[EL] Instant Run Off/Ranked Choice Voting vs Run Offs

[Jack Santucci]

Graeme's point about RCV *within* versus *among* (or even *without*)
distinct parties is a good one.

It got me thinking about this 1937 retrospective on the use of
majority-preferential systems in 11 states' party primaries (p. 67):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42879396

"The reasons commonly assigned for the abandonment of the preferential plan
have been as follows:

1. All states except Alabama and Oklahoma did not require the voter to
register more than a first choice for any office. It seems to have been
quite common in all the states indicated above that a great many voters
failed to avail themselves of the privilege of registering second or more
choices, which resulted in the practical restoration of the plurality
system in many primary races. This failure was due to several causes:
ignorance of the voter; his desire not to have his vote counted for any but
his first choice; or his refusal to accept what was thought to be a
complicated system, which, it was felt, could be easily corrupted or
readily subject to mistakes in the count, or which seemed to provide for an
unfair method of evaluating choices.

2. Failure of party leaders and officials to educate the public in the use
of the preferential feature, due partly to their opposition to it as a
complicated device and one the results of which could not be easily
anticipated.

3. In Oklahoma, where the preferential system was declared unconsti-
tutional (Dove v. Ogleby, 244 Pacific 198, 1926), the law made it
compulsory on the voter to indicate more than one choice for each office,
and the court held this an unwarranted interference with the voters freedom
of choice. It may be added also that Alabama did not permit 'single shot'
votes to be counted."

Graeme's point also looms large in New York City and Alaska, where some are
counting on transfer flows to generate political moderation.

Jack

On Mon, May 3, 2021 at 1:36 AM Graeme Orr <graeme.orr2008 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rob Ritchie of Fair Choice made the good points below in yesterday's post.
>
> After over a century of experience of IRV ('preferential voting') in
> Australia - nb I've only lived through half! - it seems to me that States
> like Texas here are trying to kill two different birds with one stone.
> Having either IRV or a two round run off mixed with party primaries is
> asking for trouble.     Ranked choice in party democracy is simple and
> fair, as voters by and large can differentiate sensibly (to them) between
> parties.    In Australian single member electorates we have up to 7 parties
> running (on average) yet still maintain a 2-3 party system.
>
> But throw in half a dozen or more intra-party choices, and you skew the
> entire ballot choice.   Especially since the US will never mandate full
> ranking (what Aussies call full preferential voting, which is common in our
> lower houses).    With ranked choice, votes will exhaust even within the
> suite of candidates in their preferred party.  Conversely, with the run off
> system, you have what the French would call the Le Pen effect, and which
> Rob mentions, of perverse splitting of one of the major parties, leading to
> an unrepresentative second round pairing off.
>
> It's exceedingly rare for a party to win a seat Down Under with less than
> a third of the '1' votes.   And it was the conservative side of politics
> that first brought in not just instant runoff/ranked choice, but mandated
> full rankings.  Because that side of politics was then more prone to splits.
>
> In non-partisan races - eg smaller city local government - things
> occasionally go skew-iff.  There, full rankings are not required (given the
> lack of party cues).   The Rockhampton mayoral by-election this year had 17
> candidates.  The frontrunner was on 25%, number 2 on 16%. With a long tail
> of 15 other candidates between around 12% and negligibility. After second
> and later preferences, the frontrunner was elected on 59% of the
> non-exhausted rankings.
>
> Graeme Orr, Professor, Law, University of Queensland, Australia
>
> [Cut and pasted from Rob Ritchie:
> (1) The results are the latest example of the "roll-the-dice" dynamics of a
> single-choice voting system in a crowded field. The top two candidates
> going to the runoff together earned only 33% of the vot
> <
> https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/02/texas-special-election-too-close-to-call-but-gop-on-verge-of-lockout-win-485194
> >e,
> while Democrats were locked out of the runoff even though their candidates
> together won more than that 33% total.
>
> (2) If you run ranked  choice voting to get the contest down to two, you
> could choose to avoid the runoff, but at least would have more certainty in
> having representative candidates advancing.  Notably, our nation's 10th
> largest city -- Austin, Texas -- yesterday voted 58% to move to ranked
> choice voting for city elections as soon as legal questions involving state
> law are addressed. That results means that, since November 2018, RCV has
> won all 11 city ballots measures, by an average of 30 percentage points.
> Coming up in 2021, new uses of RCV include the New York City primaries in
> June, the Virginia GOP statewide nomination contest, and more than a dozen
> mayoral elections in Utah, including the capital city of Salt Lake.
>
> Rob]
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