismantled the ACA, signed off on a tax heist for the rich which will cost us the social safety net, and dialed back consumer and environmental protections. And she would have prevailed in ranked choice voting as well. Spare me your false equivalencies!
2
Ranked choice voting and a jungle primary are not complementary. The jungle primary is an abomination.
3
I am a San Francisco voter who has been very happy with ranked choice voting. It saves our city money, and was a likely reason two of our candidates (Kim and Leno, plus a lesser known candidate, Weiss) worked so well together. They have an interest in being number two to our number ones, and it holds them more accountable to us and to one another. It also allows less party-aligned, smaller, or third-party candidates to get more votes, even if they are the second or third choice. I hope to see it implemented in my state, as well, and perhaps one day federally*.
*But oh man, those feds right now are a little bit of a mess, eh? *rim shot*
5
Better than ranked choice (used with mixed results in Oakland - see Quan election - and SF) or top two (subject to political gaming, see recent CA gov election, resulting in Newsom knocking off Villaraigosa, his most competitive rival through minority Republican votes) is combining the two: a ranked choice primary to choose top two for general. This gives voter a clear binary choice for the general election between the two candidates with broad appeal.
Both ranked choice and top two are worlds better than closed primaries (dominated by party activists and interest groups, leading to fewer moderates) followed by general elections where a minority party can prevent the most popular candidate from winning.
1
I don't think the combination makes sense. If there are only two candidates (after a jungle primary) then there's no point in ranking. With only two candidates, one or the other will get over 50% of the votes cast. In the very unlikely case of a tie, ranking doesn't help: which candidate would you drop to second choices? Who would those second choices be for?
I don't think San Francisco is the first city to use Ranked Choice voting. Cambridge MA has been doing so since the early 40's.
2
This is one probably useful revision of how elections should be changed. Another would be to change the day on which elections have been held, so that they would occur on a weekend, instead of the middle of the work week. A third would be to shorten the time frame in which campaign contributions could be solicited, accepted or spent. Without significant changes to our election systems, it's unlikely that there will be a reduction in the apathy that keeps a majority of eligible voters from bothering to participate in elections.
6
Republicans seem to fear and thus hate anything that allows voters more fully to give their opinions about what representatives they want. I hope that ranked choice will help to remove the wedge strategy from our politics. Let us see how it goes in Maine.
1
It’s a simple form of Proportional Representation, and gives a far more accurate reflection of the electorate’s choice.
About time the US copped on to it.
5
Multi member congressional districts would be great.a chance to fully represent disparate electorates!
3
Seems ranked voting would favor the strongest entrenched political party,open the door to manipulation, complicate what is now straight forward and reduce the chance of Mavericks when voters want to be rid of the status quo.
Tell that to the entrenched folks who are the toughest to persuade!
Reality is that RCV liberates voters to vote their preference and creates a level playing field. Level means level: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
6
I should have written:
Anyone with the support of 1/9 +1 of voters can become one of the 9 Cambridge ma. city councillors. Cambridge has used ranked choice voting since 1939.
1
One of the biggest problems with the US electoral system is that it makes it difficult to vote. RCV is great but one of the real differences between other countries and the US is the ease of voting. For example, in Australia (where I am also a citizen), elections are on the weekend, not during the weekday. It is also easy to vote by postal vote or (in state elections) online. More interestingly, in Australia if you do not vote you get fined ($125 last I remember). But voting is so easy you can just do it. In the UK, a bit the same (without the fines). Even as a non-citizen, I can vote in local elections since I pay local taxes. In the US voting is a chore. Elections are on weekdays, making it a conflict of work and time. Polling stations are sometimes remote and if you are not on the rolls of that specific station you end up having big issues. So while RCV works well, it never solves the problem of real representation of the population since the election is not representative of the whole population -- just those who can make it to the polls. While I can say, Trump is not my President because I could not vote (a difficulty for expats), I can never say that for an Australian elected official.
2
It seems to me that the real basis of Republican's objections are that this system will increase turnout, encourage more views to be heard, including progressive views, and that it might loosen the hold that the hard right has on the Republican Party.
Another advantage of ranked voting is the encouragement of substantive, as opposed to negative campaign message.
6
I have volunteered as an election clerk in several elections in CA. We have had people voting For and Against on the same proposition. We had over 30 candidates for one office. How are people supposed to rank say 26th vs 27th. Maybe just rank 1, 2,3.
1
The Maine ballot is for the Republican primary, so voters still have to choose one Republican to face one Democrat. So it seems minority parties are still locked out.
Debra, these are primaries.
I don't believe there is a legal prohibition for either the Greens or the Libertarians (Maine's two major, minor parties) to hold primaries.
In any case, both the Greens & the Libertarians will have candidates on the ballot for State and Federal offices come November.
3
Ranked choice, or as it is called here in Australia, the preferential system, is a very good system in my opinion because it ensures that everybody's vote counts.
The biggest advantage is that minority candidates - like LePage for example - can't win with only a fraction of the vote, they need to be the preferred candidate of a majority in order to win. Maggie Thatcher won three elections in the United Kingdom though she only ever got between 35% and 43% of the vote, because the progressive vote was fatally split between the Labour and Liberal parties. Under a preferential system, Thatcher would probably never have won an election as most Liberal preferences would have gone to Labour. It's scandalous IMO that somebody can be in power for more than a decade when a majority of the country is opposed to their policies.
This does not of course mean that the preferential system favours progressives candidates - it just favours the candidate with the broadest overall appeal. Al Gore would probably have won with Green preferences in a preferential system, but GHW Bush would probably have beaten Clinton with preferences from Perot.
The preferential system also helps third parties because people can vote for them knowing their vote will still count. For example, in the US you could vote for the Green party to send a message to the Democrats that you think their policies aren't progressive enough, or vote Libertarian and still have effectively registered a vote for the GOP.
11
I like RCV and support it but I think it needs adjustment. It isn’t good when it goes through too many elimination rounds. With 3 choices, once you eliminate 3 candidates you’ve taken away someone’s vote altogether. Do that enough times and it’s as if many people didn’t vote at all. That isn’t a good thing and can cause some truly awful results in crowded elections.
There needs to be some metric by which we decide to go to a real runoff with say the top 4 remaining candidates. I think if we triggered a runoff under a condition like 20% of voters being disenfranchised by eliminations it would help RCV a lot in crowded elections.
2
Some are interestingly suggesting Top 2 primary evolve into "Top Four" with RCV in November.
But cities with one-round RCV can just have ballots that allow more rankings, as San Francisco will have next year and Maine has this month. But event there, some voters wont' rank everyone - that's their right.
1
There is a small sample of voters weighing in at
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-S-F-may...
Every system has its pluses and minuses. The upside of the Electoral College is that Connecticut does not become a suburb of New York. The downside is that the winner can actually end up losing, which is not really the purpose of a general election.
The upside of RCV is that one is not obliged either to waste one's vote or to select the lesser of the two evils. The downside is that the political classes cannot juggle with the many permutations, and it makes it harder to shut out the hoi polloi like Ralph Nader and give us a choice of polarized extremes (count the undervotes in 2016).
The upside of first-past-the-post is the binary transparency. The downside is that the winner can often be a plurality, not a majority, winner, and starts out hobbled by not having a consensus of 50%+ of the voters.
Let's see how Maine does. Australia seems to use it quite well.
But then, "Australia is socialist." Naughty, naughty.
2
This is a great improvement for those who want better representative government.
6
Good grief, can't Republicans *ever* support anything reasonable? They seem to be on the devil's side of every issue these days.
What a load of cockamamie their objections are. More expensive? What does it cost to have a computer make an extra pass or two through the data? Too confusing for voters? I guess they've been drinking the Trump kool-aid about "uneducated" voters, because anyone who's been to eighth grade should have no problem understanding ranking. And a person whose choices are eliminated in early passes is no more disenfranchised than a person who, in a conventional vote-for-one system, votes for a loser.
At the end of their ridiculous list, the Repubs get close to the real reason: a big-tent party with nuanced approaches to issues [hint: not the Republicans] is at a disadvantage in a choose-one, winner-takes-all system, and after all, it's all about winning. Isn't it?
6
Meh. RCV can be gamed like any other system. There’s no need to change the way our votes are counted, we just need to change the way campaigns are funded.
Until we can get corporate money out of our politics and news we’re going to end up with corrupt candidates.
Of course, until we get rid of the corrupt politicians we’ll never get rid of the laws that permit political subornation.
The duopoly is safe and sound.
And maybe, then, more voters will be able to vote in primaries. That primaries in some states are still closed to independent voters is archaic, undemocratic and makes me think of Tammany Hall with the smoke-filled back rooms, underhanded tricks and stolen elections. I may be wrong, but it seems that trying to do ranked-choice voting with closed primaries is oxymoronic. Let's open the polls to as many voters as possible and do voting in a way that allows for better democratic possibility. If ranked-choice voting accomplishes that much alone, it is worth a try.
The idea behind closed primaries is simple, and I believe quite reasonable.
Would you allow people who don't belong to your group or organization to vote for your leaders? If you belong to a religious organization, would you allow someone of another religion to choose your leaders?
3
I've often heard democracy described as "majority rule".
As J.L. Picard often said "Make it so".
Also, the electorate of Ann Arbor Michigan voted in ranked choice voting for some municipal offices with Charter Amendment, Section 13.12(b), Ann Arbor City Charter, in the November 5, 1974 general election.
What? Seriously? The articles states: "Mary Mayhew, a leading Republican candidate for governor, called ranked-choice an “absolute disaster”
Well, that disaster would be Mary Mayhew.
4
I hope this works, it seems so much more sensible than anything else we have. Especially the ridiculous jungle primary in effect in California.
3
Benton county in Oregon is slated to use this system in their elections later this year. Keep an eye on that!
1
Isn't this basically how Australia votes now?
2
Cambridge, Ma. has elected its city council by ranked choice continuously since 1939.
2
What the New York Times and RCV cheerleaders seem to conveniently forget, or never knew, is that RCV is contrary to the State's Constitution.
Maine's Supreme Judicial Court let this happen for just this primary on Tuesday.
Even if the ballot question supporting RCV prevails, the fact remains that it is still unconstitutional.
Unless or until the Constitution is changed (and that probably won't happen as long as the Republicans hold the State Senate) RCV is unconstitutional --- good idea or bad.
To be crystal clear, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling only affected general elections for governor and state legislature. Use of RCV for nomination contests and federal elections is not affected by the ruling. Obsrtuctionists have run out of legal attacks.
3
That is correct.
It is not obstructionist to insist that reporting be accurate.
RCV was first proposed for state-wide elections after the Dems twice lost to LePage. It was clearly aimed at the governor's office.
Until the constitution is changed, RCV will not be used to elect the governor or legislators.
By the way, I believe that the city of Portland has used RCV for a number of years.
It is because of governors like DuPage that Maine understood the wisdom of ranked choice. Of course, the mainstream parties are against it. It opens the door to third party candidates. It gets rid of the monopoly lock they have on our primary system. We need way more elections like this ... people must fight for it.
3
I believe you got it backwards. LePage was elected thanks to a 3rd candidate both times.
Whether the Democrat would have won without the 3rd candidate we will never know for sure.
Any voting system that would discourage the laceration of one candidate by another in an effort to win an election by public denunciation of one's opponent would be a benefit. This would also mitigate those media machines that have developed (Fox, Limbaugh, Infowars, Breitbart, etc.) the tactic of smear and accuse. The voter often does not find out until some poor citizen interested in public service enters the political arena that that citizen is a perv and deserves to be in jail.
Now let's dismantle the Electoral College for Presidential Elections and let the so called 'rural' states fend for themselves.
1
We just had our first Ranked Choice Voting election in Santa Fe. It was as advertised: candidates were civil and reached out to everybody not just their base; voters got more engaged in the civic process and candidate forums were many and all extremely well attended; voter turnout increased by almost 10%; and in the end, we have a new mayor who got 66% of the vote. This is a vast improvement to our democratic process.
5
Good idea/ideas....from Editorial Board/and many who are
commenting here.
Also; hopefully the next Congress (hopefully Independents
and Democrats...and not so-called "Republicans") will vote
to get rid of the unconstitutional law - Citizens United...which
allows personhood for the wealthiest to elect their mouthpieces
in the Legislative Branch, The Executive Branch ....so the
unfair elections have resulted in the WORST President in
US history...who is a psychological MESS !!!
