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

Fri May 7 08:54:05 PDT 2021

To clarify, nearly all states cited by Jack had a defective form of ranked
choice voting often called "Bucklin voting" after its inventor. Like
approval voting, a voter could not indicate support for a compromise choice
(e.g. a second choice) without that vote counting against the chances of
their first choices. As a result , most voters stopped ranking a second
choice. It's rife for the ability to game the system as well.
Rob

On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 11:42 AM Jack Santucci <jack.santucci at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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