[EL] Maine Legislation Clarifies Ranked Choice Voting Rules for President

[sean at impactpolicymanagement.com]

I thought members of the list might be interested in a recent blog post I
wrote concerning Maine's ranked choice voting system (RCV) and legislation
that hopes to "harmonize" it with the National Popular Vote interstate
compact (NPV). It was referenced in a post on the FairVote site earlier this
month, Maine Legislation Clarifies Ranked Choice Voting Rules for President
<https://www.fairvote.org/maine_legislation_clarifies_ranked_choice_voting_r
ules_for_president> . As a few (or perhaps many/most) here understand,
there's a pretty significant conflict between RCV and NPV - the short
version is that NPV assumes plurality voting and a single total for every
presidential candidate from every state, while RCV will produce at least two
vote totals when used -the initial tally and the final tally. As I explain
in my blog post, this creates 3 major problems:


1.	States using RCV can decide to report either initial or final
(RCV-adjusted) vote totals, and candidates could gain or lose hundreds of
thousands of votes depending on which vote total is reported.
2.	States using RCV can decide to report both numbers, leaving it to
NPV compact member state officials to decide which vote totals to use.
3.	If a major party candidate finishes in third place in any state
using RCV, hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes could be
completely erased from that candidate's national vote count.


The FairVote piece suggests that recently passed legislation in Maine
addresses the RCV/NPV conflict (among several other election-related
topics), my own blog post (NPV Still Has An RCV Problem
<https://saveourstates.com/blog/npv-still-has-an-rcv-problem> ) explains
that the problems remain. 


An excerpt:


While the legislation would seem to address the first two problems, it does
not really fix either of them and may make the third problem worse.

1.      The law directs Maine's governor to report post-RCV numbers on the
Certificate of Ascertainment, but that is not the only document that
official vote totals can be obtained from for NPV's use. As compact
advocates have pointed out repeatedly when I have documented problems with
these certificates, states typically produce a separate certified statewide
canvas of votes or similar document. Would that document, which can also be
used under NPV to obtain vote totals, include both the initial and final
vote counts? The answer is likely yes - the official results on the Maine
Secretary of State
<https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/results/results20.html#julytab> 's
office for the 2020 Republican primary in the 2ndCongressional District
include both initial and final numbers, and there's no reason to believe the
state wouldn't or couldn't as part of its statewide canvas for a
presidential election include that same information. There's no requirement
that officials in NPV member states use Maine's Certificate of Ascertainment
as its source for vote totals, particularly if there's a statewide canvas
available as well. Both the initial and final vote counts are likely to
remain available on official election results available for use by NPV
states.

2.      Even if the Maine legislation resolved the issue of which set of
vote totals should be reported, it only addresses Maine - other states that
use RCV (Alaska will use it in 2024, and other states may adopt it as well)
would pose the same problem for NPV. It seems unlikely that states hostile
to NPV would agree to adopt legislation aimed at helping other states
operate the compact - in fact, several states have considered legislation
explicitly designed to thwart the compact
<https://saveourstates.com/blog/states-consider-preemptive-measures-against-
national-popular-vote> .

3.      The Maine legislation literally locks in the third problem,
guaranteeing that a major party candidate who comes in third behind an
independent or third-party candidate will have hundreds of thousands or even
millions of votes completely erased from their national vote total. This is
not farfetched: Maine is one of two states (Utah is the other) where a
major-party presidential candidate finished behind Ross Perot in 1992 (Perot
narrowly beat George H.W. Bush in Maine and Bill Clinton in Utah). In that
election, almost 400,000 votes would have been erased from national totals
if RCV had been in effect in those two states. The Maine law doesn't just
lock in this problem, it makes it more likely to occur because of how the
state runs its RCV process. As the FairVote post explains, "When there is no
first-round winner, Maine will run its final statewide tally down to two
presidential candidates and put those final-round vote totals on the
certificate of ascertainment." This means that even if one candidate
receives a majority of votes before the third-place major party candidate is
eliminated, the process will continue until that third-place candidate has
every vote erased.


Comments, critiques, and questions welcome.


Best,


Sean Parnell

Sr. Legislative Director

Save Our States

 <http://www.saveourstates.com> www.saveourstates.com

 <mailto:sean at saveourstates.com> sean at saveourstates.com

571-289-1374

 


p.s. The blog post was written (but not posted) before the recent Harvard
symposium at which a lengthy paper authored by Rob Richie and others offers
additional fixes to this issue, primarily Congressional legislation as well
as an interstate compact between states using RCV. I'll be writing those up
at a later date, and assuming Gozer the Gozerian hasn't done his thing by
then (this is Sixth August of 2016 after all, so clearly everything's on the
table), I'll share those with the list as well. Short version of what I'll
be writing: Nice try, but no.


 


 

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