How Can Ranked Choice Voting Improve Our Democracy?
Slowly gaining prominence, this voting method might make for better politics all-around.
Hello, friends!
Last week we talked about Gerrymandering, including how it’s done, some case studies, and some possible solutions to the problem.
This week I want to take another swing at something that seriously damages our Democracy as a whole: The “forced choice” between two major parties, and the catastrophic consequences of “wasted votes” for third party candidates.
Don’t get me wrong! I’m a Democrat, by dint of masochism, if for no other reason (okay, voting in primaries is important). Most Democrats are decent people who believe in Democracy and want to see this country improve. Most give a damn about a woman’s/person-who-can-be-pregnant’s control over their own bodies. Most want Queer people to have equal rights, such as marriage. And most believe that People Of Color should have equal opportunities to vote, a right which is frequently targeted for suppression.
But some exist who will find any excuse to avoid granting those rights - say, by passing, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act we discussed last week. And voters should never be in the predicament of, “You have two choices, pick the slightly less evil one.”
It’s a good thing there is a solution to this that is, slowly but surely, gaining precedence in the United States: Ranked Choice Voting.
How Does Ranked Choice Voting Improve Democracy?
First, I would like to introduce you to a video by Youtuber CGPGrey, wherein he describes one such method of elections: “The Alternative Vote.” A similar system already exists for New York City, and it is not alone, nor is it the first.
To sum it up: Instead of just voting for one candidate and that being it, you can put down your second choice, your third choice, and so on, up to whatever (arbitrary!) limits are in force. NYC, for example, allows you to rank five choices. If, for example, you vote for your favorite candidate but they only get 5% of the vote, they are eliminated and your vote automatically goes to your second-ranked candidate. And so on, until a candidate reaches 50.1% and has a majority.
This means you can vote for your favorite candidate and know that, if they are defeated, you get to vote for your second-favorite candidate to prevent your least-favorite from winning.
This is how a good Democracy should work: Your vote will always count. You vote for your favorite, but if your favorite doesn’t win, you vote on who’s next, until everyone’s vote is counted in a meaningful way, win or lose. No “wasted” votes, no “protest” votes, just votes.
Hey, third-party people? This is where you come in.
What Ranked Choice Voting Would Mean For Third Parties
In America, as much as I am right there with you in agreeing that it sucks, there are in virtually all cases really only two candidates running for an election: A Democrat, or a Republican. Yes, I know that some places have Ranked Choice. Other places have other means of narrowing down available candidates. For example, California has a “Jungle Primary” where the top-two vote-getters are the only ones available to choose from in a second election, and it’s not uncommon for the choice to be between two Democrats, or a Democrat and a Green party candidate, or such combinations.
As things stand, in most elections in the U.S., the highest vote-getter wins. If you vote for a Libertarian party candidate who gets 5% of the vote, but that vote is mostly siphoned off of the person who would be your second-favorite, major-party candidate, then you might accidentally be, in essence, voting for the person you least want to govern.
The (arguably) most famous example of this is the 2000 election, where (well, where a lot went wrong, including the Supreme Court getting involved in choosing winners) the State of Florida wound up splitting it’s vote 48% Bush, to a slightly lower 48% Gore, with the Green party candidate taking about 1.64% of the vote.
I’ve always understood the Green party to be Progressive in nature (...That’s the idea, right?), and I’m willing to bet that, if those voters were given a choice to cast their vote once again, strictly between Bush and Gore, they would have picked Gore more often than Bush. After all, Gore is notoriously pro-environment.
And, hey, I have my doubts that 9/11 would have happened because I’m willing to bet Gore would have read his security briefings more closely. That would have led to an entirely different world history for the past twenty years.
Moreover, with Ranked Choice allowing people to vote for candidates “on a lark” and then still have their vote counted if the “lark” candidate loses, it would encourage more people to run for office. It would certainly inspire different people to run for office, knowing that they wouldn’t necessarily “steal” votes from a more-likely-to-win candidate.
The bottom line (again, as much as it really does suck): Until Ranked Choice Voting is a thing within your district, third-party runs rather often do more damage than simply voting for “the lesser of two evils.”
How Do We Get Ranked Choice Voting Established?
This…Is more a question for legal scholars and legislators. On a local or even state level, this is as “easy” as convincing enough members of your relevant legislature to pass a change to voting laws; and, then, to convince the governor in question to “flip the switch” and sign the law.
This is, of course, a drastic oversimplification that fails to take into account the very real inertia that stands against changing a system which, let’s be very honest, heavily benefits both parties involved.
Then, you have the notion of making Ranked Choice Voting a Federal institution. The first thing to do is ask what the Constitution has to say about it, and it says in Article One, Section Four: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”
That would suggest that a state law could govern how Congressional offices are filled. In fact, Alaska is already using Ranked Choice Voting in its elections. So, there’s no reason to believe that any other state couldn’t pick this up, as well. Maine also uses RCV, but there have been court challenges regarding it, and there could be more regarding other states, as well.
There are many organizations who want to see Ranked Choice Voting in some form, though their scopes may differ. One of them is FairVote, while another is the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center.
Until Ranked Choice is established, Democracy is imperfect.
It is that simple.