Right now, there’s an effort under way to transform the way Americans conduct elections. And as we move forward deep into the 2024 campaign, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about it, maybe even voting on it in November. It has to do with something called ranked choice voting, a confusing alternative to the system most of us are familiar with, where the candidate with the most votes wins. There is bipartisan support for the change — and bipartisan opposition. Today, we set out to find who’s pushing ranked choice voting and who would benefit the most.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.” Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
Helping us navigate the ranked choice voting debate, Deb Otis of FairVote, an election reform group that tends to be thought of as left-leaning and a major driver behind the ranked choice voting movement. And Scott Ganz who’s against it. He’s with the American Enterprise Institute, which is thought of as conservative.
Deb Otis: Ranked choice voting is a better way to vote. It gives voters the option to rank the candidates on their ballot. It gives voters more power, and it promotes majority winners in our elections —something we’re not doing a good job of right now.
Sharyl: And how would you describe it?
Scott Ganz: The place where we disagree is whether it supports majority outcomes. So, it supports the majority outcomes of the last two candidates, but it doesn’t always support the majority outcome among all the candidates. And, at least, recent history has shown, that in the presence of certain types of electorates, candidates that have true majority support don’t actually get selected.
Both sides agree ranked choice voting is a kind of instant runoff when no candidate has more than 50% of the vote. Here’s how it works.
In an election with more than two candidates, voters have the chance to rank the candidates from first to last on a voting form that looks like a multiple-choice answer sheet. If the winner doesn’t get more than half of the first place votes, ranked choice kicks in. The candidate in last place is knocked out. His votes get transferred to each of his voters’ second choice. That keeps going until one person gets more than 50%.
Right now, big money is behind ranked choice voting, as a way to transform the American election system. But the idea has been around for a long time. Ashtabula, Ohio is said to have been first to adopt ranked choice voting in 1915 for city council elections. In 1941, Cambridge, Massachusetts began using ranked choice voting. San Francisco started in 2004.
Today, some degree of ranked choice voting is used in at least three counties, several dozen cities, including New York, and two states — Alaska and Maine.
Sharyl: What would you say about the history and why it seems to be more front and center the past 10 years or so, I think maybe, than before?
Otis: We have a long history in this country of wanting majority winners. We have a number of states that hold two-round runoffs in order to get a majority winner, and even more cities that do that for offices like mayor. Ranked choice voting aims to do the same thing without making voters show up and vote a second time a few weeks later. And so we see impacts like increased positive issues-focused campaigning and less mudslinging. We see winners with broader support among their constituents. And the more we are seeing these outcomes in practice, more cities and more states are choosing to opt in.
Sharyl: What would you say is the biggest argument against ranked choice voting?
Ganz: So, the biggest argument against ranked choice voting is that it doesn’t select candidates that support the preferences of the electorate as a whole as often as we would like for an electoral system. So, when we look at the Alaska special election, here’s a wonderful example that demonstrates how ranked choice voting doesn’t lead to the election of majority winners.
Alaska’s special election in 2022 was the state’s first race decided under ranked choice voting. It led to an upset with a Democrat winning the state’s single seat in the House of Representatives.
Republicans won way more votes in the original count — about 60% to the Democrats’ 40%. But the Republican votes were split between two candidates, and neither had more than 50%, so ranked choice voting kicked in. Republican Nick Begich was knocked out, and, in round two, Democrat Mary Peltola beat Republican Sarah Palin. Adding to the controversy, the voting show that Begich, the eliminated Republican, would have won head-to-head against Peltola and against Palin.
Ganz: So, Nick Begich did have a majority of support against Mary Peltola and against Sarah Palin. And because of the algorithm, because of the way that ranked choice voting systems compute who wins the election, he was eliminated in the first round, and one of the two candidates who did not have majority support ended up winning. This is indicative of sort of the fatal flaw of using an instant runoff system, which we call ranked choice voting here in the United States.
Also, under ranked choice voting, the first-place winner in the initial vote may go on to lose the election. That’s what happened in Alaska’s first U.S. Senate race under the new system in 2022.
The candidate with the most first-place votes was Trump-backed Republican Kelly Tshibaka. She edged out Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who’d voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, a third Republican, and a Democrat. But since Tshibaka fell short of 50%, ranked choice voting kicked in. Murkowski picked up more second-place votes and beat Tshibaka.
In Oakland, California in 2010, Democrat Don Perata won the first-place vote for mayor with 30% more votes than fellow Democrat Jean Quan. But under ranked choice voting, Quan eventually won.
