I’m a virologist & concerned voter. COVID endangers elections, yet might civilize American election campaigns in. Bottom line: At-home voting has unintended consequences (wasted votes) solvable w/ #RankedChoiceVoting (RCV), which civilizes politics. Like game theory? Read on...
To avoid crowding at polling stations during pandemic, 6 states adopted 100% at-home voting (WA, OR, UT, CO, HI, & CA phasing it in). Great idea. If people must vote in person, then prudent citizens will stay home & others will risk infection. Bad for democracy & public health.
At-home voting is good even absent a pandemic. It increases voter participation; people who can’t get away from work or are home-bound are still able to vote. And it’s easier. More people voting is good for democracy. Covid is just accelerating us towards a rational goal.
But at-home creates a particular conundrum, especially for primaries. B/c people have to vote in advance, they might vote for a candidate that drops out after they send in their ballot but before the ballot count. That happened to millions of voters in CO & WA this year.
You could try to fix that by adopting secure on-line voting so people could do it on the official voting day from home, but the technology is not quite ready, and it’s currently a can of worms. Another simple solution is to just ask...
“If your 1st choice candidate were to drop out before voting day, which candidate would be your 2nd choice? & if that person also dropped out, which would be your 3rd?” That’s called Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Maine does it. Many cities do, including NYC, biggest in nation.
RCV is used in elections in many other countries. It’s pretty simple. Just pick your candidates in order, starting with your favorite. You don’t have to rank them all. You can pick your top 3 (or just 2), & that’s better than picking just one, as we do now.
That way, your vote isn’t wasted if your top candidate drops out between the point when you mailed your ballot & it is counted. But there is a fascinating consequence of RCV... this is where game theory comes in. In today’s politics, people only vote for their top choice…
…and candidates want to win your vote at all costs. If they aren’t your top choice, you are dead to them. So they polarize and vilify others to try to get as many people to vote for them. In extreme, there could be 10 candidates in a primary & winner might be…
...the one who gets 12% of the vote. That means that winner could be someone who has turned off 88% of voters. To avoid this, some elections require that if no candidate wins a majority of the vote, there should be a costly run-off election…
…in which people pick from among the top few candidates. Ultimately, there may need to be a run-off of just top two so that one wins a majority. RCV makes this easy & saves money (aka instant runoff). You rank your candidates. When the ballots are counted, if no candidate has…
…more than 50% of 1st choice votes, the candidate with fewest votes is dropped. All voters who picked that candidate have their 2nd choice votes instantly apportioned to the remaining candidates, mimicking a run-off election.
If still no candidate has a majority, the next-lowest candidate is dropped, & again we apportion those voters' next ranked votes among remaining candidates. And so on until a candidate wins a majority. So the most polarizing, extreme candidate…
…might get 12% of first place votes, more than any other, but eventually that candidate will pay the price for having turned off so many other voters as their votes coalesce around another candidate & elevate him/her to a majority. Extremism & polarization don’t pay under RCV.
So RCV encourages candidates to appeal not just to be your 1st choice, but, if you prefer someone else, then they want to be your 2nd choice. They’re disincentivized from turning you off by being rude to your preferred candidate. They’re incentivized to strike a balance between…
…their unique positions & what they have in common with other candidates. For example, if candidate A knows that she won’t win the votes of environmentalist voters away from a green candidate B, then candidate A would say, “Look, if you choose B as your #1 choice...
...I can respect that. But know that I also care about the environment, so pick me as your 2nd choice.” RCV incentivizes candidates to find common ground. That’s remarkable. Imagine if every candidate stopped badmouthing other candidates & pointed out what they could agree on.
Sounds too good to be true? Check out these two opposing candidates appealing to voters together in the Maine 2018 election. Imagine if that kind of civility were typical of American campaigning!
At some point, you are likely to see a question on a ballot asking you to support the adoption of RCV in your state; or your legislature will be lobbied to adopt the policy. Vote yes, just as Mainers did.
At a minimum, RCV will ensure that your vote isn’t wasted if you vote from home for a candidate that soon drops out. To learn more about Ranked Choice Voting, here’s an explainer video.
But RCV is part of a bigger reform movement. Michael Douglas @KDouglasMichael explains it really well. This video has great animations & was produced by the non-profit Represent.Us @representus w/ bipartisan support: Unbreaking America:
Jennifer Lawrence also makes a compelling case for reforms in this video. Note that this isn’t a Republican/Democrat thing. People from both sides want democracy to work and support this effort, as I do.
So bottom line: Just as Covid-19 has driven us into isolation in our homes, politically it could trigger a series of election reforms that could help bring us closer together for the long run.
