[EL] Explaining Ranked-Choice Voting

[Pildes, Rick]

Having now looked at the City Journal piece that Rob Richie flagged, it strike me as quite significant for political reform that City Journal endorses a top-five election structure with RCV.  Perhaps that’s a sign of some emerging bipartisan support for reform to the structure of primary elections.

Best,
Rick

Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
NYU School of Law
40 Washington Square So.
NYC, NY 10014
347-886-6789

From: Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2021 12:00 PM
To: Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu>
Cc: sean at impactpolicymanagement.com; Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>; Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Explaining Ranked-Choice Voting

RCV advocates generally believe that this approach to an "instant runoff" is helpful for clarifying mandates and outcomes. One good example was an open seats race for to be the mayor of Berkeley n 2016, where the winner had a large "instant runoff" win, but the county stopped the tally whenever he first went over 50% -- and over the course of the slow California tally of votes, he sometimes went over 50% in the 2nd round (just barely) and sometimes in the 3rd round (much more substantially), when in fact all along he consistently had a big win.

 San Francisco now reports the "instant runoff" tally down to two even when a candidate has surpassed 50% of votes in the first round, as in this example from London Breed's landslide mayoral election win in 2019<https://www.sfelections.org/results/20191105/data/20191125/mayor/20191125_mayor_short.pdf>. My colleague Pedro Hernandez and I did a short piece <https://www.fairvote.org/a_better_way_to_report_ranked_choice_voting_elections_in_california_cities> about this in looking at San Francisco Bay Area elections in 2018.

In the spirit of "instant runoffs," New York City results will show first-round wins when a candidate earns over 50% or show the final "head-to-head" instant runoff when the field is reduced to two.

BTW, the Nation magazine has a detailed writeup of the mayoral race<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ranked-choice-voting-nyc/> today from a progressive perspective today and City Journal had a helpful piece<https://www.city-journal.org/nyc-mayoral-race-ranked-choice-voting> from a conservative piece last week.
Rob



On Monday, April 26, 2021, Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu<mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>> wrote:
Varies by jurisdiction --

Best,
Rick

Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
NYU School of Law
40 Washington Square So.<https://www.google.com/maps/search/40+Washington+Square+So.+%0D%0A+NYC,+NY+10014?entry=gmail&source=g>
NYC, NY 10014<https://www.google.com/maps/search/40+Washington+Square+So.+%0D%0A+NYC,+NY+10014?entry=gmail&source=g>
347-886-6789

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>> On Behalf Of sean at impactpolicymanagement.com<mailto:sean at impactpolicymanagement.com>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2021 11:03 AM
To: 'Rick Hasen' <rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>>; 'Election Law Listserv' <law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
Subject: Re: [EL] Explaining Ranked-Choice Voting

I’m curious whether this practice of continuing to conduct the RCV process even after a winner is known is required by statute, or whether it is an administrative decision? Or does it vary by jurisdiction?

Sean


Explaining Ranked-Choice Voting<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D121780&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=jswLkXYUqi67YBou5IpKKg2Iuum_kO3Z8vFBBasZ4og&s=DDaLMuOF9NHbHw3yLXrrv_NtNV-cCTczvyusiDLiQVY&e=>
Posted on April 23, 2021 7:36 am<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D121780&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=jswLkXYUqi67YBou5IpKKg2Iuum_kO3Z8vFBBasZ4og&s=DDaLMuOF9NHbHw3yLXrrv_NtNV-cCTczvyusiDLiQVY&e=> by Richard Pildes<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fauthor-3D7&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=jswLkXYUqi67YBou5IpKKg2Iuum_kO3Z8vFBBasZ4og&s=LTU9oFoBluYbdjK0SVC2DjIRmj80iVgPYiELSEywcog&e=>

The New York Times has a good explainer<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nytimes.com_interactive_2021_nyregion_ranked-2Dchoice-2Dvoting-2Dnyc.html-3Faction-3Dclick-26module-3DTop-2520Stories-26pgtype-3DHomepage&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=jswLkXYUqi67YBou5IpKKg2Iuum_kO3Z8vFBBasZ4og&s=ApNfCXTpGRFJVdrxi2GDqHoSF1JJueJdQbzAJc8-_98&e=>, with good visualization aids, that explains how RCV will work in our June primaries for mayor. I wanted to clarify one point of potential confusion.

The story says:

In New York’s primary, these rounds of elimination will continue until there are two candidates left — even if a candidate collects more than 50 percent of votes before the very end. In each round, when a candidate gets eliminated, his or her votes get redistributed to whoever was ranked next on the ballot.

A reader might think, wait a minute, once someone has gotten more than 50 percent of the votes, haven’t they won? Why is there still further counting to be done?

The answer is yes, once a candidate has more than 50 percent, that candidate has indeed won. Nothing in later rounds of counting could change that outcome. The reason the counting still continues is purely for informational purposes, so that the public can see how the process plays out all the way until there are only two candidates remaining and no more votes to be redistributed.

This is an approach a number of jurisdictions use with RCV, as Michael Parsons and I explain in our article<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__papers.ssrn.com_sol3_papers.cfm-3Fabstract-5Fid-3D3563257&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=jswLkXYUqi67YBou5IpKKg2Iuum_kO3Z8vFBBasZ4og&s=bw1DIVK-Z8r_yYL6mX_LRINbcCHog6FuOyyjGBcjydU&e=> on RCV.
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