[EL] "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"

Sat Feb 27 13:59:57 PST 2021

Mark, the Coombs rule (with the modification I suggested for unranked candidates) doesn’t give voters any more power to eliminate candidates, it just means that a voter’s unexpressed preference between unranked candidates is not reflected in the election’s result.

Here’s an example. Assume four candidates, A, B, C, and D. After the first round of voting, C and D have the most fourth-place votes, with 1000 and 1001 respectively.

There is a voter, call him Adam for his adamance, who ranked only candidate A. Adam’s failure to express a preference over B, C, and D would be treated as a last-place vote for each. This increments their respective tallies of 4th place votes by one, such that C is now treated as receiving 1001 4th place votes, and D as receiving 1002. The relative position of C and D is unchanged, so D gets eliminated in the first round. Perhaps Adam had a preference for D over C, but he didn’t express it, so it’s not reflected in the election outcome. His failure to record his preference mades his vote less impactful, that’s all.

The strongest argument against the Coombs Rule is probably its vulnerability to strategic voting<https://www.accuratedemocracy.com/l_data.htm>. In my original example, if the AOC and the Trump voters coordinate to rank the moderate candidates last, then the moderate candidates would be eliminated first and the race would come down to the two extreme candidates. But that kind of coordination seems rather unlikely in a world of strong affective partisanship.

CE

From: Mark Scarberry <mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu>
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 1:00 PM
To: Samuel S. Wang <sswang at princeton.edu>
Cc: Christopher S. Elmendorf <cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu>, Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu>, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>, Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"
I'm certainly no expert on this, but treating the three unranked candidates on the single vote ballot as coming in fourth on that ballot would seem to give that voter three times the power to eliminate other candidates -- the voter will have been allowed to cast three 4th place votes.

Mark

[Pepperdine wordmark]
Caruso School of Law

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu<mailto:mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu>
Personal: mark.scarberry at gmail.com<mailto:mark.scarberry at gmail.com>

On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 12:15 PM Samuel S. Wang <sswang at princeton.edu<mailto:sswang at princeton.edu>> wrote:
Dear Chris (cc:all),

That sounds reasonable, though one might want to tinker with the statutory wording and do some simulations to make sure the Coombs-rule concept played out as desired.

Warmly,

Sam

________________________________
From: Christopher S. Elmendorf <cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu<mailto:cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu>>
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 3:04 PM
To: Samuel S. Wang <sswang at princeton.edu<mailto:sswang at princeton.edu>>; Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu<mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>>; 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: "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"

Sam, couldn’t this problem be fixed by treating the second ballot as having a “tied vote” for 4th place? Candidates Golden, Hoar, and Bond, who were not ranked, would all be counted as if they’d been ranked forth. The candidate with the most 4th place votes would be eliminated in the first round, and then the ballots cast for that candidate would be reallocated.

--C.

From: Samuel S. Wang <sswang at princeton.edu<mailto:sswang at princeton.edu>>
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 11:56 AM
To: Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu<mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>>, Christopher S. Elmendorf <cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu<mailto:cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu>>, 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: "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"

The Coombs rule is conceptually attractive in a world of perfectly compliant voters. But there's an issue. it treats ballot truncation in a nonintuitive manner. As written in Grofman and Feld (2004), it treats ballots in which only one candidate is ranked as being last-choice ballots.

For example, this ballot

1. Poliquin

2. Golden

3. Hoar

4. Bond

would eliminate Bond first, whereas this ballot

1. Poliquin

2/3/4 left blank

would eliminate Poliquin.

Recall that Poliquin instructed his supporters to make only one choice, as a means of protesting the new voting rule. I guess he would not have done that if the Coombs rule had applied...but do you really want a rule to penalize a candidate whose supporters won't slog all the way down the ballot?

