Ranked Preference Voting Choice- And Why Two Ranked Votes Are Enough In IRV National Election Contests
ranked-choice voting is more important and more doable than Electoral College reform
I think most of us are agreed that we aren’t well-served by American electoral democracy these days.
Both major parties have gotten complacent. And the idealistic potential of democracy has been reduced to both parties embracing the mission to convince pluralities of Americans in a handful of states that their party candidate is slightly better than the opponent. A hairs-breadth better is sufficient. So neither major party candidate really feels under any obligation to actually be objectively good, or competent; they merely have to persuade voters that they’re less incompetent than the opponent. With all the talent in this country, the two major parties settle for that. Because both parties have self-interested priorities—the bureaucracy of each party is its own Big Business.
Ranked choice voting is the reform that’s able to supply the outside pressure on the two major parties to stop complacently wallowing in their entrenched advantage: shape up, or be replaced. The ranked-choice vote movement should consider the benefits of a 1st and 2nd choice--only--in contests for national office. It's 99% of the benefit with 1/10 the complications of adding more choices.
A two-choice system accomplishes the most with the least side effects. In a Presidential race, the logic of politics indicates that voters would tend to pick 1)the candidate that the voter thinks would make the best president; 2) the candidate offered by one of the two entrenched parties. That way you get a plebiscite at the polls, where a strong outside challenge has an opportunity to get stronger by the next election.
If someone only wants to make one choice, that’s fine. It doesn’t upset the tabulation.
Simpler is better. The power for each voter to have the option to rank a first and scond choice choice is infinitely better than being resigned to voting for the least worst choice of two options. It puts paid to the mistaken assumption that votes cast under the present system for a victorious candidate actually indicate approval, when many times ballots are cast on the basis of a calculation of which candidate is probably less unsatisfactory. Allowing that option for each voter to express their opinion of who would be the best President is crucial. The fact that it's unlikely to lead to an instantaneous victory by an outsider maverick candidate is not evidence that it's an ineffective reform. It's an institutional upgrade, not a magic wand answer.
There are ranked-choice ballots for municipal offices that allow for more than two choices- but cities are usually a very a different situation, because the ranked votes elect perhaps three or four candidates at once, out of a field of a dozen. I don't see why that can't work well, potentially. But it inherently introduces extra levels of uncertainty and the potential for tabulations to shift in ways that aren’t intutive. That’s the situation that Marc Fisher was critiquing in his recent Washington Post column on the upcoming use of ranked-choice voting in Washington DC city elections. The Post headline, and Fisher’s objections, made his article seem as if it offers a critique of all ranked-choice voting methods. But it doesn’t- because Fisher doesn’t consider the practical advantages of a ranked choice that’s limited to a first and second preference, especially for election to the House, Senate, and Presidency.
For any elected office where only one candidate is a winner, two ranked choices is best.
The two-ranked system reinforces the unique strengths of the US Constitution. The ideal election result in a tripartite government with an elected chief executive is majoritarian. In a Presidential election, ranked-choice voting provides for a majoritarian result in each state. Due to the electoral college, it's still conceivable to have a minority popular vote total nationwide, but it's much less likely than under the current system- where 3 of the last 5 first-term presidents were elected with a minority of popular votes, and one President (Trump, 2024) was elected to a second term without a majority popular vote.
Ranked-choice voting--which guarantees a majoritarian end result--appears better suited for a Presidential system than a parliamentary system where executives are picked by the elected representatives of parliamentary legislatures, and hence reliant on coalition politics inside the institution rather than direct ballot choice. I think this is an important point. People governed under a parliamentary system probably don’t understand the implications, the way American voters are able to understand them. American voters may not grasp the implications either- at first notice. But thoughtful Americans should be able to grasp the potential significance with a few minutes thought. There isn’t anything especially obscure about the advantage.
