- Ranked choice voting is a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win.
- It obscures true debates and issue-driven dialogs among candidates and eliminates genuine binary choices between two top-tier candidates.
- It also disenfranchises voters, because ballots that do not include the two ultimate finalists are cast aside to manufacture a faux majority for the winner.
||| FROM THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ||| POSTED AT REQUEST OF ORCASONIAN READER
You will not believe what “reformers” have devised to tinker with and manipulate our elections. It is called ranked choice voting (or “instant runoff voting”)—but it is really a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections. Some jurisdictions in the U.S. have already replaced traditional elections with the ranked choice scheme.
However, ranked choice voting only applies to federal elections, not state elections, because the Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that the law conflicts with the state’s constitution. Opinion of the Justices, 162 A.3d 188, at 209–211 (Me. 2017). Some municipalities in states like California, Minnesota, and Washington State also use ranked choice voting.
Here is how it works. In 2008, instead of choosing to cast your ballot for John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, or Cynthia McKinney, all of whom were running for president, you would vote for all of them and rank your choice. In other words, you would list all five candidates on your ballot from one to five, with one being your first choice for president and five being your last choice.
If none of the candidates were chosen as the number one pick by a majority of voters in Round One, then the presidential candidate with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated from the ballot. People who selected that candidate as their top pick—let us say it was McKinney—would automatically have their votes changed to their second choice. Then the scores would be recalculated, over and over again, until one of the candidates finally won a majority as the second, third, or even fourth choice of voters.
In the end, a voter’s ballot might wind up being cast for the candidate he ranked far below his first choice—a candidate to whom he may have strong political objections and for whom he would not vote in a traditional voting system.
Rigging the System
We do not often agree with former California Governor Jerry Brown Jr. (D), but he was right in 2016 when he vetoed a bill to expand ranked choice voting in his state, saying it was “overly complicated and confusing” and “deprives voters of genuinely informed choice.”
Such a system would present many opportunities to rig the electoral system.
Think about what ranked choice voting destroys. It destroys your clear and knowing choices as a political consumer. Let us call it the supermarket contemplation. In reality, you are choosing one elected official to represent you, just like you might choose one type of steak sauce to buy when you are splurging for steaks. At the supermarket you ponder whether to buy A1, Heinz 57, HP, or the really cheap generic brand you have never tried.
In the real world, you compare price, taste, mood, and maybe even the size of the bottle and then decide on your steak sauce. You know nothing about the generic brand, so you rank it last among your choices, while A1 is ranked a distant third. In your mind, it comes down to Heinz or HP, and you choose the Heinz. You buy that bottle and head home to the grill.
Now imagine if, instead, you had to rank-order all the steak sauces—even the ones you dislike—and at checkout the cashier swaps out your bottle of Heinz 57 with the cheap generic you ranked dead last. Why? Well, the majority of shoppers also down-voted it, but there was no clear front-runner, so the generic snuck up from behind with enough down ballot picks to win. In fact, in this ranked choice supermarket, you might even have helped the lousy generic brand win.
Ballot Exhaustion
How could this happen? Because of a phenomenon known as ballot exhaustion. A study published in 2015 that reviewed 600,000 votes cast using ranked choice voting in four local elections in Washington State and California found that “the winner in all four elections receive[d] less than a majority of the total votes cast.”
This is sheer rubbish — just what I’d expect from the Heritage Foundation. Ranked-choice voting gives appropriate support to moderate candidates able to address concerns from both sides of the aisle, the kind of candidates the Foundation abhors.
The Heritage Foundation is a “conservative think tank” (according to Wikipedia), and so has a political position; its comments must be taken with a grain of salt. But even for th HF, this screed is a bit over the top. Really!!!
Knowing what we do about the Heritage Foundation’s political agenda, this dyspeptic diatribe gives us even more reason to vote in favor of ranked choice voting.
As a lifelong Democrat I find myself asking people to consider the issue, not simply attack the speaker. Our country is polarized by those relying on extremism for support, and this isn’t the province of only one party. Irrational response is not argument.
While statistically ranked choice voting tends to result in the election of moderates, it is also capable of delivering flukes. When this happens, confidence in voting is impaired. Under current circumstances, this is the last thing we should risk: encouragement of The Lie.
Does anyone happen to know of any good explanatory articles for ranked-choice voting that don’t take a negative stance on the issue? It might be worth requesting the Orcasonian post one of those, if they haven’t already, to provide a counterpoint.
Anything that the far-right Heritage Foundation suggests is bad for the public must scare them, therefore said action may indeed be good for the public.
For those who are unfamiliar with Heritage here are a few quotes from their Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
“Voter fraud claims
The Heritage Foundation has promoted false claims of voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky who heads the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation has played an influential role in making alarmism about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.[75][76]”
And they took CIA money through a South Korean cut-out:
“In 1980, The Heritage Foundation reportedly received a $2.2 million donation from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, then known as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.[90]”
And of course they chose to scapegoat former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a clear outlier in the political field:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_McKinney
“After her 2002 loss, McKinney became a vocal supporter of conspiracy theories about the September 11 terrorist attacks. McKinney was re-elected to the House in November 2004, following her successor’s run for Senate. In Congress, she unsuccessfully tried to unseal FBI records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Tupac Shakur. She continued to criticize the Bush administration over the 9/11 attacks. She supported anti-war legislation and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”
This is a hit piece against left/populism as much as anything else.
It seems to me that ranked-choice voting may make it more difficult for a powerful institution like Heritage to buy and install political candidates.
What we’re seeing here is the resistance of the entrenched, old-school, two-party, two-candidate system to a fresher, more open and more democratic idea. How many times have you voted for the “least bad” candidate or wanted to vote NOTA (None of the Above)? I propose that we re-name ranked-choice voting as free-choice or real-choice.
Seems like everyone is attacking who wrote the article but not anything in it. I for one want to vote for who I choose, and only that one person. Anything else just smells fishy.
To address John Davidson’s point – using RCV you do not HAVE to vote for a 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice if you choose not to. Just vote for your first choice and walk away. It’s that simple.
Ken Wood- so why fix what ain’t broke?
Will the write=in option go away? Can I write in my first choice as a second choice too?
Just wondering how open and democratic the new shiny object will be.
An internet search for pros and cons of RCV yields some interesting information.