[meridian5850]

Those who push ranked-choice voting (RCV) make over-the-top claims for it, as we have seen in Massachusetts recently. The ads claim RCV will lead to consensus candidates and remove the impact of spoiler candidates. Not so fast. Stop and ask yourself: Why is RCV being pushed by a group that advocates changes to election laws to help elect liberal candidates? Clearly, they see an advantage beyond the first-mover advantage.

RCV is really a get-out-the-vote strategy. The New York Times reported that a progressive candidate ran in this year’s Maine Senate race to help throw the race into an RCV decision: “Lisa Savage, a progressive running as an independent in the race, has urged her supporters to list [Sara] Gideon second. . . . Savage emphasized that she was not looking to undercut Gideon in her bid to unseat [Sen. Susan] Collins, but instead to help attract otherwise reluctant, young and first-time voters who were discomfited by the bitter campaign and wary that Ms. Gideon was not liberal enough.”

Before we change to this system, shouldn’t we ask if we want a dozen (or more) fringe candidates on the ballot who run not to win or to advance a cause but rather to manipulate an election system whose outcome few can understand and fewer can explain? Look at the official election results for the San Francisco mayor’s race in 2011 which had 16 candidates and went 12 rounds. Transparency isn’t a feature of RCV, and it will lead to more polarization, not consensus, as the parties figure out how to win RCV elections.

[blueash]

Originally Posted by maggie1

In this year's Presidential election in the swing states that remain close, rank choice voting possibly makes Trump the winner
In Georgia Trump has 49.2 % and the Libertarian has 1.2 %
In Arizona Trump has 49.1% and the Libertarian has 1.5%
Wisconsin also would be in play with ranked choice.
That's 37 electoral votes.

You had me until your equations "makes Trump the winner"[/QUOTE]

Well, in 2000 if you did the same sort of calculation then Gore wins Florida as the third party candidates in that election in Florida took more votes from the Democrats than the GOP. As I wrote initially, it does not favor either party.

[meridian5850]

From the Wall Street Journal
By The Editorial Board
Nov. 2, 2020


Electoral reforms often don’t have the results proponents foresee—witness campaign-finance rules that empower wealthy candidates, or “independent” redistricting bodies that also gerrymander. So it is with ranked-choice voting (RCV), an idea that has taken hold in two dozen mostly liberal cities. On Nov. 3, RCV will face its biggest electoral test to date as voters in Alaska and Massachusetts decide whether to adopt it statewide.

As the name implies, ranked-choice voting means voters rank candidates in order of preference. Less intuitive is how this produces a single winner. It works like this: The counting proceeds in a number of “rounds.” In the first round, the candidate who has the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. For voters who ranked that candidate first, their second choice becomes their first choice. A second round of counting follows, and the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated again. The process is over when one candidate has a majority of first-place votes.

Got it? It’s confusing. But proponents claim a host of benefits. First, they appeal to moderates by arguing RCV races would be less divisive as the winning candidate would need to have broader appeal.

They also appeal to more ideological voters—especially on the left—by arguing that they can express their views with more precision in a ranked-choice system. If states used ranked-choice voting in presidential elections, for example, left-wing alternatives like Ralph Nader in 2000 and Jill Stein in 2016 would be less threatening to Democrats. Their votes would presumably have gone to Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in the second round.

No one knows for sure the long-term impact of RCV on federal or state general elections. Maine was the first state to use it at that level in 2018. Democratic challenger Jared Golden trailed the Republican incumbent in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District by 2,000 votes in the initial tally, but won by about 3,000 votes when third and fourth choice candidates were included.

We don’t need empirical evidence to know RCV would make elections more difficult to navigate when trust in democratic institutions is already low. Columbia computer scientist Stephen Unger has highlighted some of the “bizarre outcomes” the iterated counting system delivers. For example, in a three-candidate race, it’s possible that it if all supporters of candidate A listed him first, he would lose in the second round—but if some of them strategically listed him third, he would win, because a different candidate would be knocked out in the first round.

Whether such cases would occur often in practice is less relevant than the effect the complex system would have on voter confidence. For a 2017 paper in the journal Politics and Policy, political scientist Lindsay Nielson had volunteers do mock traditional and ranked-choice elections and surveyed them about the experience. She found “weak support for the supposition that RCV rules could increase support for election winners.” She also found respondents were significantly less likely to say RCV was “fair” than plurality voting.

