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Voting Reform: Tricks and Traps

If you live in the US, chances are you probably at some point thought that the government is broken. Politicians lie, lobbyists buy off Congress, no one can agree... But perhaps you heard about people wanting to change the system to make it better. For example, the organization "RepresentUs" posted a video about a strategy to break down corruption here. Almost everything in the video is spot-on, but there is one mistake that could seriously undermine the goals.

That one mistake occurs at 5:48: "Create ranked choice voting so third parties and independents can run and win." Unfortunately, this bold claim does not hold up to scrutiny. They are correct that our current voting rule, where you name one candidate only, is problematic, but ranked choice voting (RCV) suffers from many of the same problems.

For those who have never heard of RCV, the system goes as follows: When you vote, instead of naming one person, you list the candidates in order of preference. For example, you may vote:

1. Alice Ideal
2. Bob Good
3. Carol Meh
4. Dave Otherparty
5. Evil N. Corrupt

(Usually, you are not forced to rank every candidate.) Initially, your vote only counts for Alice. The first-place votes are counted up, and the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Anyone who voted for that candidate gets their vote transferred to their second choice (or the next choice that is still in). So if Alice dropped, your vote goes to Bob. (If Bob had already dropped, your vote goes directly to Carol, and so on.) This continues until one candidate has an absolute majority of the votes.

People also call this system "instant runoff voting" (IRV) because it works like a series of runoff elections, but you only actually vote once (hence "instant"). I will use "IRV" from now on because there are other methods out there that also use ranked ballots.

IRV may seem like a pretty good system. Supporters claim that the use of IRV will:

• Elect a true majority winner (as opposed to in our current system, where in a five-candidate race, Bob may win with 21% of the vote).
• Prevent the "spoiler effect" where a minor party draws votes away from a frontrunner and flips the result.
• Discourage "tactical voting", because voting your true favorite is supposedly always safe because your vote will transfer to your favorite frontrunner.
• Allow third parties and independents to win.

Do not get me wrong. Those are all massive defects with the current system. My point in this article is that IRV also falls into those four traps (although perhaps less often). Think of IRV like a mirage in the desert: it looks like water, and you are certainly thirsty, but when you look closely it is just more sand. Only a true oasis will unlock the full potential of democracy. You can see my other blog post for some legitimate oases.

IRV (RCV) Example

Before we begin: I am using small elections (3-4 candidates) to make it easier to see what is going on. However, the problems of vote-splitting and center squeeze actually get worse with more candidates.

Suppose that a town has been dominated for decades by the Purple Party and the Orange Party. The Oranges generally win the mayor's office 55-45, but occasionally an independent shows up, steals votes from Orange, and Purple wins.

One day, the town decides to switch to Instant Runoff Voting (branded as Ranked Choice Voting, of course). They send out papers showing people how to use the new system, and encourage third parties to run. The Yellow Party runs as a stronger version of the so-called "dull" Orange Party, and the votes come in...

45% vote Purple, 35% vote Orange, 20% vote Yellow.

Yellow is eliminated, but their voters all put Orange second, and Orange wins 55-45. Spoiler averted! So what is the problem?

Well, the Yellow Party is not interested in getting 20% every time. (That would not solve the problem of two-party domination.) They decide to push harder next election, and hopefully try to win.

40% vote Purple. (Their second choices are irrelevant.)
28% vote Orange:
    14% voted Yellow second.
    8% voted Purple second. *
    6% gave no second choice. **
32% vote Yellow:
    All voted Orange second.

*These voters are swing voters who faced a close decision between the main rivals. Yellow was regarded as too extreme.
**These voters did not care too much about politics but liked the Orange Party and simply voted for that party. Both of these two categories of voters will exist in real elections, even though giving a second choice cannot hurt Orange.

OK, so there is a lot more going on here. (IRV is not simple to count once there are more than two competitive candidates.) Orange is eliminated. The second round looks like:

Purple: 48% (40 first-ranks, and 8 from Orange transfers)
Yellow: 46% (32 first-ranks, and 14 from Orange transfers)

...Purple won? Wait a second. I thought IRV was supposed to eliminate spoilers! The truth is, IRV only partially solves the spoiler problem. Specifically, IRV definitely avoids spoilers if either:

1.  The candidates splitting votes are, or are close enough to, "perfect clones": all voters treat them as identical and rank them all adjacent.
   OR
2. One or more candidates who have no hope at all draw votes away from one main candidate, and those no-hope candidates get eliminated first.

However, in this case, there were some moderate Orange voters who may have been deciding between Orange and Purple, but thought Yellow was too extreme and ranked Yellow last. In real elections, "perfect" vote splitting will almost never occur, so IRV can still cause spoilers in a slightly more subtle way than our current system.

Let's look at that election in more detail:

• IRV did not elect a majority winner for two reasons:
• Purple won with 48% of the vote, because some Orange voters neglected to give a second ranking. (These voters probably only care about the Orange Party, and neglected to research the other two candidates. This will happen.
• Orange was preferred over both of the rivals by a majority of the electorate. Orange only lost because of not having enough first-place votes to make it into the final round.
• Yellow was a "spoiler", because Yellow knocked Orange out of the race too early. Yellow was not strong enough to beat Purple, and lost the second round.
• In particular, note that Yellow's votes never transferred to their second choice. Every single Yellow voter specifically wrote that Orange was the second choice. None of those second choices were counted. In the meantime, Orange voters' second choices were counted. (This is unfair, right?)
• Yellow is never going to be able to defeat Purple. After this election, Yellow voters will tactically rank Orange first, for fear of another disaster.
• In this case, the third party was thwarted. Voters will now return to voting for the two major parties, out of fear of another mishap.

Perhaps you feel like Yellow was too extreme to win, and a centrist who draws votes from both parties will fare better. In fact, that is what the Red Party decides. They mount a campaign that is between Purple and Orange. Then Crimson, an independent moderate, decides to run. The first round counts are:

33% vote Purple.
15%-1 vote Red.*
15%+1 vote Crimson.*
37% vote Orange.
*That is, Red lost by two votes, in an election that may have thousands of voters.

Since the first round is so close, it takes days of checking, recounting, and hand-counting again before the near-tie is resolved. (The problem of ties is intensified under IRV because there are more rounds and more candidates. These ties hold up the entire process.) Red is eliminated by two votes. The second round looks like this:

33% Purple
30% Crimson
37% Orange

Crimson does not make the cut. (What happens to those votes is not important; a major party won again.) This is called the "center squeeze" effect. Moderates face vote-splitting from both sides. Crimson was probably the next choice of almost all Purple and Orange voters.

What about real-world experience?

Australia uses IRV for their House of Representatives and has done so for 100 years. The House is almost completely two-party dominated (if you consider the Liberals and Nationals as the same party). In fact, in 2001, 2004, and 2007, third parties won zero seats out of 450 total! (This is despite third parties winning other elected offices.)

Burlington, Vermont used IRV to elect its mayor, but after the 2009 election, voters repealed the system. That election also had a center-squeeze effect where the (comparatively) moderate Democrat won.

Summary

"Ranked Choice Voting" is a false cure. The problems it claims to solve are real and serious, but RCV is not the answer. Real-world experience verifies the trend towards two-party domination.

As I argue in another blog post, Score Voting and STAR Voting are better ways of ending two-party domination and reducing corruption.