And a similar flip happened in Maine in 2018. Congressman Bruce Poliquin, a Republican, won more first-place votes, but ultimately lost to Democrat Jared Golden.
Whether outcomes like that are good for the election system depends on who you ask.
Thirty-one states and Washington, D.C., are considering bills or ballot measures to install ranked choice voting.
Five states, all controlled by Republicans, recently banned ranked choice voting.
Support for ranked choice voting doesn’t fall strictly along political lines. But we did find ranked choice voting efforts are more likely to be funded by liberal and progressive megadonors. Big donors to FairVote include the liberal Hewlett and John and Laura Arnold Foundations, as well as the liberal activist billionaire George Soros through his Open Society Foundations.
Sharyl: What’s behind the big money push by these big money foundations and politically-toned billionaires, for example? What’s their interest in it?
Otis: Most of FairVote’s funding comes from individual donations, but we do get a number of larger donations from foundations. And I think these foundations tend to invest in a number of good elections or pro-democracy-type reforms. And they’re looking for more stability in our politics, I think. And I think some upgrades to our elections help us inject more stability into our political system and make it easier to make progress on every other issue.
There’s little doubt that ranked choice voting means candidates have to campaign for second place votes and might be less likely to sling mud, more likely to try to please a wider variety of voters.
But the conservative Heritage Foundation says ranked choice voting “manufacture[s] a faux majority for the winner” and is “a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win.” The conservative Honest Elections Project says ranked choice voting is a way to “ensure left-leaning politicians get elected.”
A final controversy comes because when voters choose only a first-place candidate — as nearly one in three decide to do under ranked choice voting — their vote may not ultimately count at all in the final results.
One thing is for sure, you can expect to hear a lot more about all of this. Not only are Biden and Trump on the November ballot, but ranked choice voting will be voted on in more states than ever before.
Sharyl: What would you say to the idea that these new ideas, maybe not so new, but the ideas to change things are coming from people who just aren’t happy because the candidate they liked didn’t win?
Otis: I think that’s a really valid concern that we hear from folks. However, if we look at the non-majority outcomes we see right now, I think this was not what the founders intended. We were intended to have an informed electorate making decisions based on majority rule. And a system like ranked choice voting gets us a lot closer to that intention than what we’re doing now.
Ganz: The problem with ranked choice voting is that you don’t end up electing the candidate whose preferences are aligned with the median. It has this extremist bias. It has a tendency towards electing candidates who are further to the left or further to the right.
Sharyl (on-camera): There’s talk in Illinois of using ranked choice voting in the 2028 presidential primaries, as well as proposals to drop out of an experiment early in Utah, and ban the system in Idaho.
Watch video here.
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Not interested in this change. I fail to see how it helps to get my candidate of choice elected.
Ranked voting is the Left getting rid of the Electoral College and our government of a Representative Democratic Republic.
I WATCHED THIS AND MOST OF THE TIME THE DEMOCRATES CAME OUT ON TOP. THE ONLY WAY THE DNC PARTY CAN WIN IS (CHEET) AND THAT IS THE BEST REASON NOT TO VOTE FOR IT. SHOWS THEM THAT HAS TRYED IT IS NOW GETTING RID OF IT SO DONT START IT IN THE FIRST PLACE
There were several worthwhile things in this article. I appreciate the fact that SA allowed input from both sides, I appreciate that the discussion was civil, and I especially appreciate that there were specific examples provided to buttress the points being made. Too often, these types of discussions devolve into ill-defined talking points that can interpreted any number of ways.
But one thing that I didn’t appreciate was that one side (the anti-RCV side) was allowed to make what I thought were wildly misleading (to the point of being wrong) claims without any pushback or asking for clarification from either the other side or SA. That’s not right.
Full disclosure: RCV seems like a good idea to me. It addresses what I considered the most serious shortcoming of popular-vote elections (especially if we could get rid of the Electoral College), namely that in a crowded field, the winner might only get 35% – 40% of the vote. And having a Presidential runoff didn’t seem very attractive to me. The election season is already way too long.
However, I am always concerned with new ideas that there might be a way to game the system. That’s why I value a true discussion about RCV. Is there a way to game this particular system? There’s no way to tell from this article since that aspect wasn’t really addressed.