As for the idea that RCV will moderate politics, San Francisco State University political scientist Jason McDaniel followed mayoral voting patterns in cities that adopted RCV and those that didn’t. RCV led to “greater racial divisions at the ballot box between white and Asian voters, and quite possibly also between white and Black voters,” he wrote in a 2018 paper for the California Journal of Politics and Policy. Faced with a more confusing set of options, voters may be “more likely to rely on candidate traits.”

In a 2019 paper, Mr. McDaniel also found RCV leads to a “significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3-5 percentage points in RCV cities.” College-educated progressives may appreciate the chance to list more choices. But for voters who favor one candidate but don’t spend as much time gaming out political possibilities, it is a burden they would rather avoid.

There is research pointing in both directions on RCV, and there may be circumstances where it makes sense—such as within parties in crowded primaries.

But rather than make U.S. politics kinder and gentler, we worry the effect of wider adoption would be to tear at existing divides. Major parties could be weakened to the benefit of more extreme candidates. Pressure groups and the most sophisticated slices of the electorate could increase their dominance. And political legitimacy would suffer at a time we can’t afford it.

[blueash]

Originally Posted by babcab22

Ranked choice does not require one to vote for a second or third candidate, does it?
So, if so, one could simply not vote for an alternative candidate, if the alternative was
not acceptable to the voter.

You are exactly correct. If you strongly feel that only one person fits your thinking then you just vote for that one person and don't list any other candidate.

Here's a trivial example. Mrs Blueash asks what vegetable do I want for dinner tomorrow as she is heading out the door to shop. There are many choices. I can say first choice green beans, second choice sweet potato, third choice pea pods. That way I'll get something I like even if it's not my favorite it will be acceptable. Had I only said green beans and the store didn't have green beans then she might buy broccoli which I dislike. So ranked choice makes the final result better for me than if I only got to mention one vegetable which might not have been available.

But if I felt strongly that I wanted green beans and all the other veggie choices were equally ok then I'd just mention green beans and leave what to select up to her if that weren't an option.

[Domenick]

Some people have a hard time making an informed decision on two candidates. I can’t believe that people would take the time to learn the actual views on multipliable candidates. I would prefer to just compare the top two candidates in a runoff election.

[leeannske]

That is not true in Florida. When registering to vote, you have to select a party or register as an independent. Democrats can only vote in the Democratic primary, Republicans in the Republican primary, and Independents can't vote in either primary.

[blueash]

Originally Posted by Domenick

Some people have a hard time making an informed decision on two candidates. I can’t believe that people would take the time to learn the actual views on multipliable candidates. I would prefer to just compare the top two candidates in a runoff election.

I don't know where you live but almost no places in the US have runoff elections. Georgia does which is why you are hearing about it.

Some have gone to open primaries where all candidates of all parties [or no party] appear on a primary ballot in the spring or summer. Then the top two vote getters in the primary are the only choices in November.

If Georgia were like almost all the other states in not having run off elections then the two Senator-elects would be Perdue who got 49% and Warnock who got 33%. Yes, 33% was the plurality winner in the second Senate race.

[mydavid]

Originally Posted by blueash

You're not understanding how it works. If one party wants to run numerous candidates it does not prevent a winner.

Say 6 GOP run in Sumter Co for commissioner equally dividing the GOP vote and 1 Dem. Under our present system if the Dem gets 30% of the vote he wins even though the GOP candidates got 70%. Rank choice voting means one of the GOP candidates will win.

In the 2020 Georgia senate races, Perdue got 49.7% of the votes and a Libertarian got 2.3% with the Democrat getting 48.0 %. Under rank voting the Libertarian is eliminated and the second option of his voters is used. Likely 80% Republican meaning the election is over and Perdue wins.

In the other Georgia race there were 21 candidates who received 0.3% of the vote or more. But the leading two Democrats received 40% of the votes while the top two Republicans received 46% of the votes. If you total all the votes by party there were more cast for GOP than DEM. But the leading vote getter in the election by a 33% to 26% margin was a Democrat. Under the system in almost every other state he would be Senator elect. Under ranked choice voting it is more likely one of the Republicans would win.

In this year's Presidential election in the swing states that remain close, rank choice voting possibly makes Trump the winner
In Georgia Trump has 49.2 % and the Libertarian has 1.2 %
In Arizona Trump has 49.1% and the Libertarian has 1.5%
Wisconsin also would be in play with ranked choice.
That's 37 electoral votes.

