...and I promise that will be the last alliteration in this post.
Thinking I would be putting the issue of instant runoff voting (or "IRV") aside for a few entries, a strange string of coincidences occurred. If you've been following, you already know that upon FifteenNineteen's endorsement of IRV, I received a detailed critique of that system from Dr. Warren Smith from the Center for Range Voting. I offered him a blog entry here all his own, and he took me up on it, and that entry is here.
A day or so later, I got an e-mail from Rob Richie, who is the head of FairVote, an organization that advocates IRV. Turns out he's been to see shows at the Blackfriars Playhouse (where I'm working now) several times, has seen all but one of this season's shows, and he had written to say that he'd seen my blog's material on IRV, and that he'd be seeing our next performance of Macbeth that weekend. In our correspondences, Mr. Richie agreed to counter the entry by Dr. Smith, and what follows is his own entry concerning IRV and Dr. Smith's critique thereof.
The blog's all yours, Rob!
Congratulations on your blog entries supporting instant runoff voting (IRV). IRV is a terrific idea, one that’s working well and proving to be very popular with voters in ballot measures and in elections where they use it. I should stress that IRV is not the be-all, end-all of reform –- and indeed am skeptical about anyone who suggests their reform has such power. But IRV is a win-win solution to how to accommodate choice in our politics, with an appropriate balance between rewarding a candidate having core support and having broad support. Many IRV backers like myself would prefer to see proportional voting methods for legislative elections, but for "single-winner" races, we see IRV as the best system out there, and it hands down is the most politically viable reform of our current voting methods.
See the below as a first draft of a response to the Warren Smith’s of the world. We’ll do more soon in the midst of very real, concrete efforts to do pro-active reform that are making such headway. Just as a reminder of the context here, here's where instant runoff voting is – with more information about all this at FairVote’s homepage for IRV America and at sites of other supportive groups like the New America Foundation.
* Voters like instant runoff voting:
Measures to adopt instant runoff voting were on the ballot in three jurisdictions in November 2006, all with an average population greater than that of some states -- Minneapolis (MN), Pierce County (WA) and Oakland (CA) These measures all won, receiving an average of more than 62% of the vote. In each jurisdiction the ballot measures had the strong support of the area’s major newspaper, the local League of Women Voters and local volunteers activists ready to pull up their sleeves and really work for change. IRV has now faced the voters eight times since 2002 and won every time, typically with more than 60%.
* Political leaders support instant runoff voting:
Instant runoff voting has won the support of a range of important political leaders in the United States. Backers include Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, Democratic Party chair Howard Dean, and Congressmen Jesse Jackson Jr. and Dennis Kucinich. IRV is in the state platforms of the Democratic Party in states like Colorado, California and Oregon, is used by Republicans in Utah to nominate candidates at some of their conventions, and has the strong backing of the United States’ two largest "third" parties, the Green Party (with IRV in its platform and a major issue of many of its candidates) and Libertarian Party (which had IRV in its platform before an overhaul took out such specifics and whose chair is a long-time board member of our organization).
* Young people like instant runoff voting:
Instant runoff voting has spread rapidly among college campuses. More than half of the nation's top 30 universities (as rated by U.S. News and World Report) have adopted IRV. Where it has been voted on as a ballot measures on campus, it inevitably rolls up huge margins.
* Instant runoff voting works in practice:
For all the esoteric talk of potential problems with instant runoff voting, we are not talking about an untested method of voting. IRV is used in national elections around the world and in a growing number of American cities. It is used annually in San Francisco, and now has three elections under its belt there. Each was studied very closely, including two major exit polls by the Public Research Institute of San Francisco and an exit poll this year by the Asian Law Caucus. Burlington (VT)'s first mayoral election with IRV this year was a hotly contested affair, and a local college did an exit poll there. The exit poll results consistently showed overwhelming voter preference for IRV over the systems it replaced, and the results showed that voters made a smooth transition to the system. In Burlington, 99.9% of ballots were valid, and a strong third party candidate won the mayoral race. In San Francisco's two most contested 2006 elections, the winners were outspent by other candidates, but better at gaining grassroots support and building coalitions.