My dissatisfaction with the article begins with the way SA describes RCV (“a confusing alternative to the system most of us are familiar with, where the candidate with the most votes wins”). Calling it “confusing” seems like an editorial opinion, something that SA has repeatedly said reporters shouldn’t interject into their articles. And it also seems intended to cast RCV in a negative light. And, of course, there are lots and lots of examples in today’s world where the person that got the most votes (at least initially) didn’t win the election. So that characteristic isn’t unique to RCV. But it sounds bad so she included it.
The argument against RCV seems to be that “it doesn’t select candidates that support the preferences of the electorate as a whole as often as we would like for an electoral system”. This sounds like gobbledygook to me. But, fortunately, Ganz helpfully points to the Alaska special and general House elections in 2022 as specific examples that embody his concerns.
As far as I know, outside of RCV, there are two current ways that elections are conducted in the U.S. In the first one, whoever gets the most votes, wins regardless of the percentages. In the second one, unless one candidate gets more than 50% in the first round, the top-two vote getters advance to a runoff, thereby guaranteeing that someone will get more than half of the vote.
It seems obvious that the knock against RCV that “the person with the most votes doesn’t win” also applies to elections requiring a runoff. And there are important recent examples of this. In 2020, both Republicans (Perdue and Loeffler) finished with the most votes in their Senate races. But they both lost in the runoff. Is Ganz going to argue against a runoff system? That seems like a worthwhile, albeit unasked, question.
Here are the first round results from the special election: Peltola (39.66%), Palin (30.92%), Begich (27.84%)
Here are the second round results: Peltola (51.48%), Palin (48.52%)
Here are the first round results from the general election: Peltola (48.77%), Palin (25.74%), Begich (23.33%)
Here are the second round results: (54.96%), Palin (45.04%)
Ganz raised two primary objections to the results of this election:
a) Somehow, Ganz claims that Begich enjoyed more “across-the-board” support (“so, Nick Begich did have a majority of support against Mary Peltola and against Sarah Palin”). I have no idea what he bases that conclusion on (according to Ganz, “the voting shows that Begich, the eliminated Republican, would have won head-to-head against Peltola and against Palin”). But I don’t see how that changes anything. Begich finished third. If there was a runoff, he would have been eliminated prior to that runoff. And, he wouldn’t have won either if there was no runoff. So the question becomes: exactly what would have been the election mechanism to allow Begich to win? I don’t see one – just like I don’t see that question being asked.
b) The other objection is that the Republicans got more votes than the Democrat, but that their vote was split. To which I reply: so what – and Jill Stein. “So what” in that perhaps the Alaska GOP should get its act together and only run one candidate. Is this an argument against Alaska’s jungle primary? Perhaps, but what does that have to do with RCV? It seems like a red herring to me.
In 2016, Jill Stien arguably cost Clinton the election with her candidacy. Specifically, she got more votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin than Clinton lost to Trump by in those states. It’s really hard for me to believe that someone who would vote for Stein would vote for Trump (I once heard Gary Johnson’s campaign manager claim that Johnson siphoned the same number of votes from Trump and Clinton so I’m not including him in this). The total EVs in those states (46) would have given Clinton a total of (at least) 273 EVs – that’s enough to win. But I haven’t heard any Trump supporter complain about Clinton’s votes being split with Stein.
And, of course, Clinton got the most votes and yet didn’t win. How many Republicans are OK with doing away with the EC to prevent such a travesty from occurring again?
More gobbledygook: “But the conservative Heritage Foundation says ranked choice voting “manufacture[s] a faux majority for the winner” and is “a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win.” The conservative Honest Elections Project says ranked choice voting is a way to “ensure left-leaning politicians get elected.”
What exactly do they mean by “faux majority”? Peltola got a majority just like Osoff and Warnock did? What is “faux” about their majorities? And how exactly does RCV “allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win”? Perhaps, but until they provide examples, it’s assuming facts not in evidence.
Then there was this about the Alaska Senate race: “The candidate with the most first-place votes was Trump-backed Republican Kelly Tshibaka. She edged out Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who’d voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, a third Republican, and a Democrat. But since Tshibaka fell short of 50%, ranked choice voting kicked in. Murkowski picked up more second-place votes and beat Tshibaka.”
Several questions here:
a) How does this scenario differ from the one in the 2020 Georgia Senate race? I think it’s a reasonable assumption that had there been an actual runoff, the result would have been the same.
b) The inclusion of “Trump-backed” for Tshibaka and “voted to convict Trump” for Murkowski is completely irrelevant and (I think) designed to garner sympathy for Tshibaka from the readership (who overwhelmingly support Trump). What does that information have to do with the merits of RCV?