2
Ranked voting benefits the GOP because they have the money to sell their personalities. But there is only one way for the public to know who to vote for - their party affiliation. Party is everything when the two parties are so far apart. And the middle road? There is no middle road - get over it. America has to chose between liberalism and fascism - Now!
Has the editorial board of the NYT endorsed a solution proposed by, among others, David Brooks?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/opinion/voting-reform-partisanship-co...
2
Ranked choice voting avoids the situation where Hitler is democratically elected despite the majority seeing through him. It's a good thing.
3
This is a great first step. Next we have to abolish the infamous "electoral college". Then my vote will completely matter.
3
This insanity will lead to even more divisiveness and will bring about the paralysis so common in Western Europe. It took Angela Merkel eight months to form a government and that government is a double headed monster: the two largest parties are in control and they hate each other.
The real goal here is to bring about a system that chooses candidates based on their race or sex or sexual orientation not their experience or qualifications. It is the opposite inverse of Nixon's southern strategy that fed on the backlash to the civil rights movement. Ranked voting is reminiscent of games at a birthday party for little kids where their is no winner or loser so no one's feeling are hurt. But our democracy is not an elementary school game; 'ranked voting' is a serious threat to the fundamental principle of democracy: majority rules---get over it!
I guess you’ve never seen a candidate who got the majority of the vote then be forced into a runoff with the second place finisher and then lose. This happened to Jon Ossoff against Karen Handel in Georgia. How is that “majority rule”?
3
It's called 50% plus one. He got a plurality not a majority. And I hate that system too because it's rooted in the one-party system in the South where each Democrat tried to out race-bate the other.
Carol is absolutely correct. There are downsides. The system is being gamed in San Francisco. Powerful interests back two or more candidates from the same wing of a party and then take on the strongest candidate not in that wing.
So if someone wins a majority in every district, the machine can still win with one of its candidates.
Two points here: First, a big reason for acceptance of the ranked choice system was to save money. A runoff when a candidate fails to get 50 percent is expensive. (Then again, if we can spend money on other items why can’t we spend it on maintaining our vote). Second there was a huge drop off in voter participation.
Both reasonable to consider. I don’t understand why we simply couldn’t turn the count and runoff vote in 2 weeks? Have a section of the original ballot prepared so the voter could just write in one of the two top vote getters names and drop it in the mail or at designated centers such as libraries fire stations police stations or City Hall on a designated day. Give the top 2 candidates a week or two to campaign and it’s done.
Nothing sneaky happens with RCV. Everything has to be transparent because voters are in charge. London Breed had more money behind her, Mark Leno and Jane Kim had the Democratic Party endorsements. It's a really race, and someone will win.
But it's not nearly as polarized as you seem to make it out to be. In fact, about half of Leno voters ranked Breed as one of their backup choices, and about half of Breed voters ranked Leno as a backup choice. Whomever wins will have done a good job engaging with voters and will be ready to take over as an elected mayor.
Burlington, Vermont used this system to election a mayor a decade ago. The person who finished third (of three) wound up the winner. It turned out to be a disaster. He was a nice man but totally incompetent. Burlington dropped that system.
1
This is false. The incumbent in 2nd in first choices won in the instant runoff. He then got involved in a post-election scandal, and backers of the first round leader saw this as a chance to go after the system. It barely was repealed over the objections of the League of Women Voters, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders and nearly all members of the city council. But it will be back -- good ideas are hard to keep down!
2
Combined with the "jungle primary" that California is using, this could go a long way toward reducing the power of the parties and reducing the power of voters with radical views.
1
Calling every controversial proposal you endorse “sensible” does not ensure that everyone will see it that way. Rather, it serves as a warning: here comes another crazy idea from the NYT, as is the case with ranked voting. Nowhere is it written that the winner of an election must get more than 50% of the vote. National and state-wide elections shouldn’t be conducted like New England town meetings.
Rank choice voting is not a solution to our problems.
First, it is inherently unconstitutional, because it upends the principle of one person, one vote, in which some voters will have their vote counted multilple times.
Second, it does not promote civility in our electorial process. Look at “civility” in our governors race with the numerous attack ads on Janet Mills and Adam Cote by the warring camps and outside interest groups.
Third, lessening the power of political parties is the worst idea in our current political climate. Did any of these idealistic types learn any lesson from the 2016 election that voting for third party, unqualified candidates has real consequences?
Finally, if you are concerned, like I am, that a candidate should be elected with a majority of the voters, there is something widely practiced throughout our nation - it is called a runoff - which is something my hometown had during last fall’s mayoral race.
Even so, runoffs are without their faults, since this runoff was won by the candidate whose party - the GOP - used vile, race-baiting dirty tricks.
So, in the end, our electorial process continues the be flawed, which suggests that “fixes” such as ranked choice or even runoffs is not the solution.
The solution lies within each of us to be more intelligent and politically involved voters and when that happens the reforms that we need to clean up our flawed electorial process will surely come.
To pick up on one piece of this: several courts, including both federal (9th circuit) and state (like Maine, Michigan and Minnesota) have addressed the 1-person, 1-vote issue. They have unanimously ruled RCV is a 1-person,1-vote system.
That's because each voter has one vote, and never has a allot count for more than one candidate at a time. The rankings are backups to count if your top choice is defeated.
4
sounds like a great experiment
1
As with all RCV enthusiasts, the NYT editorial board has conveniently ignored the major problems with the method - namely, exhausted ballots and the ability of a candidate who is no one's first choice to win an election.
The exhausted ballot problem happen when a ballot is 'exhausted' (perhaps the voter only chose 1 candidate and that candidate is eliminated in the first round, etc.) and that ballot is then discarded. That's right, that voter has just be legally, systemically disenfranchised! Some of us think that is an insurmountable problem right there.
There's also the issue that it is very possible for a candidate who was no voter's first choice to end up with the majority after rounds of eliminations. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
I'm extremely disappointed that the NTY chose to buy into the hype of RCV and not even bother to address the very legitimate problems with and criticisms of the practice. Your readers deserve better.
2
In a world where we have Trump Democrats, Obama Republicans, and reproductive choice is only one of many footballs, this could more clearly reflect public thought. I'm afraid though that it will divert attention from abolishing the arbitrary kingmaker called the electoral college. And heck, the current president was elected by a portion of the electorate. Do we really want more candidates like *that*?
1
I do not follow San Francisco politics. But from what I can read about it, London Breed, an African American, got more 1st place votes than any other candidate but was eliminated when 2 moderate Democrats essentially combined their votes? And of the 2 moderate Democrats who combined their votes, the one who was eliminated was Asian and the one who won was a white male?
This seems like a tortured way to ensure that the establishment gets what it wants.
2
Breed may well win this election. She has not been "eliminated." The votes are still being counted, and its' very close; right now she's ahead.
In the context of San Francisco she also is more moderate than her two other top challengers.
3
C’mon America! What’s taking you so long to wise up to the benefits of ranked choice voting?!
“It’s too hard”? Seriously? Aussies have managed this for over a century. I’m happy to accept that the average Aussie is smarter than the average Yank. Are you?
All voters should be cheering for this. It means you get to vote for who you really want - but direct your preference to the least bad of the rest. Imagine if all the Stein and Nader voters could (in the privacy of the booth) admit that Dems are not equally as bad as Republicans and rank them higher. President Gore would’ve won easily. Plus Bernie could’ve run in 2016 presidential without spoiling Hillary’s chances (might’ve improved them).
Finally, it really does encourage more nuanced thinking politically. As purists split off into their own parties one is always reminded that your mainstream opponent is not the most crazy bunch out there. All left-wingers in Australia may intensely dislike the governing Conservative party, but there’s a bunch of loonies further right that remind us that they could be worse. It works the same in reverse with centre-left Labor and the more extreme Greens.
Go for it America. You won’t regret it!
4
This needs to be adopted universally in America.
2
We're the only country that votes during the work week, and we wonder why we get such paltry participation. We need to hold elections on Saturday AND Sunday, so people who planned a picnic one day can vote the other. It's not complicated, and ranked voting would have helped us tremendously in California. Most California districts showed majority support for the slate of Democrats over Republicans even in traditional Republican strongholds. Ranked voting will further the demise of the Electoral College, an antiquated design that soon became a collection of demigods Thomas Jefferson called the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He refused to support the new government without the Bill of Rights that Hamilton and other Federalists didn't think necessary. The Senate gives small and large states equal representation in our national government, especially after passage of the 17th Amendment established the direct election of senators in 1913. I wish Maine well, and hope ranked voting becomes the national norm in the United States.
2
Electoral reforms are fine if they become more representative of people's needs and wishes by electing an honest and capable politician who has their backs covered. Trouble is, once in power, it is difficult to hold them accountable (until the end of their term) if there is dereliction of duty; or worse, corruption, so to enrich themselves at our expense. Don't we realize that, to have responsible politicians we have to get involved, and participate in our own education, civics in particular, so demagogues need not apply? If the latter had been done, the current abusive bully (a coward in disguise) in the Oval Office couldn't have had a chance. Don'r you think foolish on our part to trust a liar and crook to have our best interests in mind?
Canadian political parties use this. Seems to work.
YES PLEASE! And while were at it LOSE the electoral college and we won't ever have to argue about "crowd" size again!
1
I live in Maine and I have been actively working for RCV for a few years. The real goal her is to eliminate the split vote which is something that has created voter apathy here. The majority of voters have backed a candidate that did not win, while between 30-40% of the voters elect officials.
(I) James B. Longley 142,464 39.70% 1974
(D) Joseph Brennan 176,493 47.80% 1978
(D) Joseph Brennan (2nd) 281,066 61.91% 1982
(R) John R. McKernan, Jr. 170,312 39.90% 1986
(R) John R. McKernan (2nd) 243,766 46.70% 1990
(I) Angus King 180,829 35.37% 1994
(I) Angus King (2nd) 246,772 58.61% 1998
(D) John Baldacci 238,179 47.15% 2002
(D) John Baldacci (2nd) 209,927 38.11% 2006
(R) Paul LePage 218,065 37.60% 2010
(R) Paul LePage (2nd) 294,533 48.18% 2014
The above percentages prove plurality is failing in this state. Candidates know they don't have to work to win a majority of voters, they just need a few more votes than someone else. Whatever happens on Tuesday in Maine with elections, this fight is NOT OVER!
1
Ranked Choice? Lovin' it in San Francisco ; )
I see. What was "wacky" in California a couple of days ago is now "sensible" in Maine. Make up your minds, NY Times. We can stick with our stultifying two-party system or try something more open, more competitive, less vulnerable to gerrymandering and less plutocratic. Where do you really stand?
Add that to vote by mail which has been working successful for decades in many states and we might have a practical and effective voting system.
Very interesting. Eager to see how well it works in Maine, albeit a small state.
2
We use this system in Ireland, where it's called 'proportional representation' and it really gives people a chance to run for office from smaller parties. You can decide whether or not to fill out the ballot completely. For example, if there are 15 candidates, you can give a vote to each from 1 to 15th choice, or just ballot as far down as you wish, say your top 3.
There are many advantages. It can allow a very popular candidate to bring in a running mate from the same political party in multi-seater constituencies. It can also promote voting pacts between different parties to go into coalition and ask voters to transfer their votes (i.e. give me your #1 and my running mate your #2). Voters can let parties know their dissatisfaction by giving them a lower ranking in preferences. Independents can win a seat without being in any party at all. Every vote counts in every constituency, nothing is a foregone conclusion.
Of course, we also have tighter limits on spending by political parties and nothing like your super-PAC's!
3
Ranked-choice voting is a beautiful system, but it will take time for voters and candidates alike to get used to it. We need to stop electing candidates who believe they can be elected by, and thus only serve, a narrow constituent of the electorate. That attitude is the cancer that is killing our democracy through excessive partisanship.
5
I don’t like the results of elections, change how we conduct elections. What happens when that doesn’t work? Not very thoughtful analysis. Sounds like a second guessing loser Jets fan.
What this Opinion Piece curiously failed to mention was that Question 1, which is on Tuesday's ballot in Maine, would repeal or at east postpone ranked choice voting.
