[EL] Ballot Exhaustion in Maine RCV Primary

Fri Jun 22 08:18:06 PDT 2018

Thanks for inviting me to respond, Vlad. Just enjoyed being in a forum with
your "ballot exhaustion" coauthor Craig Burnett, by the way, and I welcome
folks on the list joining me at 9 am Monday morning at Third Way in DC
<https://www.thirdway.org/events/ranked-choice-voting-lessons-from-the-states>for
a conversation about RCV in the states with Third Way's Lanae Erickson
Hatalsky and FairVote New Mexico's Maria Perez, who will talk both about
Santa Fe's first use of RCV in March and the unanimous vote of the council
in the state's 2nd largest city Las Cruces to use RCV next year.

As you might suspect, I don't see Vlad's numbers as a problem - indeed,
quite the opposite. A few reasons why:

** Turnout:* More Maine Democrats came out to vote for governor than any
previous gubernatorial primary. That follows a string of mayoral elections
with ranked choice voting where turnout was a good bit higher
<http://www.fairvote.org/the_facts_of_ranked_choice_voting_voters_like_it_high_turnouts_are_trending>
than projected: San Francisco (2nd most mayoral votes ever, this month and
a lot more votes cast  for mayor with RCV than top of the ballot for
governor and US Senator without RCV), Santa Fe, St. Paul and Minneapolis.
We can safely put the "RCV will turn voters off" claim to rest. But that
higher turnout almost certainly does mean some voters are coming out
primarily to back candidates who doesn't reach the final instant runoff. (2
additional notable facts from San Francisco: voters were six times more
likely to invalidate their vote for governor with an overvote than
invalidate their vote for mayor with an overvote, while 95% of backers of
the Asian American candidate Jane Kim who did particular well with API
voters ranked at least one other candidate 2nd.)

** Contrast with runoffs and plurality*:  Of the Maine Democrats who had
their ballot count in the first round (final numbers aren't in, but will be
in 126,000 range), 93% had their ballot count for one of the two finalists
after five candidates were defeated in the RCV tally. That "exhaustion"
compares quite well to the average of federal primary runoffs drawing 62%
of first round voters
<http://www.fairvote.org/federal_primary_runoff_elections_2016>back to the
polls. We did an overall analysis comparing "exhausted votes" with RCV vs.
"exhausted voters" in runoffs
<http://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_outperforms_runoffs_in_upholding_majority_rule>last
winter that will look at better for RCV when we update it this summer. And
of course the fact that of four out of every five backers of defeated
candidates were able to express a preference that counted in the final
round is a lot better than a single-choice plurality system that would have
allowed the winner to take the nomination with 33% of the first round vote.

** Deeper significance of RCV beyond the "binary choice" analysis:* It's
misleading with RCV to determine an RCV winner's mandate only by their
final round "instant runoff" percentage. What that percentage misses is
that the winner has often worked hard to be ranked by backers of the
candidate who finishes second, In San Francisco, for example, voters this
year were still limited to ranking three candidate in the 8-candidate
election for mayor. (That limit will be lifted next year, btw.) The winner
London Breed was ranked 2nd or 3rd by nearly half of the backers of her
finalist opponent Mark Leno and was ranked in the top three by 63% of all
voters. That's not just of theoretical value. Leno easily could have
finished third behind Jane KIm and missed the final instant runoff, so
Breed wanted to connect with his voters. Indeed, she was ranked 2nd or
third by more than a fifth of the backers of all other 7 candidates,
including the most liberal and conservative candidates.

** Getting the runoff candidates right*: Furthermore, RCV is more reliable
than runoffs for ensuring that the final two candidates are representative
of voter opinions The Top 2 primary in California this year ultimately
didn't shut out Democrats from winnable congressional districts this
November, but Democratic forces had to literally spend millions of dollars
to ensure that didn't happen. Without that kind of intervention, that "shut
out" in fact did happen to Republicans in a special state senate election
in Georgia last year in a GOP-leaning district and to Democrats in a
statewide race for state treasurer in 2016. I know some mathematicians can
have their concerns about RCV in this area too, but RCV certainly is more
reliable than runoffs for ending up with the two strongest candidates in
the final round.

Thanks again for the invite, Vlad, and happy to take this offline to not
bore the list.
Rob Richie, FairVote

On Thursday, June 21, 2018, Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu> wrote:

> Regarding this:
>
>
> “Ranked-Choice Voting Fans Hope Maine’s Experiment Pays Off”
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99722>
>
> Posted on June 21, 2018 6:25 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99722> by *Rick
> Hasen* <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> AP:
> <https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/maine/articles/2018-06-21/ranked-choice-fans-hope-maines-experiment-pays-off>
>
> * Maine <https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/maine>‘s first crack at
> ranked-choice voting went off without a hitch, and backers of the voting
> method are hopeful the results will motivate other states to give it a try.*
>
> *The state finished its first ranked-choice process Wednesday when it
> named the winners of Democratic primaries for governor and the 2nd
> Congressional District.*
>
> Does anyone know where to find the actual RCV results in Maine? From what
> has been reported, it looks like there was considerable ballot
> “exhaustion,” at least in the Democratic primary for governor, something
> that seems endemic
> <http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/files/2014/12/ElectoralStudies-2fupfhd.pdf> to
> RCV.
>
>
>
> It looks like the AP stopped updating the election night results, but the
> latest <https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/maine/>
> first-round totals I could find show a total of 120,406 votes cast in the
> Democratic primary when 90.2% percent of precincts were reporting. By
> contrast, the RCV results
> <https://www.pressherald.com/2018/06/12/june-2018-maine-election-results/>
> reported in the press show only 116,431 votes counted after the final round
> of redistribution. That means a minimum of 4,000 ballots were exhausted
> (and probably a lot more, since there is still the 9.8% of precincts not
> included in the most  recent first-round AP count, plus any provisional
> ballots that were counted subsequently).
>
>
>
> It probably wouldn’t have mattered in this race, but we can’t say the same
> thing about the nail-biter San Francisco mayoral race, where London Breed
> won by only 0.6% and the rate of exhausted ballots was over 8%.
> <https://sfelections.org/results/20180605/data/20180621/mayor/20180621_mayor.html>
> As in the races we examined in our paper, her final count was less than a
> majority of valid first-round votes cast.
>
>
>
> (To be clear, I’m not arguing that RCV is worse than the alternatives. I
> know Rob Ritchie will jump in with a spirited defense!)
>
>
>
> Vlad
>
>
>
> [image: The Ohio State University]
> *Vladimir Kogan*, Associate Professor
> *Department of Political Science*
>
> 2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
> 510/415-4074 Mobile
>
> 614/292-9498 Office
>
> 614/292-1146 Fax
>
> http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
> kogan.18 at osu.edu
>
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