More on what happened in Maine:

https://election.princeton.edu/2020/08/13/ranked-choice-voting-on-the-docket-in-maine/

https://election.princeton.edu/2020/08/14/ranked-choice-voting-wins-in-court-in-maine/

Best,

Sam

>>>

Prof. Samuel S.-H. Wang

Neuroscience Institute, Washington Road

Princeton University

Princeton, NJ 08544

Office: (609) 258-0388

Virtual office: http://princeton.zoom.us/my/samwang

Neuroscience: synapse.princeton.edu<http://synapse.princeton.edu>

Redistricting: gerrymander.princeton.edu<http://gerrymander.princeton.edu>

Election analytics: election.princeton.edu<http://election.princeton.edu>

________________________________

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>> on behalf of Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu<mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>>
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 2:02 PM
To: Christopher S. Elmendorf <cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu<mailto:cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu>>; 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] "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"

I’m glad Chris is raising these questions (and that visualization is great, I will use it in class).  These are good questions and I’m interested in hearing from others about them.

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: Christopher S. Elmendorf [mailto:cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu<mailto:cselmendorf at ucdavis.edu>]
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 1:20 PM
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>>; Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu<mailto:rick.pildes at nyu.edu>>
Subject: "How to Keep Extremists Out of Power"

Apropos Rick P’s excellent op-ed, I’d like to see more public debate about the decision rule for retallying votes under RCV systems. To the best of my knowledge, every U.S. RCV system drops the candidate with the fewest first place votes (or first place + reallocated votes) after each round. But as Bernie Grofman showed<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.polisci.upenn.edu_ppec_sawyer_Speakers_Speakers-27-2520Publications_Feld-2DAlternative-2520vote-2520Coombs-2520rule.pdf&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=gzwkqcfuqUsoxvOV9NvO6--MK1Q0HVEAUD2SpkD4Oiw&e=> some years ago, the “Coombs Rule,” under which the candidate with the most last place votes (or non-rankings) is dropped after each round, does a much better job finding the Condorcet winner.

In a statewide top-4 race between a Trump-style candidate, an AOC-style candidate, and a couple of moderates, it seems quite likely that the moderate candidates would be eliminated early under the usual RCV rule. Here’s a nice visualization<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__imgur.com_gallery_SLTHgCO&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=jpuP7ZliZ-_WEIWfYrpe3on9eM00uUyUtoB71GNLZvY&e=>.

(There’s also a serious question about whether voters can even discern candidate ideology<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__onlinelibrary.wiley.com_doi_full_10.1111_lsq.12113-3Fcasa-5Ftoken-3DMhEWDh14tvYAAAAA-253Aj6WZ74-2D9tXhP1olp4-5Fhm6BNZdUMFX70-2D37zBTYJnucp8QmuLfTxu8RnpokqzWB-2DOp4Yz-5Fry2DSfZk4I&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=53eivofqCwWmlCVtMimZFsnoyWGU5NieXDPjEypSSs4&e=> in typical legislative races…)

--Chris

------

Christopher S. Elmendorf

Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law

UC Davis School of Law

“How to Keep Extremists Out of Power”<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D120978&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=aIp0iizqCZK6H4Drttf3HmytXEDYanCp8O1sQMi2Rls&e=>

Posted on February 25, 2021 9:59 am<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D120978&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=aIp0iizqCZK6H4Drttf3HmytXEDYanCp8O1sQMi2Rls&e=> by Richard Pildes<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fauthor-3D7&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=N-W8zEtfyYkfWvFg_bhM4uQmC2VFNj2zTWahgZ6vnog&e=>

That’s the title the NYT gave my latest piece<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nytimes.com_2021_02_25_opinion_elections-2Dpolitics-2Dextremists.html&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=Myy2jvfbosqBkLUswBfVOCdihK3XTnqbSeEBkjvqpn4&e=>. I’ll include an excerpt here, though it’s a bit hard to excerpt this one because I raise reform proposals in four different areas:

American democracy faces alarming risks from extremist forces that have rapidly gained ground in our politics. The most urgent focus of political reform must be to marginalize, to the extent possible, these destabilizing forces.