* IRV would address obvious problems with our current elections:
Time and time again we see third party and independent candidates marginalized and virtually ostracized for their "spoiler" role even as their candidacies indeed can contribute to electing non-majority winners. This dynamic has been obvious in several presidential elections (like with FairVote board chair John Anderson in 1980, Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004), but it’s regularly a part of our politics at all levels of election-- both punishing outsider candidacies and allowing for undemocratic outcomes. We saw more examples in 2006 of IRV would have clarified controversial outcomes in 2006, including the governor's race in Minnesota (where a former Democrat running on a third party line won several times the difference in votes between the Democrat and winning Republican), the Senate race in Virginia (where the vote for an independent Green candidate was far greater than the margin between the winning Democrat and the Republican) and the Senate race in Montana (where the Libertarian Party's candidate won far more than the margin between the Republicans and winning Democrat. It is eminently easy to see how IRV would accommodate choice in these elections.
Now, onto critics like Dr. Smith (so appropriately named for aficionados of “Lost in Space”).
In the name of promoting his range voting proposal – a proposal that hasn't been adopted anywhere for anything and has transparent flaws that make it a very unlikely reform vehicle – Smith seems to spend most of his time making impassioned arguments against IRV that don't hold up to scrutiny. In classic sectarian form, he seems to see IRV has his main opponent -- to me as a fellow reformer, an attitude that is a recipe for not winning anything, and most certainly not winning support among other reformers for range voting, as he and some of his allies win no friends by trying (unsuccessfully) to undercut IRV campaigns through public letters to the editor, calls to reporters, private emails flaming proponents and so on. Certainly Smith has alienated numerous "workhorse reformers" (as opposed to desktop reformers who never seem to get anything done) by injecting his opposition into IRV into campaigns where volunteers are working hard for change.
The “IRV cements two-party dominance” / the “compromise candidate” spoiler dynamic claims: In contrast to Smith’s highly charged rhetoric, the real record shows that IRV is a very strong reform, with an instantly meaningful impact on elections. It's quite entrenched as a popular way to vote for national single-winner offices in Australia and Ireland, for instance, with no one even remotely seriously expecting it to be replaced by another winner-take-all system, in contrast to the very real movements to replace plurality voting in nations with it like the United Kingdom. One could talk about various positive effects IRV has had on those nations’ elections, including creating incentives for building new electoral coalitions and ensuring the winner has more support than the top opponent, but I’ll address Smith’s major critique about this experience, which is that IRV somehow fosters “two party domination.” Smith, a mathematician who is new to politics, doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that winner-take-all voting rules (where finishing second wins you nothing) are far more important to determining what kind of representation one has than the method of voting within that winner-take-all system.
Winner-take-all elections are what typically lead to two-party domination, but where the major parties present weak candidates or have gotten too far from majoritarian sentiment, IRV allows a challenger to win. London used the “two-choice” form of IRV in its first mayoral elections in 2000, for example, and Ken Livingstone was elected as an independent. (Click here) Denied the Labor Party nomination by party insiders, IRV made it easy for him to decide to run as an independent, and voters fearlessly voted for him despite Smith’s belief that they somehow would be caught up in some kind of spoiler concern. He won 38% of first choice sand then the election. Similarly, in the first mayoral election with IRV in Burlington (VT) in 2006, the Democratic candidate (a wealthy state senator) was favored to win, but when her campaign began to disappoint more and more people, the Progressive Party decided to nominate a candidate, Bob Kiss. With voters again not worried about Smith’s “spoiler” fear, Kiss again was also able to surprise most observers by winning a plurality of first choices and a majority after the elimination of the three weakest candidates, including the Republican. As detailed below, something similar also happened in Ireland’s presidential election in 1990, when Mary Robinson was elected as Ireland’s first woman president as a third party candidate.
