This popular electoral system allows voters to rank candidates by preference, meaning they can submit ballots that list not only their first-choice candidate for a position, but also their second, third and so on.
Ranked-choice voting advocates, including Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has championed it as a key policy initiative, say it could help prevent evermore polarized election campaigns, increase the number of women and minority candidates running for office, and reduce negative campaigning. Critics say that the new system could make elections much more complicated for voters and be abused by parties trying to game the system.
“We are really settling on ranked-choice voting as the most promising reform to democratize and depolarize our politics,” says Larry Diamond, the former director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. “I think it’s not only here to stay but that it’s gaining support across the country.”
Here’s what to know about ranked-choice voting.
What is ranked-choice voting?
Ranked-choice voting is an electoral system that allows people to vote for multiple candidates, in order of preference. Instead of just choosing who you want to win, you fill out the ballot saying who is your first choice, second choice, or third choice (or more as needed) for each position.
The candidate with the majority (more than 50%) of first-choice votes wins outright. If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, then it triggers a new counting process. The candidate who did the worst is eliminated, and that candidate’s voters’ ballots are redistributed to their second-choice pick. In other words, if you ranked a losing candidate as your first choice, and the candidate is eliminated, then your vote still counts: it just moves to your second-choice candidate. That process continues until there is a candidate who has the majority of votes.
In comparison, the U.S. federal government and most American states and cities currently use what’s known as the plurality system: the candidate with the highest number of votes wins—period. It doesn’t matter whether that candidate earned the majority of the vote.
In a ranked-choice voting system, it works differently. The winning candidate almost always ends up with a majority of votes—even if some portion of the electorate selected him or her as a second or third choice.
Ranked-choice voting works in a variety of contexts. New York City will join Maine in using instant-runoff voting.
How ranked-choice voting could affect U.S. elections
If ranked-choice voting was adopted nationwide, it would fundamentally change how U.S. elections work.
Take the last presidential election, for example. In 2016, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton received less than 50% of the total vote in 12 states, with the remainder going to third-party candidates. Under the current system, in each of those states, the candidate with the most votes was declared victorious. If the U.S. had a ranked-choice voting system, voters would have been asked to choose a second choice, third choice or more. (If Green Party candidate Jill Stein was a voter’s first choice, for instance, she would have been given the option of choosing a different candidate—Clinton, Trump, etc.—as her second choice.)
Ranked-choice voting advocates argue that the plurality system doesn’t always reflect the true will of the people. It can lead to vote-splitting among candidates with similar positions, resulting in a candidate who is less popular overall being elected, experts say. That’s called the “Nader” effect or the “spoiler” effect. (...)
Because it helps eliminate vote-splitting, a ranked-choice voting system can have the effect of encouraging more third-party and centrist candidates, advocates say. Michael Bloomberg, a centrist, third-party candidate, considered running in the 2016 presidential election but decided not to upon concluding that he might split the Democratic vote with Clinton, increasing the chances of Trump’s victory. (Trump, of course, still won the election, though he lost the popular vote to Clinton.) Again, the 2016 election offers a good hypothetical example. If a ranked-choice voting system had been in place in Michigan, then Clinton, not Trump, may have won that state. Because neither candidate received a majority of the Michigan vote, ranked-choice voting would have come into play. And if we can assume that most Stein voters would have chosen Clinton as their second choice, the former Secretary of State would have won, according to Saari. Trump won Michigan by 10,700; Stein received more than 51,000 votes. (...)
What are the benefits of ranked-choice voting?
Ranked-choice voting can lead to less negative campaigning, says Richard DeLeon, who researches ranked-choice voting at San Francisco State University. Less divisive political environments can also have the effect of helping female, minority, centrist candidates, and third-party candidates.
“A lot of research shows that when you, as a candidate, go negative, you hurt public perceptions of yourself, but you do more damage to your opponent, and in plurality elections, this tradeoff can pay off,” says Diamond, the Stanford researcher. But since candidates are forced to rely on second and third-place votes in ranked-choice elections, negative campaigning can open the way for a third candidate to gain support. “It becomes much more costly to go negative since you risk losing your ability to pick up second-preference votes, and it actually does more harm than good,” Diamond adds.
A 2018 study showed that this created a slight percentage increase in female candidates running. This may be because women can be “deterred from running for office if they have to campaign negatively to win,” explains Sarah John, an author of the study and former director of research at FairVote. “Over time we expect candidates to learn how to run an effective ranked-choice voting election campaign, which will less often include ‘going negative.”
The study also showed that women overall and minority women are more likely to win in ranked-choice voting systems. This is, in part, because of an unconscious ticket “balancing” that many voters tend to practice. “When voters are asked to vote for or rank a whole field of candidates under proportional or ranked systems, they often tend to include female or minority candidates in the mix for balance,” explains John.
According to experts, ranked-choice systems also tend to favor centrist candidates, since the system allows voters to express preference for one-sided, partisan candidates of their choice, as well as moderate candidates, who have broader appeal. Partisan candidates have a narrower appeal, so they are less likely to be the second and third-choice for voters than a centrist candidate would be. This can also motivate partisan candidates to avoid taking extremes as well as give third-party, centrist candidates more incentive to run.
by Anna Purna Kambhampaty, Time | Read more:
Image: Gabriela Bhaskar—The New York Times/Redux[ed. Positives and negatives. If the process favors more "centrists" (middle of the road, wishy washy types) then I consider that a definite downside.]