Every reform proposal must be judged through this lens: Is it likely to fuel or to weaken the power of extremist politics and candidates?

In healthy democracies, they are rewarded for appealing to the broadest forces in politics, not the narrowest. This is precisely why American elections take place in a “first past the post” system rather than the proportional representation system many other democracies use.

What structural changes would reward politicians whose appeal is broadest? We should start with a focus on four areas.

Reform the presidential nomination process

Until the 1970s, presidential nominees were selected through a convention-based system, which means that a candidate had to obtain a broad consensus among the various interests and factions in the party. “Brokered conventions” — which required several rounds of balloting to choose a nominee — offered a vivid demonstration of how the sausage of consensus was made. In 1952, for example, the Republican Party convention selected the more moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower over Robert A. Taft, the popular leader of the more extreme wing of the party, who opposed the creation of NATO. …

How can we restore some of the party-wide consensus the convention system required? The parties can use ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This rewards candidates with broad appeal to a party’s voters, even if they have fewer passionate supporters. … Ranked-choice voting reduces the prospects of factional party candidates. Presidents with a broad base of support can institute major reforms, as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan demonstrated.

Reform the party primaries

Many incumbents take more extreme positions than they might otherwise endorse because they worry about a primary challenge.

One way to help defang that threat is to eliminate “sore-loser” laws. These laws, which exist in some form in 47 states<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__reformelectionsnow.org_wp-2Dcontent_uploads_2020_03_REN-2DWhite-2DPaper-2DSore-2DLoser-2DLaws-2DFINALlk3202020-2D1.pdf&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=YbyNtUDzrG4bzRBgYCmMYhMycolXqv3czsLlX2m3fkM&e=>, bar candidates who have lost in a party primary from running in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate. Thus, if a more moderate candidate loses in a primary to a more extreme one, that person is shut out from the general election — even if he or she would likely beat the (sometimes extreme) winners of the party primaries. One study<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__citeseerx.ist.psu.edu_viewdoc_summary-3Fdoi-3D10.1.1.384.2884&d=DwMF-g&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v3oz9bpMizgP1T8KwLv3YT-_iypxaOkdtbkRAclgHRk&m=OUDXV_PXxCjObt0s6JFe9Ua2eL0-OdErgNbhw3XjigM&s=CQtwpCLtFp-Vtzqnxo0EV2iL5F-rpu7QHlyhXoagF74&e=> finds that sore-loser laws favor more ideological candidates: Democratic candidates in states with the law are nearly six points more liberal and Republicans nearly nine-to-10 points more conservative than in states without these laws. …

Reform gerrymandering

Many reformers agree on the need to take redistricting out of the hands of partisan state legislatures and give it to a commission. In several recent state ballot initiatives, voters have endorsed this change. But that still raises a question: What constitutes a fair map?

Redistricting reform should have as a goal the creation of competitive election districts. Competitive districts pressure candidates from both the left and the right, which creates incentives to appeal to the political center. They also encourage more moderate candidates to run in the first place, because they know they have a greater prospect of winning than in a district whose seat is safe for the other party.

[I’ve left out suggestions for the right direction for campaign finance reform]

Jan. 6 provided a painful demonstration of the dangerous currents gathering in American political culture. Every proposed election reform must now be measured against this reality to make sure political reform furthers American democracy.

I’m aware of ongoing debates about these issues, which there was no space to address in the NYT. My goal was to frame the general question and encourage debate and discussion about these specific proposals, along with additional ones that should be part of the conversation. I’ll respond in later posts or elsewhere to what I expect will be some pushback on some of these ideas.

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--

Rick Hasen

Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science

UC Irvine School of Law

401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000

Irvine, CA 92697-8000

949.824.3072 - office

rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>

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