Smith’s big critique is that a "spoiler" effect will occur with IRV when – follow me closely now -- a third party candidate gets ahead of a major party candidate and then voters have to worry that if the major party candidate loses, too many of that candidate's supporters will support the other major party candidate. Okay, sure, that could happen. But note, in each of these significant third party/independent wins described above, it didn’t happen in exactly the kind of situation where it is supposed to happen (e.g., a candidate more to the left or right displacing a more centrist major party candidate). So if it doesn’t happen there, when will it happen in real elections? Why aren’t San Franciscans up in arms about it? Because it’s far, far more likely to be theoretical than real.
Regardless, will it have anything close to the impact of the "spoiler" dynamic in our current elections? Of course not. Furthermore, it's absolutely no different from what could happen under two-round majority vote runoff elections that Smith in some forums has gone on and on as somehow better than IRV. The exact same “spoiler” dynamic should be playing out, but Smith seems very short of examples of it actually affecting people’s voting behavior in a way that’s remotely comparable to what happens when third parties run in our current system. The uncomfortable fact for Smith is that every single one-winner election in public voting in every single nation in the world either uses plurality voting, some kind of two-round runoff election or instant runoff voting. That means every such election has either the straightforward "spoiler" dynamic of plurality voting or the esoteric spoiler dynamic weakly supported "compromise" candidate potentially losing that comes with majority voting systems.
Onto a few nation examples:
Australia: Third parties and independents regularly contest these offices and can get their ideas out there without being attacked as spoilers. True, most of these parties don't often win these single-winner offices, but such is the nature of winner-take-all elections. At least the major parties can be held accountable due to IRV allowing candidates to challenge them from left, right and center, and third party candidates’ ability to run there makes it all the most possible for them to build support and win seats in the senate races held with a form of proportional voting. Furthermore, the fact that in Australia, one third party – the National Party – has with IRV been able to win regular representation is significant and something we certainly don’t have in the U.S. Even if the party is closely allied with one major party, IRV makes it possible for the National Party to have its own identity and party leaders. The reason why most third parties in Australia would like to adopt proportional voting is they understand their biggest barrier is winner-take-all rules, where finishing second wins nothing. From my dealings with Australians, third parties have zero interest in going to plurality voting, two-rounds runoffs or something like range voting.
As an aside, the major parties win the great bulk of the first-choice vote in most elections. With nearly universal voter turnout (due to mandatory voting in Australia), that’s a sign that they are doing a relatively good job at representing most people’s political views. When people have freedom of choice and choose major parties, that’s their right. But with IRV, third parties are able to pounce on opportunities and make sure the major parties are being representative.
Ireland. First, Ireland uses the proportional voting form of IRV for parliamentary elections, and it has a vibrant, very well functioning multi-party system. Several minor parties regularly win seats and nearly all have had a chance to be part of government in the past 15 years during which time Ireland’s economy has been booming. So in relation to IRV, we’re only focused on the presidential election, where there are 7-year terms and the office is relatively weak in power. Despite that, it is very significant that while in the first presidential election not won by the dominant Fianna Fail party, third party candidate Mary Robinson was able to win the presidency in 1990, jumping from being second after the count of first choices to winning in the IRV count, with her victory dependent on winning almost all of the second choice preferences of the backers of the other major party candidate -- in exactly the kind of dynamic that Smith says won’t happen in IRV elections. In the past two contested elections (1990 and 1997), no candidate has won a majority of first choices, and IRV has accommodated that increased choice, in one year electing a third party candidate and the other election a major party candidate.
Malta: Malta uses proportional voting, the same system that in Ireland produces a multi-party democracy in the parliamentary elections. It also has remarkably high voter turnout, indeed often over 95% and the highest in the world for nation’s without compulsory voting. With proportional voting a third party candidate could win with 17% of the vote in any given 5-seat legislative district. Two things tend to keep that from happening. First, the major parties run relatively broader “slates’ of candidates than we’re used to, seeking to pick up a greater range of support in highly contested elections. But second and far more importantly, Malta has established a rule where the party whose candidates have the most first choices will get a majority in parliament. That rule has created straightforward, plurality voting-esque “spoiler” dynamic – if you are a minor party backer and vote first for a third party candidate, you won’t be helping your “lesser of two evils” major party win control of parliament. So IRV-type voting frees voters to vote very freely within the major parties, but the “most votes shall form the government” rule makes it much harder for them to vote outside the minor parties.