This is reason enough not to have ranked voting.

[blueash]

Originally Posted by meridian5850

From the Wall Street Journal
By The Editorial Board
Nov. 2, 2020


...

As for the idea that RCV will moderate politics, San Francisco State University political scientist Jason McDaniel followed mayoral voting patterns in cities that adopted RCV and those that didn’t. RCV led to “greater racial divisions at the ballot box between white and Asian voters, and quite possibly also between white and Black voters,” he wrote in a 2018 paper for the California Journal of Politics and Policy. Faced with a more confusing set of options, voters may be “more likely to rely on candidate traits.”

In a 2019 paper, Mr. McDaniel also found RCV leads to a “significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3-5 percentage points in RCV cities.” College-educated progressives may appreciate the chance to list more choices. But for voters who favor one candidate but don’t spend as much time gaming out political possibilities, it is a burden they would rather avoid.

...

The article mentioned in WSJ is available online. It is NOT an analysis of whether ranked choice moderates political extremes, rather it is focused entirely on a different question. McDaniel writes that in the two cities he studied, Oakland and San Fran, the mayoral elections tend to be racially polarized.. whites vote for the white, Asians for the Asian etc. He wanted to know if ranked choice changed that dynamic and that dynamic only. It did not. Here is the actual conclusion to his work

..assessing whether a relatively new electoral reform adopted in several California cities, Ranked-Choice Voting, could lead to a reduction in racially polarized voting. The results presented here suggest that the hopes of reformers for the potential of RCV to reduce polarized voting are misplaced. Racially polarized voting did not decrease due to the implementation of RCV. Racial competition at the ballot box persists, and voters continue to use their vote choices to express their racial group identity interests.

This is the same Jason McDaniel who authored this article

Economic Anxiety Didn’t Make People Vote Trump, Racism Did

How do you feel now about his political analysis of voting behaviors?

[blueash]

Originally Posted by mydavid

This is reason enough not to have ranked voting.

ranked choice might have favored the GOP in 2020, but it would have favored the Dem in 2000 where Gore would have defeated Bush and possibly in 2016 where Hillary might have defeated Trump. As I have written before. RCV does not benefit either party, it benefits the will of the people to have a more supported candidate beat a less supported candidate.

[petiteone]

Originally Posted by Joe V.

Your use of second bites at the apple is not founded on principles of a Constitutional Republic. Just another tactic to bring in mob rule.

Or instead, the lesser voted candidates should be able to give their votes to which ever candidate they choose.

[brick010207]

I want to commend all the commenters. This was a well done discourse and ALMOST no snarky comments. This is a great example of disagreeing without being disagreeable and made reading all four pages worth the time. Can't say the same for most of what I see on TOTV.

[Joe V.]

Originally Posted by petiteone

Or instead, the lesser voted candidates should be able to give their votes to which ever candidate they choose.

Nonsense. So one party has 4 people run. The other party has 1 candidate and that 1 candidate gets 44% of the vote who was the opposing party candidate. The other 4 then choose who they want to win over a clear winner. One party rule. Move to a parliamentarian government country if you want.

[sooziesoul]

This is true! I just left Maine a few years ago and my friends who live there really hate rank choice voting!!!

[72lions]

Originally Posted by blueash

That is an excellent example which you seem to believe was a theft of office. The original vote totals:
Bruce Poliquin 46.33% 134,184
Jared Golden 45.58% 132,013
Tiffany Bond 5.71% 16,552
Will Hoar 2.37% 6,875

Final result after re-allocation of Hoar then Bond votes:

Jared Golden 50.6 142,440
Bruce Poliquin 49.4 138,931

This means that Golden was the second choice of over 10,000 of the voters while Poliquin was second choice of about 4000. Had only those two been on the ballot, Golden was the preferred choice and he ended up winning. Seems like a good system to me. Obviously some voters did not list a second [or third] choice.

So what if he was the second choice. Let’s elect the first choice. Why should two candidates receiving 8% control an election. What is the problem with a run off?

Florida, by the way, does not have run offs in the primaries, which I believe is a mistake. DeSantis beat a weak candidate who received less than 50% of the primary vote. There is some evidence that Former Senator and Governor Bob Graham’s daughter would have won the run off and likely beaten DeSantis.