Allowing the option strengthens the power of the individual voter. It removes the burden on people inclined to vote for an “outside party” candidate to be coerced into shifting their vote toward a major party candidate, or else face the possibility that their refusal to vote major-party will negatively impact the election outcome in the “realistic” sense: by working against the candidate of the two major parties that they would pick if they weren’t “throwing their vote away” to make a symbolic choice that will be forgotten within a week after the ballots are tallied.
As a result, for that growing number of us who hold Independent allegiance, the system keeps on presenting us with an actual two-valued choice that leads to a false two-valued choice. Especially in Presidential elections.
The authentic two valued choice is: to Vote or not to Vote. The false two-valued choice: for those who have chosen to Vote, that single-choice vote must pick either the Republican Party candidate or the Democratic Party candidate, or else be consigned to the wastebasket of irrelevance.
The Illusion Of The Power Of The Status Quo Single-Preference Vote
The notion that the current system allows the opportunity for any political movement and candidacy from outside of the entrenched Dem or GOP party structures to mount a challenge strong enough to topple either one of them is pretty much of a cloud-castle fantasy. As long as there’s only one lever to be pulled, the only thing a third party choice can do is prevent a majoritarian total, potentially shifting the result to the benefit of the major party candidate that the voter least wants to help get elected to office. The classic example is the 2000 election, where it’s generally agreed that the decision of a handful of voters to cast ballots for outsider party candidates—who overall received less than 2% of the vote total nationwide—arguably decided an election by a razor-thin margin in a “battleground state”, i.e., one holding the crucial margin of electoral votes required to get a Presidential candidate past 270.1
If the Third Party Vote Spoiler Trap hasn’t convinced readers that the status quo voting method is irredeemably flawed, consider that while theoretically it’s possible for a candidate to run as an outsider insurgent and beat both major party candidates, the victory result would be almost certain to show up as plurality support, not majority support. Under the current system, the deck is stacked in three different ways to make it practically impossible for a no-party/minor party US Presidential candidate to run an Outsider Insurgent campaign and win an election with more than 50% of the votes. In the era since American politics began revolving around the two-party rivalry between the Republicans and Democrats, only two outsider candidates have ever broken into double-digit voter support in the final November showdown: Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, who achieved a 2nd place finish with 27.4% of the vote, and Ross Perot, finishing 3rd with 18.9%.
Personally, I’d view the whirlwind rise of any dark-horse outsider Presidential candidate poised to win more than 50% of the popular vote in the current system very warily—as proof of end-stage voter despair with the duopoly parties, combined with the novelty of a well-funded and media-adept charismatic personalist candidate. Most likely one with a demagogic platform that promises to “fix everything.”. I wouldn’t trust that result. Shifts that dramatic are evidence of a systemic failure.
A three-way Presidential race could—in theory—be won by a strong outsider candidate with less than 34% of the vote- but for reasons that should be obvious, that amounts to a Pyhrric victory. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson won a 4-way race with only 41.8% of the votes. In 1992, Bill Clinton won a 3-way race with only 43% of the votes. Both Presidents had a strong base of Congressional support. An outsider walking into the White House with no base of Congressional support and less than 50% of the votes might as well be walking into quicksand.
The Long-Run Power Of Ranked-Choice Votes
No nation that I know of that directly elects its chief executive uses ranked-choice voting, so it’s only possible to make conjectures and hypothetical scenarios to gauge the results. Here’s my prediction of how the reform would most likely play out over time:
1 Independent voters- including those formerly disinclined to vote at all- would use their first choice to pick the candidate who they thought would make the best President as someone other than a Democratic Party of Republican nominee.
It’s extremely unlikely that any outsider candidate would win. But their base of popular appeal would be on the record. The strength of that showing would encourage other voters to become acquainted with them and their ideas.
2 A strong outside challenge would serve notice to the entrenched parties to retrench, as it were- to rearrange priorities, to change positions on issues, to ensure that their party nominees have what it takes to contend with an Independent challenger. Not just a challenger from the other side of the Duopoly. This reaction would result in nominations more sensitive to the actual concerns of voters.