Why not approval voting and range voting?
FairVote expends almost no energy detailing publicly its critique of range voting and other systems like Condorcet voting and approval voting. I believe all of our criticisms of these systems have been defensive in nature, responding to advocates of these proposals attacking instant runoff voting. But yes, we have very closely looked at these systems, and like nearly all serious groups who have studied comparative systems, have rejected them. There’s a reason why none of these systems are used in any public election in the world and very few private elections as well. Pushed by folks like Smith, FairVote will soon detail our criticisms in more detail and more systematically. For now, I’ll say a few things.
One basic problem with range voting and approval voting is that a candidate might lose who would receive more than 90% of the vote in our current system -- that doesn't go over very well with most charter commissions and elected officials. Similarly, Condorcet voting could elect a candidate who would win absolutely no votes in our current system. These systems allegedly boost “compromise” candidates, but in fact that “compromise candidate” could be a complete nobody who, while offending no one, has not won any followers either. Some IRV advocates like to say that “IRV elects leaders” because most believe it’s important to be able to have a certain degree of first-choice support. To me it’s not “wrong” if that means that sometimes (very rarely, actually) the “Condorcet” candidate doesn’t win. Ironically, the Condorcet candidate – e.g., the one who theoretically could beat all other candidates one on one – might well be someone who would never win under our current rules because he or she never would find themselves in a one-on-one race because of being so weak in first-choice support.
There’s a second major problem with approval voting and range voting: they create obvious, immediate and ongoing strategic dilemmas in every election. With approval voting, each equally weighted vote counts both for that candidate but effectively against the other candidates -- if you indeed have a preference between the two candidates, you need to weigh whether to "bullet vote" for your favorite to avoid canceling out that vote by voting for someone else. You can be sure candidates will publicly call for voters to reach out to all candidates they might like with their votes, but privately to urge all backers to bullet vote for themselves. That in fact was the result of the use of an approval voting-type system in some gubernatorial elections in southern primaries in the early 20th century. Voters in this “Bucklin” system had the option to rank a second choice, in an IRV-type way. All first choices were counted, but unlike with IRV, all second choices were counted simultaneously if no candidate won a majority of first choices and no candidate was eliminated. That might sound fair to someone like Warren Smith, as he doesn’t want to see elimination of the “compromise” candidate who runs poorly in first choices, but it made the system fail. Very few people would rank a second choice, as they knew that doing so would count directly against the chances of their first choice. In some Alabama gubernatorial races, for example, fewer than one in five people ranked anyone second. The system was recognized as not achieving its objective, and states using it returned to two-round runoffs.
Range voting creates comparable dilemmas, but gets all the more complicated in its opportunities for strategic manipulation -- think of how one East German judge could throw off an Olympia figure skating competition with an insincere ranking of a skater from another nation and you get the idea. Voters would face bewilderingly complex strategic decisions. As Smith’s own analyses of voter opinion of range voting have shown (Click here), voters have an initial largely negative reaction to the idea of it . I suspect that negative view would only increase over time after trying to handle it in public elections. But if Smith wants to get a place using ranging voting by working to defeat plurality voting or runoffs, I’d be interested to see what happens. Instructively, I don’t think he and his “Center for Range Voting” have a single such reform effort underway. Let’s see what happens when they finally try. In the mean time instant runoff voting advocates have a lot of work to do.
As a side note, I got to meet Mr. Richie and some of his family and friends after the show, and everyone was very nice and gracious. I am very grateful for his time and effort in talking with me and all the readers of FifteenNineteen (which at this point I believe is me, Dr. Smith, Mr. Richie, and my mom).
I hope you're digging this debate, and will likewise Digg it as well. More, I am sure, is to come!