1
"Never again" are words we say a lot in Maine. Never again will we elect a mini-me Trump like Paul LePage. Eight years we've suffered in Maine under this little tyrant's rule. Soon he'll be gone and Maine can start progressing forward again after eight years of nonsense, the whole "Some people are saying...." way of governing. We're done with him. Good riddance, Paul! Hope you return to Florida and never show your face in Maine again.
I'm all for ranked choice and excited to use this new voting system.
2
We can only hope things will get better.
1
Regarding San Francisco:
1) You only get three choices in an election with more than three candidates. I think there were technical limitations when ranked choice voting started here. I think ranked choice voting sells better with more choices.
2) I found it very strange to see to see endorsements for multiple candidates for the same office. As in the "Democratic Party of X Neighborhood endorses Leno for first choice, and Kim for second choice." It isn't binary. I actually liked it. Asking yourself who you want as second and third choice is quite different from asking yourself who you want as first choice.
3) It actually bothered me that Ms. Breed couldn't form an alliance with anyone for their second or third choices. I did wonder if she was an example of those who do not play well with others. (In truth, such an alliance is probably unrealistic with three front runners, so that fact didn't bother me that much.)
4) On a state wide level, it would be interesting to see if you get 'fringe' candidates whose basic function is delivering second choice votes. I really don't know if that is better or worse than the current system, although it might be more obvious.
1
I had heard of this during the never ending primaries for the presidential election in 2016. I think this works really well for primaries. Many good candidates were lost to the winner takes all primaries. This process of ranked voting for primaries allows party members to have a broader spectrum of candidates, only if party members are the only ones to vote in each party's primary.
Crossover, open or "jungle" primaries creates the possibility of non party members sabotaging political parties. (This kind of voting is like crashing a wedding party.)
Since ranked primary voting will produce more universally acceptable candidates I think voting for only one for each office on the ballot in general elections creates a clear choice.
1
As long as gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Electoral College exist isn't it a joke to talk about electoral reform as "gaming the system" or being "unfair" in some way? Our present system has not only been gamed far beyond fairness, it was even created with an anti-democratic self-destruct button, the Electoral College, set inside it that after 240 years has finally pushed democracy into meltdown by Trumpocalypse. It's a breath of fresh air to imagine that any of this could be changed, assuming there's enough life and will left in the political body, at least in the individual states, to do anything but capitulate to the tyranny of the current order of things. See https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/.
It is a poor system that produces everyone's third choice by turning the election into an exercise in game theory that most voters do not understand.
W have it in Oakland and have suffered the consequences.
Lest we forget: Ranked choice would have eliminated Ralph Nader in 2000, thus avoiding the disastrous W presidency. It also would have eliminated Jill Stein in 2016, thus preventing at least one more state from going to the disastrous Trump presidency.
I like this concept, but given that the GOP had 17 candidates vying for the presidential nomination in 2016, this could result in some seriously long lines. However, combine this with mail in ballots, and we might have a winner.
What would this country look like today if we had no electoral college, and ranked choice voting everywhere:
Al Gore as President
Hillary Clinton as President
Mike Michaud as Governor of Maine
and so many other elected officials who were the preference of a majority of the electorate. Shouldn't what most voters prefer count? If not, then why are we called a democracy?
12
There is no question in my mind that the disastrous Paul LePage would have been avoided--twice--if only we'd wised up to Ranked Choice Voting earlier.
4
No, if Maine did not have so many racist voters that shunned a Democratic candidate simply because he spoke French we wouldn’t be discussing Paul LePage.
"Generates more moderate politicians and policies that more accurately reflect what most people want. "
Whistle past the graveyard, much?
3
What a breath of fresh air!
What we're doing clearly isn't working - partisanship is tearing the nation apart. Just less than half the nation felt completely unrepresented during 8 years of Obama's presidency, and right now more than half of us feel like strangers in our own land, completely disconnected from Washington, DC.
Some version of proportional representation is in use all over the world, and it results in a vibrant, participatory democracy. Unfortunately, many people who are now in power see it as a threat to their power and therefore oppose it. Such efforts are cynical and antidemocratic.
As always, I'm hoping we all win this round. We need some help here in the US before we crumble.
7
Verdict still out on constitutionality of RCV as Maine constitution states plurality of vote. A plurality refers to the “highest number of votes.” not majority. And verdict is still out on how many lawsuits will follow this election as we ignored a the need to implement a constitutional ammendant to make RCV in-line with Maine constitution ?
3
It's not unconstitutional in the sense that it violates due process or other inalienable rights. It's only unconstitutional in the sense that the Maine state constitution sets out that the winner is the person with the most votes, which is not necessarily a majority. So, I find the argument that "But, wait! It's unconstitutional!" to be the weakest argument for rejecting RCV. Obviously, we need to preserve RCV and change the constitution.
1
This voter is NOT happy with ranked-choice and I can assure you that I am not alone. The biggest problem in San Francisco is that in elections with no incumbents we can have many candidates running for one office. For example there was a district election in 2010 that involved 22 candidates and required 19 updates. (Ultimately the 3rd place candidate won!)
In these situations it is difficult to know enough about each candidate to make a well-informed decision. I believe the electorate is much better served in open primaries with the top candidates in a run-off. This gives us the opportunity to see the differences between our top two candidates as they engage in a serious policy debate. Arguments about nominal expense have no place in a discussion about democracy.
6
For years, I have been saying this to anyone who will listen to me. No one, however, listens to me.
4
Ranked choice voting would make California's 'top 2' primary system much less susceptible to being gamed and would promote up-and-coming candidates even if they don't make the runoff. We can't adopt it soon enough.
4
Doesn't understand - It's not alright to be a Republican. America will move forward when republicanism has been firmly rejected. But, so far, millions can't its the water we swim in - republicanism - destroying America.
If the object of an election is to get a sense of the voter's preference, as it certainly should be, ranked choice voting is the best way to go. A villain may be the first choice of many for any number of sick reasons, but will always be the last choice of the vast majority by virtue of the fact that the vast majority know how the count their blessings; truly enjoy their living and breathing, and are desperately anxious that they and their loved ones go on happily living and breathing just as long as possible.
As a voter, this system makes me feel disenfranchised. I have taken to only voting for one candidate and leaving the 2nd and 3 rd place slots empty. I would rather have a runoff election even thought it is very costly.
3
Ranked-choice voting would have made a big difference in a recent primary race that had unexpected (and to many, disastrous) results: the 2016 Republican primary.
Trump didn't win any of the primary races. He just eked along and outlasted the candidates as they dropped off. Even when it was down to three, he didn't win a majority of votes. If voters had been able to select a second choice, he would not have gotten the nomination.
4
Precisely!
Ranked-choice voting sounds great in theory for voters that are well-versed on each candidate and their issues. However too many Americans vote by whether D or R follows a candidate’s name.
It also sounds like work. When US voter turnout is already low this might further intimidate or even alienate some voters.
How would this work with Presidential elections and the Electoral College? I don’t foresee the EC being dismantled any time soon.
All that said, I’m still interested to see how this plays out in Maine. Maybe they’re on to something!
4
Voters would still be free to rank all the Ds or Rs #1. But they would have the additional option of ranking party X's candidate #1, which would greatly increase the chance of someone other than an R or a D getting elected.
1
Hu McCulloch,
True. I didn't think of that straightaway. After more about it elsewhere I think it's something I would be willing to try.
Correction - After reading more...
Ranked choice, and then eliminate the electoral college. Direct voting is what I want, not a political "delegate," who can change my vote.
16
This is sensible reform that has the added benefit of being economical.
14
More importantly than anything else - and surprisingly omitted in this piece - ranked choice voting offers the only realistic possibility of electing independent candidates, and thereby breaking the stranglehold of the us-vs.them, two-party system, which is tearing the country apart. The Democrat/Republican dichotomy has so polarized us, that we are effectively living in alternate universes. How can we possibly survive as a nation with this kind of disunity and broken politics? Unless we have a viable way of electing leaders who transcend the dichotomy with messages and policies that appeal to people across the spectrum, I believe we are headed toward dissolution.
35
I agree with your concerns, however note that the editorial does hint at the likelihood that Maine's system will help independent candidates in that state:
"In Maine, voters adopted ranked-choice in 2016 because independent candidates there often draw enough votes to prevent any candidate from winning a majority."
The ranked system would clearly increase the chances for independents. I, too, am no fan of the dichotomizing two-party system.
5
Even if elections are not immediately structured with ranked voting, the polls can and should adopt ranked preferences immediately.
If the early polls had asked Republican voters to rank the 17 candidates by preference, it might have been apparent immediately that 90% strongly preferred the 3 or 4 serious candidates to the game show host, and the field would have narrowed down early on.
Similarly, after the conventions, the polls could easily have asked voters to rank the top 4 (or more) candidates by rank and reported the results. This would have been very enlightening, I suspect.
10
This seems like a step in the right direction to me. Ranked-voting such as this reduces wasted votes, which the all-or-nothing systems more common in the US pretty much has built-in. That one needs but a plurality of votes to win everything seems unfair.
Moreover, if the system sees increased voter participation than it seems to me that the results are automatically more democratic and accurate than the alternative. While of course one can question if more moderates are inherently good, I think it is preferable to an escalating extremism on either side.
So yeah, I consider this a positive change.
11
I'm an Australian American so I know the two electoral systems well. I would not phrase the American electoral system as 'broken', it is just different. Similarly the ranked choice system was designed to work in a parliamentary system not a winner take all system. It will probably not work as the NYT Editorial Board would hope in the USA.
4
Always fun to engage with Australians, given that RCV is old hat there, but there is no intrinsic reason to connect use of RCV to having a parliamentary system without a separately elected executive.
For example, nearly every city using RCV has a directly elected mayor with RCV. Better to have winners reach out to more voters!
We need reform of campaign finance spending, elimination of gerrymandering, & more robust protections for computerized voting. Otherwise systems like this simply give the big-bucks set one more way to manipulate the system.
6
Sounds great, but it would be completely incompatible with a nationwide popular vote for President, unless every state adopted it and every precinct's results fed into the same computer system.
How about we just go to a parliamentary system. They seem so much more stable.
2
A nationwide popular vote is so unlikely to happen it is not worth factoring in to decisions about the election process.
1
We can start with using RCV in states for president. In 1992, say, only a single state out of 50 was won with more than half the votes. RCV would ensure more representative outcomes in states.
Savvy law professors like Vikram Amar have explained how RCV can be done in tandem with the National Popular Vote plan; it would take an implementation statute by Congress.
1
Unfortunately, yeah, a nationwide popular vote where every citizen’s vote matters equally is a pipe dream in this country.
While it may improve harmony,ranked voting further increases the tyranny of the majority as well as reduce competition in the marketplace of ideas that has made America a strong country.
1
This is completely backwards.
It reduces the tyranny of the minority - where the most popular political position is split among more than 1 candidate, and a less popular candidate wins by plurality.
It increases competition because it becomes possible to vote for the candidate you really want to win (some far left or far right or far crazy or far funny candidate), while still ensuring that if they fail to win (likely!), your worst nightmare doesn't get elected instead. This should open the door to many more diverse candidates of many different views than has been possible in the past.
29
We here in Maine have had eight years of an ignorant, xenophobic, misogynistic bully as governor because a third party candidate twice split the ballot allowing idiot LePage to win with 38% of the vote. We want to be governed by someone who has at least a 50% approval by voters.
3
In Australia we see that it does bring out the lunatic fringe -- we have the shooters party, the sex party, the motorists party and so on -- they get on the ballot and get some votes but mostly it does not matter. However, what is different in Australia is you get fined if you do not vote and it is easy to vote (I do it almost always by postal vote or online) or at any polling station. Also, votes are on a weekend. In the US, I rarely voted because (a) I had to find the right polling station and (b) it was always crowded at key times and you could not always make it during polling hours.
Our current system isn't working. Our politicians answer to the donors rather than the people they're elected to serve. Our two party system isn't designed to encourage moderate candidates let alone bipartisan solutions. Independents like myself are shut out of the primaries and have to wait for the registered Democrats and Republicans to decide for us who our options are for the main election.
The states are an opportunity to explore how to improve our democracy. We get to experiment before rolling out changes at the national level. If Oregon's vote by mail and Maine's ranked based voting improves voter turnout and the quality of our politicians than let's do it nationally. Gerrymandering and voter suppression is how dictators run a country not a functioning democracy.