3 In order to mount a strong outside challenge, any Independent/Outsider political movement or candidate would be required to adopt a seasoned, evidence-based, mature stance on issues, rather than merely defaulting to some rote adherence to ideological boilerplate. For example, both the Greens and the Libertarians would be required to review their campaign platforms in order to get rid of anything silly (presently, there’s quite a lot of it, in both parties.) Ranked-choice voting means that election politics for “minor parties” no longer has to be relegated to “protest vote” performative exercises and symbolic ideological gestures—intramural theater that accepts its own futility of result as a given. Ranked-choice voting means that anyone with a respectable 1st Choice Vote total has the ability to parlay that popular appeal. As long as they’re willing to review whatever it is that might be a deal-breaker that gets in the way of increasing their voter support, and either figure out how to defend their positions as an educational effort, or change their own policy positions in some ways. An independent candidacy in a democracy is like that: it has to listen to the people. And then communicate the most important stuff clearly.
4 The result is still, at heart, a two-party system! The principal change is the hugely increased latitude for Dynamism. Currently, the two major parties are stagnant, because the only rival is the other party. That known quantity, with its predictable array of priorities and issue stances. There’s also a massive overlap of shared similarities; when the only rival is the other party, those don’t even need to be discussed. That’s where the empowerment of Independents by ranked-choice voting comes in. An Independent movement has the potential to exert pressure- voter leverage- over one or both of the established parties. If the parties stay set in their ways, they now find themselves vulnerable to being supplanted; the Libertarians become the new Republicans, say. Or, the Republican establishment can change their ways to take the Libertarians seriously, fending off their challenge by adopting more of their priorities and policy proposals. Much the same situation could apply to a Social Democratic challenge to the Establishment Democrats.
What ranked-choice voting leaves in place is the traditional political purview that casts Presidential elections- and major-party politics at the national level, and the national scene- as a rivalry between two parties—Relatively More Liberal vs. Relatively More Conservative—resolving to a majoritarian result where one side or the other prevails. The difference is that the contest isn’t required to be settled on the basis of marginal differences that cloak the reality that both parties share the same position on the most important issues, and that the status quo enables the established parties to remain impenetrable to the prospect of either one changing those shared priorities and positions, even in the face of massive popular discontent.
With a two-choice ranked preference voting system, notice can be served to both established parties: more responsive independent contenders have arrived on the scene. The more approval the challenger candidates obtain—particularly as a First Choice--the less complacent the two establishment parties can afford to be. Make no mistake: presently, both parties are complacent practically to the point of narcosis. Complacent to the point where a huge number of American citizens are finding themselves bereft of alternatives at the ballot box, to the point where the view that “democracy doesn’t work” is getting a lot more traction in public discourse than it deserves.
Both major parties have gotten soft. And the idealistic potential of democracy has been reduced to both parties embracing the mission to convince pluralities of Americans in a handful of states that their party candidate is slightly better than the opponent. A hairs-breadth better is sufficient. So neither major party candidate really feels under any obligation to actually be objectively good, or competent; they merely have to persuade voters that they’re less incompetent than the opponent. With all the talent in this country, the two major parties settle for that. Because both parties have self-interested priorities—the bureaucracy of each party is its own Big Business.
Ranked-choice voting provides the means to dismantle that corrupt, corroded stasis, and return American electoral politics to its proper role, as a system that responds to the priorities and concerns of American voters. But it’s entirely sufficient that the choice consist of (1 the person that the voter views as the best Presidential candidate; and (with the understanding that a second choice is optional) 2) the hedge bet. One of the two candidates vetted and backed by the two major parties, as their nominee.
Right now, all we’re allowed is that second choice.
The Electoral College is a separate issue. Ranked choice voting is a more crucially important reform. Ranked-choice is also a relative snap to enact, albeit state by state.The fact that voting in national elections is regulated separately by each US State is mystifying. But that’s a minimal obstacle compared to the massive challenges of adding a Constitutional amendment, which is what’s required in order to abolish the Electoral College. It’s someone else’s project, if they want it.