“A final controversy comes because when voters choose only a first-place candidate — as nearly one in three decide to do under ranked choice voting — their vote may not ultimately count at all in the final results.” My response: if you want your vote to count, you have to follow the rules. Voters mail-in ballots are thrown out all the time because they didn’t sign the form correctly or didn’t include the correct information (and many conservative states are making it easier to throw mail-in votes out by requiring additional identification – where is the outrage on that?). So their votes didn’t count. And, yes, someone’s vote may not count in the final result if their candidate doesn’t get enough votes. I don’t see how that is that much different from today’s non-runoff scenario. If you vote for someone who gets fewer votes than the other person, you can argue that your vote didn’t count. And, of course, if you vote for the losing Presidential candidate in your state, your vote literally doesn’t count at all. More missing outrage!
“The problem with ranked choice voting is that you don’t end up electing the candidate whose preferences are aligned with the median. It has this extremist bias. It has a tendency towards electing candidates who are further to the left or further to the right.” My response: Sorry, but this is nonsense. The whole point of RCV is that candidates can’t afford to alienate large segments of the voting public because they may need them in subsequent rounds. You can win even if you aren’t most people’s first choice. But you can’t win if you’re no one’s second choice.
And that, of course, is why conservatives are against RCV. They know that if they continue to nominate hard-right ideologues, two things will be true: (1) support for those ideologues will be sky high from their supporters, and (2) support for those ideologues will be close to zero from everyone else. So unless they win a majority on the first round, they aren’t likely to prevail in subsequent rounds. It’s no more complicated than that.
If RCV has “this extremist bias” how do you explain this: “There’s little doubt that ranked choice voting means candidates have to campaign for second place votes and might be less likely to sling mud, more likely to try to please a wider variety of voters.”
So by all means let’s have a discussion about RCV. Maybe there’s some aspect of it that isn’t good. But if you’re going to have a discussion at least come prepared to challenge what the participants say. Don’t just roll over and accept what I think is a preconceived belief. I’m hardly an expert on the subject, and even I could spot what seem like serious weaknesses in Ganz’s arguments. Why can’t SA do that?
Sharyl and Full Measure Team,
Why Vote, if elections are remotely fixed—by Electronic Vote Machines ? :
https://sharylattkisson.com/2023/10/poll-mixed-verdict-on-the-ousting-of-house-speaker-mccarthy/#comment-176010
P.S.
Everyone is smarter/wiser today
—than Aristotle, re INVASION by
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provide medical help to men,
women and children NOT belong-
ing here. Applied M A R X I S M )) :
https://sharylattkisson.com/2023/11/watch-antisemitism/#comment-178193
P.P.S.
Re : Deep Stat Trotskyites
Find my two posts below “Native
Virginian” and “Hollywood…”
posts, in below URL.
======
Definition/Description/Warning
about NECONS—to explain
Trotskyites ( e.g., Kristol ) and
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here :
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/madison-forum-maria-zack-exposing-the-deep-state/#comment-53268
======
-Rick
I can’t believe PDL’s ridiculously long defense of RCV and attempt to disprove everything said against it, including your statement that it’s confusing. Of course it’s confusing. That’s a factual statement. I suspect its confusing nature is a feature, not a bug. If RCV became standard, can you imagine the resulting fights about election results? Hardly anyone would be happy.
It’s thus an extremely divisive voting method, and that may be part of why the left is pushing it. They’re trying to divide people in every possible way.
I’m not understanding the argument against the ranked voting. They seem to be claiming that since a person initially in third place can end up in first, then it isn’t a proper majority. Is that what I’m reading? That doesn’t make sense to me.
How would ranked elections be any different from a standard run off election? Is it because they are are not eliminating all the lower candidates in a single round and applying all the left over votes to the original top two?
In any election where there are more than 3 candidates on the ballot, it becomes possible that the person getting the second least number of votes in the first round could become the winner in RCV.
That may be unlikely but it is entirely possible. The fact that the Senator from Alaska was the 3rd finisher in the first ballot count and went on to become the winner proves the possiblity. Had there been more candidates the only sure loser is the one that finishes last in the first count.
IRT PDL on the 2016 election the nation is not happy to have one state decide the election. Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes (rounded up slightly). Clinton won the CA popular vote by 4 million votes (rounded up even less). So the difference in the popular vote was entirely CA.