19
Automatic absentee voting effectively eliminates the secret ballot, since your employer or union boss or spouse or neighborhood capo can insist on looking over your shoulder as you vote.
It should be restricted to those with a sworn special need such as illness, military service, college, etc.
Ranked voting make sense unless voters are absurdly required to express a preference for every candidate on the ballot.
According to macleans.ca, 2/26/16, the latter is the case in Australia. The only reason the system works there when there are 100 or more candidates on a single ballot (as in one recent NSW election) is that 95% of voters typically just give their proxy to their favorite party's ranking of all the candidates.
It should instead be understood that unranked candidates are merely ranked somewhere below all ranked candidates. In order to make sure that their votes count in the end, voters must then simply include at least one front-runner in their rankings.
5
It's interesting that some of the posts here point to an apparent complexity Australians, as long time adherents to preferential voting (ranked choice), since 1918, don't even think about. It's seems perfectly obvious, in terms of why it's a more democratic system than first past the post. If a candidate wins on 30 per cent of the vote, he or she may have a majority, but 70 per cent did not choose them as the primary candidate. In seats (districts) where the primary vote (first preferences) is likely to be split, with no one person achieving 50 per cent + of the total vote, the allocation of second preferences from the bottom of the first preference pile up means the losing candidate, as such, can end up deciding the winner. It's a great system and it's not that hard. Whomever you like least, give them the your lowest preference. Preferential voting also forces the main (two) parties to consult with smaller parties in tight races, to negotiate policies with them, in order to secure preference deals, which empowers candidates who are not going to succeed in the primary vote. I think if you asked the Australian people to switch to first past the post, almost no one would support the idea. Moreover, preferential voting makes elections interesting for voters. That could be a good outcome in the US. It is worth noting that Australia also has compulsory voting, again, something most people see as a useful safeguard against the tyranny of the minority - that turns out to vote.
17
Despite having been endorsed by Maine voters, ranked choice voting has been challenged by the Maine Republican Party in state and federal courts, losing in every venue.
But that is not the only instance of Maine Republicans disregarding voters' direct choices: In several cases, Gov. LePage refused to issue bonds for much-needed infrastructure and other purposes despite their being overwhelmingly passed in referendums.
Also, in 2016 Mainers voted by a large majority to legalize recreational marijuana; due to LePage's and Republican legislators' opposition that law has still not taken effect, costing the state millions in lost taxes.
Maine voters also chose to add a high-income surcharge to the income tax to fund education – the legislature rejected that outright. And another overwhelming vote, to raise the state's minimum wage, has been altered almost beyond recognition.
Several Democratic legislators were complicit in some of these actions, but Republicans have been almost unanimous in their opposition to the people's voice as reflected by our votes. Indeed, Republicans submitted a number of bills to reduce the ability of voters decide important policies directly (none of which passed). Our governor has said that he considers referendum votes to be mere “recommendations,” a position that Maine courts have said is directly contrary to our state Constitution.
Which brings me to a very sincere question: Why are Republicans so opposed to democracy?
37
So why dont you have a Constitutional amendment stating that the legislature may not amend, or enact laws contrary, any voter initiative without the approval of said voters? That's the law in several states.
4
Which brings me to a very sincere question: Why do the people of Maine keep voting for Republican candidates?
3
In a majority-rules system that allows a choice of more than two candidates, the mechanism of a runoff is the logical and necessary solution to the problem in which no one achieves a majority in the first round of voting. Ranked choice, or "instant runoff", voting embellishes the typical runoff procedure to save time.
But instead of a logical, democratic, one-person-one-vote election system we are stuck with the Electoral College, which was consciously designed to give citizens unequal voting power and thereby to counteract majority decisions by the electorate.
The Electoral College is just one mechanism that was designed to support a societal order of rigidly hierarchical wealth, power and control. Today's Republican Party not only perpetuates that societal design, but under Trump is aggressively reinforcing it. This is the meaning of "Make America Great Again". This is why no Republican states have joined the National Popular Vote Compact. And this is why Republicans don't want democracy.
3
This is NOT a "sensible reform." We've had this for a few years in Oakland and San Francisco, and it's used to game the system. Fringe candidates and losing candidates make common cause to "take down" the front runner through ranked choice.
One person, one vote. The most votes wins. In our democracy, THAT is all that is needed. No ranked choice, no Electoral College.
8
In the Bay Area, some criticize RCV for electing incumbents too often. Others say it allows "taking down frontrunners." The reality is the incumbent re-election rate has been about the same, but what is different is that winners have to reach out to more voters and win with more votes than in the old system.
A 2014 Rutgers Poll of 1200 voters in the Bay Area cities with RCV found strong majority support for it.
7
Ranked choice is still one person, one vote. It is all about finding majority support. What you are describing is not “gaming”, it is part of democratic debate. Those candidates you mention are telling the voters how they, as a group, differ from the front runner and therefore provide an alternative. You may not like that alternative, but lots of people do, and that’s why one of those candidates is sometimes successful. Remember, this can only happen because “the most votes” are *against* the front runner, and in the end another candidate is placed head-to-head against them and sometimes ends up not only with the most votes but also a *majority* of the votes. Letting someone with just plurality support win is antidemocratic in my view.
15
It doesn't seem fair or effective for Kim and Leno to team up to essentially "rig" the election for mayor of SF and by skewing the second and third choices, defeated the more popular Mrs Breed. I suppose Ralph Nader might have won after all if he got enough of the second choice votes. The current system has drawbacks, but the ranked choice seems ideal for scheming politicians to manipulate.
3
Notably, Leno and Kim were publicly endorsed by the Democratic Party and various other groups. They were a logical pairing to avoid fighting each other and encourage cross-endorsements. In a single-choice system, they would have had to go negative on each other even though they share a lot of the same voters.
Breed leads with about 35%. San Francisco has never allowed people to win in the 1st round with less than 50%. RCV gets the job done in one round rather than have to wait another 5 months to have voters come back and vote again. in a runoff.
11
"the more popular Ms. Breed" is not well-defined.
She was the 1st choice of more people, but the total preference for her as the winner was less than for Mr. Leno. You can't throw around terms like "more popular" without also explaining precisely what you mean.
Put differently, if the votes in SF are an accurate representation, then Ms. Breed's win in a non-RCV election would result in more unhappiness than happiness, overall. Mr. Leno's win under RCV leaves the total level of happiness with outcome higher than the total level of unhappiness.
Surely that's better?
1
This is not “rigging” the system — the candidates have no control over how the voters decide to vote, they are simply informing them that they are more alike than they are like Breed, and that is why they should be each other’s second choice. Our democracy functions better when we have good debate, and this is part of that debate, it is not “skewing”. RCV actually reduces negativity because of the incentive to reach out to voters for a second-choice ranking.
In plurality systems scheming politicians can split the vote of their opponent by fielding a similar-sounding faux candidate. And well-meaning candidates with a different perspective like Ralph Nader can receive the full support of voters instead of them worrying about if he will splinter the vote. If RCV had been in place in Florida in 2000 his votes would mostly likely have transferred primarily to Gore and given him a majority, and the world would now be a very different place.
1
As illustrated in some of the comments, there is a lot of misunderstanding about how ranked choice voting works--the "voting system" doesn't choose anybody, and in any election someone can get elected you don't like. It was approved by voters in Maine partly in reaction to the current governor being elected with only 37% of the votes--he remains very unpopular. In its first appearance on a ballot, the voters approved ranked choice by a comfortable margin, but it was still thrown out by the legislature and governor so is now back on the ballot--how fair is that? And the fact that more minority candidates get elected through this system is exactly why Republicans don't like it.
36
Many seem to agree that there is a voting problem in this country. Currently we have several experiments to evaluate: ranked choice voting; open primaries - top two in the primary, regardless of party, go to the general election (California state offices); public funding for elections; maybe I've missed a few.
Consider that many people voted for Trump, and many candidates in the past, as the lesser of two evils. Apparently they held their nose, covered their eyes, said they couldn't vote for Clinton, and made their choice.
What about providing another option that has been tossed around but generally shunned: "None of the Above." If that choice wins, if voters chose NOTA, we hold a new election and the parties have to choose new candidates. The old candidates who lost to NOTA can't run again.
Maybe NOTA is idealistic and unrealistic but it would be nice to see a city try this as part of our continuing experiment in democracy.
5
I have long supported that idea, but it has been challenged successfully in many courts. Ranked-choice, on the other hand, wins in court.
2
I have voted in every election since I was 18 years old, decades ago. I have lived in San Francisco for 30 some years.
I hate ranked choice voting. Why?
Because people running for office run in their political silos and then offhandedly ask people to vote for them as second or third choice.
The joke is that people do not have the time or energy to look into the polices and positions of every candidate in depth. Ask around and it just does not happen.
So people are "forced" to pick a second or third choice that they have not really vetted. I like to have the time between the primary and the general election to look over the last two standing in depth. I will not spend a month or two or three to look over 4 or 6 people in depth to pick three.
The other thing that happens is that no candidate is forced to ask why they did not get a majority, as in the old system, and have to make some compromises to win in a run off.
I cannot speak to what the survey geeks say, I can tell you that my progressive friends and my conservative friends, at our Friday standing lunch, across the board do not like ranked choice voting here in San Francisco.
7
Keep in mind that very few major elections in the United STates have runoff elections So the norm is NOT to have the 2nd look you want, but o allow candidates to win whom a majority of voters may strongly oppose
When San Francisco had December runoffs, the turnout on average plunged about 40% for the Board of Supervisor runoffs. So maybe you and your friends came back to vote, but many didn't. What RCV does is indeed reward candidates for getting out of their silos and making connections That's a good thing!
13
Ranked choice is the fairest system and quite easy to understand. Ask anyone if they would prefer to see their second choice win an election rather than the candidate they hate most.
17
A major issue, not being related to in this article, regarding any candidate, as well as the voter, is in what way, if any, will, can, this process effect both to become more accountable, personally, for their behaviors and resulting policy outcomes.
2
There is a wide empirical evidence in cognitive psychology research which demonstrate that human preference does not follow the principle of transitivity. For example, if one prefers coffee to tea and tea to chocolate drink he still could prefer chocolate drink to coffee. Why do you believe that this new system better reflects the voters real choice in a much more complex ranking task?
3
Any voting system has to deal with this issue. But RCV handles better than our status quo systems -- single-choice plurality ("winners" can be strongly opposed by majority that they represent) and 2-rounds runoffs (big turnout differences, expensive to run and split votes in the 1st round.)
We don't need perfection. We need improvement!
12
Never heard of this before. Sounds interesting. Glad to see Maine trying it. I think I will follow their election to see how this works.
Now if we can just limit contributions to a candidate by anyone to $1000.00 and limit PACs or lobbyist organizations to just give the $1000.00 and limit adds to those by the campaign, we’d be in much better shape.
And stop gerrymandering by any party.
58
Can we add warnings on " news" sources that they might be made up and perhaps you should dig a little deeper for your information before voting?
2
I believe we need federal funding for all national elections and allow no - absolutely no - outside funding. If someone slips a candidate money for the campaign both the candidate and the donor should serve time.
1
Sounds like giving voters many votes if they rank three or four possibilities. Those who only like one of two candidates get fewer votes. Spaced runoffs May be tedious, but at least you get to see who is left before you vote. Go back to the drawing board. Proportional representation...a better reform.
The best American form of PR is in fact also based on ranking candidates -- see HR 3057 in Congress.
Ranked choice voting doesn't give any voter extra votes. It gives them backups if their 1st choice is out. But if your 1st choice is in, you're happy and your vote stays with that candidate.... In any given round of counting, every voter has only one vote counting.
Ireland has had a version of this for years and it works reasonably well. My own constituency is currently represented by an independent from the right, a member of the Greens (relatively left) and a member of the governing (slightly right of centre on economic but not social issues) party.
8
Uhmm ... Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem. "Most systems are not going to work badly all of the time. All I proved is that all can work badly at times." (Arrow supposedly said.)
2
Notably, Kenneth Arrow in an interview before his death said he approved of his home city of Berkeley and more US jurisdictions moving to RCV.
1
Not only should this be adopted for all US elections, they also should adopt moving elections to a weekend day and, do what they do in Australia, fine voter $20 fro not voting. In the 2016 election, only 58% of eligible voters, voted. In Australia, for their last national election, it was well over 90%.
The other advantage, of ranked voting, is that it will give rise to more parties, and force candidates to fight for every vote. It will reduce non-competitive races and "safe states". I suspect, if such a system were in place, in 2016, Clinton and Trump, would have not been the ultimate choice, in the primaries.
Finally, we should shorten the election season, like they do in Canada, where it lasts no more than 90 - 120 days. And, that all elections are publicly funded. No more "corporate citizens" and PACs.
Our system is hopelessly broken, corrupt, and almost eternal. Politicians spend more time running for office, than doing the job they are elected to do. Congress, fro example works less than 26 weeks out of the year.
So, it is time for the US to humble itself, and realize that the Great Experiment needs a lot of repair to how this democracy is suppose to work; to elect people.
69
I agree with your ideas except for the fine for not voting. Having a high turnout is only a positive thing when the additional voters care enough to be informed. If they are only voting to avoid a fine, they probably are not informed.
12
Australians are very well informed, and do not understand, why in the US, people do not vote or do not make informed choices. Forcing people to vote, will make people pay attention. Making them vote on a weekend, there would be no excuse fro not voting. And, again, if what I wrote, in the earlier post, was in place, in 2016, Trump would not be president. Australians, were aghast when Trump was elected; they still are.
2
What you are so correctly describing here, is also the norm in the Europe.
The biggest hurdle though is the antiquated Electoral College, one that is as antiquated as the 2nd Amendment.
17
This was done in Burlington, Vermont, to elect the mayor. As soon as progressive was elected, who later became relatively disliked, that was the end of the experiment.
We should also give them bingo cards and scratch off lottery tickets. Voting is not a game. You should vote for one person as your first and only choice. No one has the right to reshuffle your vote or reassign it to someone else. To put it another way, why should you be forced to rank your choices from an existing field of candidates and end up having your vote given to someone who is not only your bottom choice but someone you would never choose at all. What will happen is that the voting system not the voters will choose the winner.
8
If you look at the sample ballot attached to the article (from Maine), you will notice that voters are not required to make more than one selection. If there’s only one candidate who appeals to you, then you need only mark his or her name for your vote to count. Other voters may, on the other hand, rank their choices in the hope of electing someone who is at least somewhat in sync with their views. The current system practically assured that the least moderate candidate is elected, with all sorts of red meat appeals to the “base,” and all.
I hope this is just one of many voting reforms: ending gerrymandering; open primaries (particularly here in New York); increasing the size of the House of Representatives; abolishing the Electoral College; etc. The election of Donald the Mad is Exhibit A for the decrepitude of our electoral system.
38
We are already living with a voting system that chooses the winner and not the voters.
The voters chose Clinton. The system chose Trump.
Why not give a different system a chance?
17
How are they redistributing your vote? You pick your second preference. So you would rather that if your pick loses, your vote is "wasted" because you don't want to pick the least distasteful of the other options?
Delighted to read this editorial.
We have a large number of what I call “defective” voters in this country, who either don’t participate or vote without considering the candidates stands and personal history in making a choice.
You call it a broken election system.
Either way, nice and clear.
A change to a system such as this may be very helpful in fixing things.
Thanks.
6
As this editorial suggests, there’s nothing new about ranked- choice voting. It has been used for decades in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I once lived. There, it is called “proportional representation,“ because it assures that representation on the city council will be broadly proportional to voter support, thereby giving even minority groups a voice on the council.
15
Thank goodness ranked choice is catching on! This will allow voters to express their true preferences without having to strategize about whether voting for, e.g., Jill Stein will allow Trump to win. Most such voters would presumably have voted (1) Stein (2) Clinton (3) Trump. When Stein was eliminated, the ballots of those who voted for her would have gone to Clinton, thus preventing the Trump debacle. Similarly for preferences (1) Nader (2) Gore (3) Bush or whatever other scenarios lead so-called spoilers to change the results of an election.
47
In fact, it was Johnson/Weld, with 3.3% of the final vote, that held the balance of power, not Stein, with only 1% of the final vote.
With proportional voting both these tickets would have obtained a much bigger share of the first-choice votes, which would have induced both parties to reach out more in future elections.
2
The Green Party has consistently included Instant Runoff Voting in its platform for years.
7
I got to experience ranked choice voting in Santa Fe this spring in our mayoral election. We had several candidates to choose from and they all had to campaign with a message to the entire population. It makes the voter more engaged with each candidates issues and ideas.
17
Having lived and suffered under the adminstration of Paul LePage I understand why this state got to the point it did in adopting "ranked voting". I remember seeing bumper stickers after the election that read something like "Not part of the 36%".
Yes, Lepage (a pre Trump Trump) became governor in a 3 way race. If ranked voting had been in effect, would the Democrat or Independent have won?
What if ranked voting had been effect during the presidential election of 2000? One could posit that Al Gore would have been elected and millions of people would not have died, been wounded or been displaced in a tragic error of a war. (Don't forget the $ cost)
What if ranked voting had been effect in the 1992 election for president. Ross Perot collected 18.9% of the vote. Would George Bush have been re-elected and saved us from the brilliance and sorrow of a Clinton presidency? (A balanced budget and sexual misconduct/abuse)
13
Why don't we just go to a parliament system and be done with it? Perot could just throw his support behind whoever sucked up to him and we'd have a coalition government.
As a Mainer, I am thrilled to have rank choice voting. Governor Paul LePage’s victory with only 39% of the vote made this reform a necessity. Being stuck with a leader the majority of voters did not want is not representative democracy.
54
Worcester, MA used Proportional representation in the 1950s/60s for City elections. It took several days to hand count and redistribute the votes. The counting was broadcast on local radio. We listened in our Jr. High Civics class. It has always been a fairer system. Computers have made it work.
9
This editorial, like many pieces in favor of ranked-choice voting, parrots the fallacy that the ranked-choice system guarantees that the winning candidate received a majority of the the votes. If you receive a majority of the votes only after one or more groups of votes are thrown out, then you've only won a "majority" in the most Orwellian sense.
As the editorial noted, Maine tends to have strong independent candidates who play a significant role in the outcome of our elections. The ranked-choice system feels like little more than a scheme by the major parties, particularly the Democrats in Maine's case, to sideline those candidates by tossing out their votes and assuming that the second-choice vote will be for a Democrat.
1
No, it’s not an assumption who the second choice is, it’s a choice made by the voter. E.g vote 1 independent, 2 republican if voter wants...
17
Your problem is you don't understand ranked choice voting if you think votes are "thrown out". The candidate with the fewest votes has their votes redistributed to whomever the voter designated as their second choice. The winning candidate is the one most voters want. Not using ranked choice voting in Maine is really a scheme by the Republican party because they are afraid that Independents will choose a Democrat as their second choice, and the Republican can't win with only 38% of the vote.
2
The votes are not thrown out. Your vote goes to one of the other choices you make.
We just used ranked choice voting in the Santa Fe mayoral election with five candidates. It forced me to become much more involved in knowing each of the candidate positions, reading their policy statements, and going to forums. It forced them to stay away from lacerating one another to get votes. I could have lived with two of the candidates and one of them did win. Ranked choice voting is easy, voters are more involved, and it is democratic.
70
LET INDEPENDENTS VOTE TO PICK CANDIDATES
You are correct that election process reform is a necessary, if not sufficient, part of fixing our broken politics.
But effective messaging, which your editorial begins, is needed to pressure state legislatures to change the way elections are held (and districts are drawn and presidential electors are instructed).
DON"T DISENFRANCHISE INDEPENDENTS FROM CANDIDATE SELECTION is something all voters should agree on.
The Times should continue to advocate for this; it should help create a groundswell of independents, soon the largest block of voting age people in the country, to clamor for this.
7
"LET INDEPENDENTS VOTE TO PICK CANDIDATES, says Randallbird. Great sentiment. And guess what? Here in Maine, we work really hard to make that as easy as possible.
You can sign a ballot petition for any independent candidate to get on the ballot -- all it requires is reaching a threshold of voter signatures.
But picking candidates for a party is party business, and done by party members. We even work hard to make independent-minded voters do that; not only can a potential voter register to vote on the day of the election at the polls, but they can register a party on primary day and vote for any or all of the candidates competing in that party's selection process. But they cannot vote in more than one primary, since they are, by definition, party business. If the voter prefers to remain independent (meaning un-affiliated here in ME, there is also an Independent Party,) they can un-enroll after the primary.
But most of all, understand that voting systems are state choices, and how your state handles party registration and independent candidates is dependent on first, state law, and second, party rules.
But it would be most helpful to recognize you're transferring your concerns about your state's voting laws onto my state's earnest attempts to develop a better system that minimizes party polarization.
4
Most states have open primaries, or they don’t require voters to declare allegiance to a particular party as a condition of registering to vote. That is the true scandal. As a resident of New York City, I face a dilemma. If I register as an independent, I can’t participate in the Democratic primary, where most elections here are ultimately decided. Therefore, I am (reluctantly) registered as a Democrat. Our system has been set up for the convenience of the two major political parties. That needs to change. Fast.
4
How do you know that the Independents are truly independent? How do you justify disenfranchising people with a party affiliation?
Many people disdain of political parties. While they are subject to faults, their strength is to help stabilize the operation of government just as representative government vs. direct elections stabilizes rule. Anything that weakens parties, which force coalitions to govern, such the Maine example or California's top two vote getter primaries, weakens coalition building. Think Italy.
1
I don't find this to be a persuasive argument.
A strong party system does not guarantee strong (or, more importantly, good) governance. Think United States.
Ranked choice voting doesn't do away with political parties. Parties are free to form and operate as usual.
And the ranked choice system doesn't result in governments formed from coalitions of political parties, so the equivalence to Italy is false.
Ranked choice voting allows virtual coalitions of voters to work together to elect candidates. It's not a system for politicians, it's a system for voters.
And it tends to promote candidates who appeal to the most people and who will actually talk to one another. Instead of electing parties that won't work together the voters can elect representatives who will.
31
Well, the “organized” Republican Party is doing a heckuva job running the Federal Government. The only substantive legislation they have enacted is a massive, unpopular tax cut that was passed, literally, under the cover of night, replete with errors and handwritten notes. Despite controlling the government, they can’t agree on any other major issue: immigration; trade; foreign policy; health care; etc. In fact, both parties are actually several parties, bound by nothing more than a name and donor lists. It used to work, but now it’s broken. As for Italy, it’s a different society and it has a parliamentary system. No comparison.
4
Ranked preference voting has been studied for centuries, and there's a reason it's not widely used - it does not appear to generally produce better outcomes than simpler systems.
5
Ranked choice voitng was 1st proposed in late 1800s and has earned a relatively large amount of use. Every voter in Australia, Ireland, London, Malta, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and Scotland can vote in at least one RCV election. In India, Nepal and Pakistan it is used by groups of elected leaders to choose the president and/or senate... Literally thousands of NGO's use it, and Robert's Rules spell it out as the best way to pick leaders when not enough time to do repeated voting.
The barrier to widespread use in the USA has been voting equipment more than anything else. As reported at RankedChoiceVoting.org, that soon will no longer be a barrier.
33
References, please? Certainly ranked preference is not perfect -- no voting system is -- but it is a lot better than the plurality system, in which the presence of two candidates with similar policies and appeal lead to the victory of a third candidate. Surely being the only candidate with a certain point of view should not be an advantage and sharing points of view with other candidates should not be a disadvantage!
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
14
@ Ernie Cohen
Can you provide a reference with data that supports your assertion?
Please...
1
The SF mayoral election shows exactly how Ranked Choice Voting can bring greater civility into the political process. And it's easy!
RCV allows people to vote their true preferences without fear of "spoiler effects". Just think how much consternation for both D and R might have been avoided in the CA statewide primaries, had RCV been used instead of the unfortunate "top two" system. And RCV *saves money* by avoiding the need for expensive runoff elections.
I urge New York City to adopt RCV, as currently being considered.
21
In SF I don't think candidate London Breed nor her supporters would agree with your assessment that the people of SF are happy with the two-two-tier voting system. In a crowded field Ms. Breed was over 35% of the vote to Mr. Leno 25%, quite a significant win - yet she finds herself losing via the second-choice ballot selections. A run-off would properly determine the party choice between the two - the idea that a candidate with only 25% of the vote who comes in second gets declared the winner is, well, messed up.
2
If you are familiar with runoff elections, as it sounds like you are, you would know that it is not uncommon for candidates to come back from trailing by margin well over 10%. The main difference with runoffs is that they overwhelmingly have lower turnout. In federal primary runoffs and San Francisco Board of Superrvisor runoffs when in place, the turnout decline on average was greater than 35%
10
Good point Cynthia about the decline in voting during a run-off election - however the thought that the "winner" attracted 10% less of the first place votes sort of turns the idea of majority rule on its head. Add to it that London Breed, who is black, was the successor to the deceased mayor and was then knocked out of office by a sleight of hand by the city supervisors, still "wins" the primary but is again kept out of office by this second choice voting and I think you have a significant civil rights issue on your hands.
Point is - in ranked voting your first choice is not always your vote. If your preferred candidate comes last, your second choice becomes your effective vote.
There have been 11 gubernatorial elections in Maine since 1974. Nine were won by candidates who received less than 50 percent of the vote. Almost half (five) were won by candidates who garnered less than 40 percent. When ranked choice voting was earlier proposed, the Democrats opposed it, and the Republicans supported it--proof of its nonpartisan basis. Mainers pioneered our "clean election" system (publicly funded elections) years ago; this year hundreds of candidates from all parties are using it, many of whom will go on to win their races. I hope we will have the same experience with ranked choice voting. These election reforms are part of the reason Maine is always among the top states in voter turnout.
51
In our system, if you are too busy rank your vote, you can vote for only one person. The vote transfer system helps support minority interests. If there are two minority candidates, for example, chances are that at least one of them will be elected.
6
I'm not sure why the process has to be so complicated....just count the votes - no majority - whoever has the most votes wins....period.
If 100 people vote among 4 candidates...with the following outcome - 27 votes, 26 votes, 24 votes and 23 votes, the candidate with 27 votes wins.
Seems easy enough to me.
I don't want to have to rank candidates - sorry - I just want to vote for one.
5
Having someone win with 27% over the potential strong opposition of 73% of people who then stuck with this person as their only "representative" isn't democracy as I would define it.
More generally, though, RCV encourages candidates to reach out beyond their base and make connections with more people -- that's all to the good when they are going to represent those people!
19
If this is too complicated for you, I'm sure you could just vote for one on the ranked ballot. But if you have a second choice, or if you really don't want a particular candidate to win, ranking would help you get better representation.
7
Yes, it's simple, but it's wrong. Among your 4 hypothetical candidates, imagine that those with 26, 24, and 23 votes all have similar ideas and appeal to similar people, while the candidate with 27 votes has completely different ideas. The candidate with 27 vote wins, yes, but 26+24+23 voters hold the opposite position. The 27-vote candidate won because he/she was the only one holding his/her views. You can ask the candidates holding similar positions to decide among themselves who is the front-runner, but often, each will think he/she is the front-runner.
7
I'm surprised you did not mention that Cambridge, MA has had proportional representation for municipal elections since the 1940s. We Cantabridgians love it because it is a far more representative system. We hope the rest of the country will gradually wake up to its virtues.
19
In Ireland we use the ranked choice system where there is only one winner - usually for President. This means that more than 2 candidates is no problem as votes for the one who comes last are not wasted - your vote goes on your second choice. It effectively stops 2 big parties monopolising things.
(for other elections we have multi-seat constituences, which needs a more complicated system, known as proportional representation, but still involves putting candidates in order of choice. It is notable that we don't really have "safe " seats' and don't usually have constituencies where only one party gets elected)
60
Because an independent siphoned off much of the vote in the last two gubernatorial elections, Maine has been saddled with a governor for two terms that a large majority more than dislikes.
Ranked choice voting is a simple way to help states like Maine choose candidates that better represent their populace.
109
Yup! We will finally get rid of Trump Jr, who was elected because of a spoiler third party candidate who refused to give up. Eight years of disaster will finally come to an end! It's also pretty interesting that republicans here are rabidly against RCV...
11
We don't 'dislike' this terrible governor, we despise him. And we've had to live under his Trumpian rule for eight years.
NEVER AGAIN.
12
The reason ranked-choice protocols were introduced ACROSS parties, largely in venues where Democrats see a rightward-turning electorate becoming dominant or at least threatening to, that makes electing Democrats problematic, was to increase the chances of electing Democrats where the proportion of Democratic activists may be disproportionally larger than in the electorate as a whole. Some should have predicted that the very number of these activists on a ballot could split their vote so finely as to allow the Republican in; but practicality and the ability to discern potential consequences in political types always has been directly correlated to the DISTANCE candidates assert from hyper-liberal ideals, so it’s not surprising that some on the left are so unpredictably encountering such predictable problems.
But this editorial largely is about ranked-choice primary election protocols WITHIN parties, so I’ll reserve my cynical snark henceforth to THEM.
Actually, the snark isn’t that cynicial. I support ranked-choice primaries WITHIN parties, because I believe the propaganda about their delivering more moderate winners who seek to appeal to broader bases, and I believe that this could be America’s salvation – a moderate Republican going against a moderate Democrat in a November election is JUST what I believe could save us.
4
We already rank political choices by informing ourselves of their campaigns, characters and party platforms, and we do so when we decide on one to support financially or simply vote for the candidate. Why do we need to rank as lesser choices candidates whom we would never contribute financially to their campaigns? Will RCV be “improved” in the years to come so that candidates running for 2nd or 3rd choice demand a lower amount campaign finance contribution from voters for their 2nd or 3rd place finish, like a trifecta horse derby bet (win-place-show)?
For two centuries our present political election system has worked at least in a way that everyone intuitively understands. The candidate with the most votes in state elections wins. Why make it more complicated now? Are we next going to let juries decide guilt or innocence of an accused by ranked choice verdicts?
3
I gather you are from Louisiana. No candidate in Louisiana can win state or federal office without securing a majority (>50%) of the vote in the general election; Louisiana has runoffs when someone doesn't meet that threshold.
That's an example of the fact that our states and cities right now use a wide range of voting rules. The strength of our representative democracy has been to keep improving those rules. Our constitutional framers had the wisdom to build flexibility about voting into our document; they would embrace ongoing ways to improve elections.
9
Most voters are turned off by the present voting system of runoffs, and ranked choice voting is not the answer to increasing voter turnout. Ranked choice advocates are not happy with conservative choices pushing single issue solutions for simple appeals. But more voters respond to elections on a few simple issues that excite them than a roster of issues designed to appeal to competing minorities. Besides, if one does not support the single issue candidates or the party’s choices, the next election can easily change the candidates and the issues. If not, there is always recall.
Many citizens of Louisiana do not support runoffs or the 50 percent majority vote, nor do we support rank choice voting. Many of the changes in straight majority elections came about after Confederate troops in the South and parishes outside Orleans like Jefferson Davis regained their citizenship rights.
They then decided to gerrymander Congressional and State Representative parishes, eliminating straight majority vote elections in any Congressional district/ parish already majority black into minority vote appendages to white voting majority ones. There is no need for a trifecta election derby where candidates nos. 2 and 3 winning ranks of the vote total can combine to decide that they can still win the race that they lost to number 1 in a three way race.
This article states that San Francisco was the first US city to adopt ranked choice voting twenty years ago. But Cambridge MA has been using it to elect their city council and school committee for decades. People in Cambridge like it just fine. I believe that NYC used it for the city council in the 1940s.
Perhaps S.F. is the first to use it for a single seat election.
27
Ranked choice looks good to me for the chance to get third parties in contention. When on the ballot, third party candidates display the will of the electorate better than party-groomed and gerrymandered ones. Disparaged as third parties are, they provide a safety valve for discontent. They force non-corporate, non-ideological planks into the major party platforms, if nothing else, and ranked-choice voting is the right environment to promote them.
26
Another way to think about election systems:
If a candidate were to address 1000 voters at a forum who went in with no inclinations about him and afterwards 50 voters were ready to sign up for his campaign and 100 voters thought he belongs in an insane asylum, did his speech advance the cause of his election? Under first choice only voting, he would have advanced his election because if the 100 voters who would commit him to an asylum weren't going to vote for him anyway, their extra conviction not to do so makes no additional difference. If you want that speech to be a detriment, you must support an alternate voting system.
This prism provides a way to view Mayhew's retort that she's only interested in being voters' first choice. She is the type of candidate who evokes the passionate support of a sizable faction, but equally passionate opposition from another faction. Under plurality voting, that passionate opposition would be no more hindrance to her than if they apathetic about her, a situation which she self-servingly wants to restore.
21
This is an important point. How do you score the voter rankings? There are so many ways, and this is only one. But maybe, as in the old Grecian concept of the ostracon, there should be a way of voting AGAINST. As Scott points out, this scoring does not work for that. But many other scorings will. The question must be: Do we want to be able to vote AGAINST, as well as FOR?
And yes, I think we should be able to vote against, as well as for. It should have happened a long time ago.
While ranked choice voting does offer an improvement over ignoring all except for the first choice, it is not the best way to do so. The common justification is that it frees voters to give their first choice vote to their favorite candidate, confident that if their first choice does not win, they can support their second choice by indicating so. What this ignores is that ranking a candidate second does absolutely nothing to prevent that candidate from being eliminated in the first pass, since only first choice ballots are counted in determining who gets eliminated. The consequence is that if one candidate is deemed tolerable by nearly everyone while a handful of others have passionate support of sizable factions but vehement opposition outside their bases, the universally tolerable would get eliminated in an early pass leaving only the polarizing options for the final passes.
The better option would be to have a pairwise contest between all pairs of candidates with the candidate winning all pairs winning the election. The result is that a voter's preference for her second choice over her fourth or eighth choice will be counted every time, even if no voters rank that candidate first. It would also more effectively punish candidates who alienate part of the electorate because there would be no chance that the candidate who beats them head-to-head would be eliminated in an early pass due to the lack of passionate support.
2
@ Scott,
While this sounded like a very complex way for a citizen to have to vote on first reading, I then realized that it doesn’t change the voters’ “job”.
The voter still makes one list of candidates sorted by preference (1 thru n).
It is the analysis of the vote that is a tad more complicated,
But we have statisticians (if needed) and computers to facilitate that.
Runoff’s should be rare (hopefully).
1
Ranked choice voting is kind of a religion for its enthusiasts. Like most fervent believers, they tend to overlook contrary evidence. In this case, the editorialist neglected to mention any instances in which voters deemed RCV a disaster.
Voters in Pierce County, Washington, adopted the system in 2006, then rejected it 71-29 percent three years later. Some of the reasons had little to do with the merits of RCV per se, but the system did help elect a spectacularly inept county official who turned his part of county government into a disaster zone. He would not have been elected in a conventional partisan primary.
A link: https://blogs.sos.wa.gov/fromourcorner/index.php/2009/11/pierce-voters-n...
This isn't proof that RCV is inherently bad, but any jurisdiction contemplating it should look at all prior experience with it, not just the cases touted as shining successes. And they ought to look at the successes with some skepticism, too, not just rely on glowing reviews from advocates.
5
The key reason for the repeal of RCV in Pierce County was that the Supreme Court restored the "Top Two" primary for state and federal elections. That took away the reason voters had passed RCV for county elections. Notably, the two major daily papers serving the county recommended keeping RCV.
The writer is correct that "old guard" types don't necessarily want to adjust to the new political incentives that come with RCV. Change is certainly not easy - but it's coming!
13
I will be voting in the primary on Tuesday and I will vote against retention of the rank-voting system. I will also pick one conservative candidate for Governor in the GOP primary and cast only one vote, for that candidate.
4
@ Douglas,
Conservative would be nice, especially for human rights and the environment we depend upon to survive.
Most politicians running as “conservatives” seem to have a radical platform.
What does your “conservative” plan to conserve?
Thanks...
3
You being able to vote for just one candidate in a ranked voting system belies your hostility to a ranked voting system.
What, exactly, is your issue with being able to rank candidates if you choose to as opposed to not doing that, which is an option?
1
From Maine here. I'd recommend that readers check out Mary Mayhew's record to understand just how much a reactionary she is as she scrambles to take on the mantle of our lunatic governor Paul LaPage. Rank choice voting will allow people to vote for their first choice without having to balance that choice against the ultimate competative viability of that candidate to sweep a secure win. By having second- and third- choice candidates, we can prioritize our candidates, and not play the hold-your-nose and vote for the single candidate most likely to defeat the other end of the political spectrum's most likely contentender. Rank Choice Voting is a progressive selection, in both senses of the term.
160
Another Mainer here… I recall when LePage was up the first time and friends were outside the voting booth frantically trying to decide whom to vote for: the independent or the Democrat…which one had the greatest chance of beating LePage.
Alas, with standard voting, LePage won despite the majority of voters’ sincere desire to stop him.
LePage, like trump, has his avid fans. He has succeeded in dividing the electorate and causing the rise of extreme partisanship,
hate speech, and crass talk.
17
Paul LePage is Donald Trump -- without the intellect or charm.
It's not complicated at all, in fact, grade school children can learn to use ranked-choice voting. A great example is with ice cream... Of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, which do you prefer the most? if we run out of that, which do you prefer of the rest? And so forth. I am so glad to hear that Maine is doing this!
30
Yes, very simple to do. we used the "Hare Transferable Ballot" for our student government elections in High School decades ago.
7
The ice cream metaphor is brilliant. Thank you!
6
Ranked voting is good, but it doesn't address the fundamental problem (not just in the US): voting systems are not based on the principle of one-person-one-vote. On Trump's election with a minority of the popular vote, conservatives and others correctly pointed out: (1) the system is not designed to measure the popular vote, and so doesn't do so; and (2) this is because the USA was founded, not as a democracy, but as a federated republic.
One-person-one-vote can be a very difficult principle to swallow: the most informed vote equals the most ignorant, or worse, the most misinformed. Imagine someone who made up their mind based on 30 seconds of debate highlights with the sound down. Their vote equals yours. (Mind you, they would probably make a far better choice than an "informed" devotee of conspiracy theories, left or right.)
If we want democracy - we must institute voting as a civic obligation, that is as compulsory. Without compulsion all we do is privilege one sort of voter's thinking, or lack of it, over another's. "None of the above" options should be obligatory, ballots must be secret (i.e. they can be submitted blank) and it should also be possible to apply for exemptions on various grounds - but it should be a civic obligation to submit a ballot.
Under those conditions, for one very important thing, the state would be obliged to provide the infrastructure for everyone to vote, in all districts.
12
Canada and other advanced industrial democracies have same day voting via paper ballots that are counted in public. A transparent and superior voting system to America's.
To protect the integrity of their elections, in 2009 the Federal Court of Germany (their version of the US Supreme Court) ruled that every aspect of an election must be publicly observable and effectively banned the use of computers to count their ballots. The Court also noted that “programming errors in the software or deliberate electoral fraud committed by manipulating the software of electronic voting machines can be recognized only with difficulty.”
19
I've lived in Maine nearly my entire adult life, arriving here at 18 to attend art school. When I registered to vote then, I registered Independent, I was already tired of the death spiral the two parties were in, and as a progressive, felt the Democrats had already moved too far to the center (that was 1982!).
I switched my registration in 2016 to Democrat so I could vote for Bernie in the primaries, and considered switching back until we, as a state, passed ranked choice statewide.
I am SO EXCITED to vote in next weeks primaries. We have an excellent Democratic field and if it were a straight up vote, I would never know who to choose and would be disillusioned that most people would assume a certain person was going to win.
With ranked choice I feel like I have much more power. Meanwhile, I have also been much more interested in hearing about the Republican candidates as well as the 2nd district US Congress seat (which is not my district, so I won't be voting).
The reason we have to vote AGAIN for ranked choice on a referendum is that the Republicans HATE it - of course - It's FAIR!!
Thank goodness for Matt Dunlap, our Secretary of State, who worked to get the system implemented for now. This is the same Matt Dunlap that sued the idiotic Trumpist "voter fraud commission" - of which he was a member - for essentially leaving members in the dark:(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/us/white-house-voter-fraud-panel-laws....
As Maine goes, so goes the Nation.
108
Considering that Main doesn't have a primary but a caucus, you didn't vote for Bernie, you caucused for him. Huge difference.
Hopefully this ranked system will do away with your very undemocratic caucus system. If so, that would be good news.
5
CD2 Mainer here. We are extremely excited to be able to use the power of RCV (for which we fought long and hard for two years AFTER it was approved by referendum). (Well, democrats are excited--republicans, not so much.) Thank you Matt Dunlap! I believe we will have a huge turnout on Tuesday and will be well on our way to replacing Bruce 'Hide-in-the-Bathroom' Poliquin and Paul 'Trump-wannabee' LePage in November!
13
Say it again!
The reason [Maine has] to vote AGAIN for ranked choice on a referendum is that the Republicans HATE it - of course - It's FAIR!!
12
This is a refreshing take on how to fix our broken political system! Thank you to the NYT Editorial Board for the thoughtful piece on such an important issue.
71
Does anyone know the ballot spoliage rate for ranked choice versus first past the post?
And, if we moved to ranked choice, why have primaries? Why not just have jungle elections? Why shouldn't political parties have more say? They certainly do in Europe where you essentially vote for a party not a representative? And, multi-member districts don't even sound constitutional? Do we have that in any fashion in the US?
The problems in our political system are because the parties have become divorced from the average voter, through a lack of patronage and earmarks, and overly reliant on big donors as well as vocal interest groups, which are sometimes one and the same. National parties are no longer made up of local polticians who need to bring home some goodies. Instead we have nation-wide politicians in Congress who care more about the rather petty, power politics of who gets to sit in which chair than getting the people's business done.
7
Ballot spoilage varies based on number of candidates and design more than RCV vs. non-RCV. For instance, San Francisco voters this month were about 8 times more likely to invalidate their ballot in the non-RCV face for governor than the RCV face for mayor. Rates of valid ballots on average more than 99.5% with decent design and were 99.9% in Santa Fe mayoral election with 5 candidates & good design this year.
13
Yet another way in which pairwise-ranked voting is superior to RCV. Under RCV, if a voter gives the same rank to two or more candidates, that voter's ballot is entirely spoiled. Under pairwise-ranked voting, it is just an abstention for that candidate-pair.
In the San Francisco example, say a voter ranked Leno and Kim first and Breed second. Under RCV, that ballot would be spoiled and no preferences from that voter would be counted at all. Under pairwise-ranked voting, that ballot would count as 1 vote for Kim over Breed, 1 for Leno over Breed, and no vote between Kim and Breed. At worst, it salvages something from that voter instead disregarding that voter's intent entirely.
1
Scott, your paired candidate idea seems to have several flaws, the most obvious being 'one person, one vote.' Using this method would increase the number of votes cast for all candidates well past the total number of voters.
Why should anyone get two votes in any election? It really can't be that difficult to decide which candidate a person prefers. And the ranking does give a person to make their choices known.
Also, would this only work for first place votes? Why not second place votes? If it included the option to vote for one candidate for first and two for second, that could all sorts of problems.
Your suggestions seems overly complex and, frankly, not very democratic.
This type of voting should be encouraged at all levels. We're going to use it to choose a graduation speaker from our graduating student body. Typically, we have 10 or 12 applicants for this honor, and they all vote for themselves. The rest of the study body spreads out their votes such that the winner only gets a handful of votes, maybe one more than the second place. Ranked-choice voting will certainly help us ensure that the chosen speaker best represents the graduate student class.
30
It still doesn't solve the primary reason our voter turnout is so low. Which is:
If your candidate doesn't win the election, your vote effectively doesn't count towards any representation of your interests in Congress.
And, if you live in a gerrymandered non-competitive district in a dense urban area, even if your candidate wins your vote is still diluted relative to the rest of the population.
And, even if you are okay with those things, just generally speaking the vote of a person living in Wyoming counts for about 10x as much political power in the federal government as the vote of a similar person living in California simply because of where in the country they live.
And even if you are okay with that, the votes don't really matter that much anyways because the lobbyists and Super PACs largely determine what the law is going to be regardless of what the voters want.
But okay sure, let's rank candidates instead of burning this whole corrupt system to the ground. Lets rank them!
15
"If your candidate doesn't win the election, your vote effectively doesn't count towards any representation of your interests [or] ... if you live in a gerrymandered non-competitive district..."
This aspect is addressed quickly in the last paragraph, where it says, "If it’s combined with other electoral reforms, like multimember districts that can more accurately reflect the political makeup of a region, it could do even more to help voters feel that their voices are being heard, even if they’re in the minority."
The reason is that when combined with multimember districts, ranked-choice voting works as a proportional system that maximizes the number of voters electing a representative that shares their views (including those in the minority). Google "single transferable vote" or "STV" to learn how it achieves this. Cambridge, MA has been using this form of voting for many years (electing 9 city council members citywide), and many other cities in the US used to use it (but it got repealed because it was too successful!).
10
I am all for a proportional voting system myself.
But you do realize that if you create what is effectually a proportional voting system the Supreme Court is going to strike it down, yes? Certainly this court will under its current composition. They have already given hints that they would do so in rulings such as Vieth v. Jubelirer among others.
They will strike them down under the Guaranty Clause. I have foreseen it in the tea leaves. They will not do so under a solid legal grounding, but they will create the legal pretext they need to do so.
Also, the current law only allows for single-member voting districts 2 U.S.C. section 2(c). So we actually could not have multi-member districts even until that law overturned.
It could be overturned through the normal bicameral process (i.e. does not require a constitutional amendment), but the Democrats would most likely need complete control of Congress and the Presidency to do so considering the Republican party is so interested in people's votes counting for nothing.
And like I said, even if you overturn that, the Supreme Court is going to be very conservative for the next 30 years and has not been shy about making up stuff to suit their chosen political party so far.
While it's true that ranked choice voting doesn't solve every single problem ravaging our democracy it does: increase turnout, encourage civility, lower campaign costs, lessen the effectiveness of negative campaigning, elect more women & people of color, yield majority winners and voter driven outcomes - I'd say that's a pretty good list!
183
Maine is a pioneer in democracy for using proportional distribution of electoral votes, rather than the winner-take-all system which can, ahem, leave the popular vote winner behind on the Electoral College.
Ranked voting is another means of making election outcomes more representative.
We should all follow Maine's democratic examples.
128
Maine’s electoral votes are not distributed completely proportional: two of four are statewide to whomever is the plurality winner, while the other two have only geographic distribution, one each from the two congressional districts (which represent coastal and interior communities, respectively). Nebraska does the same thing.
Many states did this in the 19th century, but realized they had more clout by assigning all of their vote to one candidate — and significantly reduced the possibility of throwing the presidential election to Congress if no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College. Because of this we need a constitutional amendment to require *all* states to do the same thing. (Or maybe just amend it to use the nationwide popular vote instead!)
One thing Maine could have done that they did not do: require the use of single-winner RCV to choose their electors (which would likely have made a difference in Florida in 2000).
6
Actually, the two congressional districts are divided by population. CD2 is geographically MUCH bigger than CD1 because it is sparsely populated, relative to CD1 (which represents the southern third of the state). Both districts have both coastal and inland portions.
”Geographically” does not imply size, it means location and demography. So yes, the distribution is by geography but with an equal-population constraint (as it should be).
CD1 is primarily coastal, CD2 is primarily inland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maine_Congressional_Districts,_113th_...
Good for Maine! They needed this solution because their fierce independence did not allow them to construct a ballot with one republican and one democrat.There were always independents who were appealing but affected the outcomes.Ranked choice sounds like a real choice! I hope it catches on and makes more voters happy that they took the time to vote.
73
Santa Fe had its first ranked-choice city elections a couple of months ago. In spite of dire predictions by some (software is not ready, people can't understand it), things went smoothly. Turnout was good, there was lots of help at polling places for explanations or do-overs if the paper ballot scanners detected the same rank for more than one candidate.
There were five candidates for mayor, and that race went four rounds, even though the eventual winner held a plurality throughout.
I think that in future no one will even comment on its novelty. Good for Maine, I hope they vote to keep it.
145
This is a wonderful idea. It takes power away from the political parties and brings it back to the people. This also reduces the power of big donors as they have to look at backing more than just one candidate. And, it helps to temper the us versus them demarcation between parties.
Here is a good example. Mitt Romney has been a fierce critic of Donald Trump and rightly so. He has just come out and said that Trump will be reelected in 2020. Really! Are you kidding me?
No he's not. Romney is now running for US Senate so he swallows his pride acts like he is kinda sorta backing Trump to get the Republican machine behind him. This is the stark partisan party divide that causes good people to acquiesce to incompetence and corruption. If Romney's voter base spanned both parties, he would have a greater incentive to be himself instead of a partisan hack.
I say go for it. There is no way the Congress is going to implement and kind of meaningful voter reform. It going to be up to the states and localities to forge ahead and fix our terribly broken system.
201
Terrible to think that M. Romney has had to stoop to becoming A.K. Romney. What more evidence do we need that a radical change in the party machine process is needed?
6
Ah, Romney has been a salamander all along. He is just doing whatever it takes to achieve his goal like all the rest of the money crowd.
Re “San Francisco, which, in 2004, became the first American city to use ranked-choice voting.”
Fact check: Cambridge, Massachusetts has been using ranked-choice voting since 1941!
The city, home of Harvard University and MIT, uses a city-wide multimember district for the nine members of its city council and the six elected members of its school committee, as has been proposed for Congress.
They call it “proportional representation” there, because it effectively reflects the diverse interests of the city. But it’s the same, and has withstood multiple efforts to repeal it over the years.
Here’s hoping Maine votes to continue using it also, because as Maine goes, so goes the nation!
52
Andy--EXCEPT in their choice of governor.
4
The majority of Mainers voted *against* the current governor, both times he ran. That’s why ranked choice voting has gained such wide support there (the second largest margin in the history of Maine ballot initiatives): http://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_remains_the_law_of_the_land...
(And, in retrospect, the nation did follow Maine by electing an uncouth bigot in 2016, against the will of the majority.)
2
As an Australian, it is a constant source of bewilderment to me that the United States electoral system is so bad.
We call this system of voting, "optional preferential". The "optional" part is that it isn't a requirement that you complete all the boxes on a ballot - you can just vote for one person if you don't want your other preferences to be counted.
There are a whole series of other reforms that are obvious that the United States should adopt. Chief among them would be to make the citizen's duty of voting a compulsory obligation by imposing fines on registered voter who don't show up. If you can't renew your drivers licence until you've paid your non-voter fine, you get a lot more people voting and the intransigents add to the revenue.
And voting registration should be automatic through any process which generates a photo ID. If you get a drivers licence then at age 18 or above you are automatically a registered voter. Same when you get a drivers licence. Same with any other mandatory, state-issued photo ID.
Suffrage - the right to vote - is the bedrock of democracy. Everything reasonably possible should be done to ensure that every eligible citizen in registered and thereby entitled to vote. Everything reasonably possible should be done to ensure that every registered voter undertakes their patriotic duty of participation in their country's democratic process.
These three steps - plus majorities replacing the Electoral College - would make America much greater.
107
The EC will never be replaced. Why would any politician from a small state vote to end their career?
2
I agree with step 1 without reservation. Step 3 is a problem because many people who get photo IDs are not citizens and not eligible to vote. There has to be a second part to the process where the driver's license applicant also provides proof of citizenship.
I'll agree with step 2 when "none of the above" is an option. People should not be forced to vote for candidates they don't like or disagree with.
I remember discussing this with an Aussie friend a few years ago, and IIRC he said that some people get around this problem by defacing the ballot or "voting" without actually choosing anyone. Is that correct? If so, it seems that Australians, too, would like the "none of the above" option.
It's sort of academic for America, though, because I suspect forcing people to vote would be ruled unconstitutional.
2
Good points. You can't force people to vote, but you can make turning up mandatory. You can't force people to fight, that doesn't mean they can't be drafted.
More people didn't vote at all than voted for Hillary or Trump. When that is the reality, can you call it democracy?
1
Technical ways of applying the proportionality to an election are always welcome but the biggest problem is to take the Big$ out of the process.You have to find a way to reverse Citizen United or you will lose the American Democracy...!
56
rev - a concept which time has long come.
if it'll promote eliminating " citizen united" - more cheers !
4
I'll go along with this when you also include "none of the above" and make that part of the redistribution of votes. If "nota" gets the most votes then you need different/more candidates and try again. All you're doing now is forcing the choice among the current crop. What we need in this country is not more of the same. These guys got us in this mess. We need to get more ideas and people out there.
17
NOTA's and unranked candidates should simply count as an abstention in which the voter has simply deferred to the majority of the other voters.
1
We can't give you candidates who aren't on the ballot. Feel free to write one in. Ranked voting will give you a larger field of candidates with more support than our current system.
4
A positive outcome of RCV has been the forming of alliances. Instead of having candidates rip each other apart with negative ads, we have this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXGTt66fyTI
25
How wonderfully refreshing--there's even a possibility that this type of voting would lead to more bi-partisanship in our government... Or at least bring a bit more civility in the conversation...
2
The most important thing to do is to change the voing day. The second Tesday in November was adopted when the society was agrarian, there was no such thik as a weekday except for the Saunday as the church day. The day was selected when only the freeholder men could vote and wanted to be canvass and vote when farming season was over and there was time to travel to vote after the day of rest in the hrsse and buggy days.
Let ys make the INDEPENDENCE DAY as the election day. It waill be a holiday for all (make sure all stores are closed, no Independence Day Sale hours). More can vote. And one can vote anywhere he/she wants to since all candidate slates will be available anywhere thanks to the our new Information Technology, and every eligible voter will be provided with a one-use code. Use today's IT technology, mobile population and good weather to increase the turnout. And definitely replace the today's winner-take-all electoral college process with each sate receiving the electoral votes proportiona to its number of registered voters (not population) and electors allocated in proportion of votes received by each candidate. Any other method is a Balm".
19
People always will find an excuse - voting on Independence Day? Oh, I was going to but we had a picnic planned, people were coming over, we had to drive out of town to see relatives, you name it.
I can see the appeal to wider IT application, but the more decentralized it becomes the more vulnerable it will become to centralized hacking, which positively will be attempted by our enemies if given the chance.
6
Better idea - get rid of a single Election Day, and instead have a 72 hour voting period.
2
We're the only country that votes during the work week, and we wonder why we get such paltry participation. We need to hold elections on Saturday AND Sunday, so people who planned a picnic one day can vote the other. It's not complicated, and ranked voting would have helped us tremendously in California.
1
This op-ed seems to miss out on what to me is the most attractive aspect of RCV.
In the current typical US election, voters are not able to vote for "fringe" candidates who more fully or deeply represent their views. Why not? Because it is almost certain that these candidates will not win the election, and the result may be that the voter's least favorite choice will win instead of some somewhat acceptable alternative.
RCV will allow libertarians to vote for the Libertarian candidate, but put the Republican candidate as their second choice, ensuring that no socializin' nationalizin' freedom hatin' socialist democrat wins instead.
RCV will allow socialists to vote for the Socialist candidate, but put the Democratic candidate as their second choice, ensuring that an idiotic kindergardener with a history of reality TV and bankruptcy doesn't win instead.
These votes will remind and make clear to major party candidates where their support comes from. "Wait, I'm a centrist Republican but I won because 23% of my vote was as 2nd choice to that woman?" "Hmm, I'm a left-leaning Democrat but wow, 40% of my 2nd place votes were from people who preferred Lyndon LaRouche?!?!" etc. etc.
RCV enables a range of candidates that fully represents the real spectrum of political opinion. It allows voter behaviour that covers that full spectrum, by allowing people to vote their conscience without forcing them to face their worst nightmare candidate(s) winning as a consequence.
95
Precisely! That is THE primary reason ranked voting is not liked by the 2 big parties: it gives power to the voter and a chance for alternate parties to gain notice if not wins.
Install ranked voting and eliminate gerrymandering and we start to change our screwed up system of wrongful representation.
Jim in Boulder
21
Paul--Good points. I think the simpler, the better. And, let's go back to paper ballots, and a paper trail. Some things cannot be improved upon. Thanks.
19
Ranked voting also waters down the influence of big donors! No small improvement and why they will fight it tooth and nail.
10
A possibly better option, but only if voters actually approve more than one candidate, is approval voting or another form of cardinal voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
5
We absolutely need this across the country. Examples: Bernie could have run as the true independent he is without the Dem machine fear mongering that his supporters were "wasting their votes" or "costing Hillary the election. "
In 2000, Florida liberals for Nader could have ranked Gore 2nd as the vast majority of them no doubt would have preferred Gore to Bush. This would have let them show their support for Nader without handing the state to Bush.
Many other good reasons...www.fairvote.org
65
So obviously the ruling party won't let it take hold.
6
Re Hmmm (Seattle)
Nader did not hand Florida to Bush and Berniecrats did not elect Trump.
The 5 Republicans sitting on the SCOTUS haded Bush the Presidency without standing- the Constitution clearly says the states are to determine how it’s electors are chosen and that would have been the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court. Gore was robbed in plain sight. Even Sandra Day O’Connor has said Bush v Gore was a mistake.
Hillary simply ran an awful campaign and was nominated only by Superdelegates- she failed to garner enough voter chosen delegates for a first ballot nomination of her own party. This despite a Billion Dollars and the obvious support of the media and a healthy majority of the beltway Deep State (not Trump’s- but the class of hangers on and courtesans that are eternally around government despite never being elected to anything). When you can lose the White House to Trump with her resources you need to wander the woods drinking heavily for the rest of your life.
Back to voting- we should always have the tabulated option of none of the above.
4
Ranked choice voting is terrible. The editorial mentions San Francisco where the vote count is still ongoing and London Breed, an African-American woman and native San Franciscan who got the most first choice votes may not actually win the office. Rather than investing voters in their representatives, it alienates them by making them feel their first-choice votes don't count.
As an SF voter and London Breed supporter, I did not select a second or third choice on my ballot. I don't support the other candidates and I shouldn't have to vote for them for my vote to count. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a primary with a multiple candidate field followed by a runoff with only two candidates going head to head. One of those two candidates will actually get fifty percent plus one of those voting.
The editorial fails to mention scenarios like the Oakland mayor's race when the incompetent Jean Quan was elected by a majority of second and third place votes. Who wants that person running a city and she was terrible for Oakland.
Or the San Francisco supervisorial election with 21 candidates where the eventual winner was elected with only twelve percent of first place votes and less than fifty percent of all votes when the other nineteen candidates were eliminated and their second and third votes apportioned.
General election runoffs are valuable and provide you with a binary choice. Ranked choice is just another way to save money and scuttle democracy.
15
London Breed's predicament is a predictable consequence of Arrow's Paradox, a mathematical theorem which shows that this, or one of two other paradoxical results is inevitable in ranked choice voting.
1
Robert--I think the idea is to get an election that most people can accept. You don't necessarily "lose" because YOUR first choice vote doesn't win. Other people's first choice DOES win.
1
There's nothing wrong with having "ranked choice" decide who should be in the runoff. I agree that 31 candidates will splinter the vote, so why not take the top 4 or 5, and do a runoff? Your vote is not wasted any more than if you vote for a losing candidate under a conventional system. I would certainly rather have my #2 choice than the white nationalist guy.
Under the conventional system, you vote for 31 candidates and top 2 run off. If you didn't vote for top 2, you are forced into 2nd choice in runoff anyway. Top 2 is highly restrictive in a 31 candidate field. Better to let the top 20-25% compete in runoff.
6
We have to get out of the dynamic we’re in right now, where Republican or Democrat means “enemy,” depending on whether you’re conservative or liberal, and where tearing the opponent to shreds via endless negative campaigning is standard practice. Compromise won’t occur until politicians are incentivized—or forced—to do so. The best way to force change is through a series of fundamental alterations like this (which David Brooks also recently advocated).
Changes like RCV tend to bring with them problems as yet unforeseen. But that isn’t an excuse for doing nothing. Those who oppose RCV should propose alternatives. Because, again, the dynamic we’re currently in is not going to break soon. Absent some fundamental, systemic change, it could produce a situation far worse than the one we’re presently experiencing.
There’s a lot of complaining about the personal character of politicians (and this is important). But we’ve got to stop thinking that a handful of people merely wishing for civility and compromise will produce it. It won’t. We have to force it via structural changes. Electing the right people with the right set of values, the right ideals, and high intelligence, will always matter; but working within a system such as ours, captured as it is by that ever-present foe, special interests, or even responsive to a public that sees “the other side” as only slightly superior to Satan, even the best people will struggle.
26