Ranked Choice Voting Works in Australia
A View on RCV from Down Under
This piece is a different take on RCV from someone - writer/editor Gordon Evans - and somewhere - Australia - that ranked choice voting has actually worked. I would like to thank Mr. Evans for his contribution and remind Point subscribers that they should feel free to submit pieces for potential posting on the site.
Americans seem to be struggling with the concepts of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). There appears to be a campaign to demonise the preferential voting system based on the fact that the required results didn’t go a certain way on the first few attempts. There can be any number of reasons for the problems, but from this distance it seems to be a combination of lack of education of the electorate (education, not indoctrination) as to how RCV works and the questionable procedure for counting the votes.
RCV is a philosophical argument - do you want the results of an election to reflect the will of all the people or do you want a system that anoints someone with less than 50% of the popular vote. (For this article I’m ignoring the Electoral College system - which is essential to stop electoral bullying. In Australia our Senate is a state house - each state has the same number of senate votes - population is irrelevant - populous states can’t override smaller states - but that is another discussion)
It seems churlish to require a citizen to choose between two unpopular options, instead why not let them select who they really want and if their first choice doesn’t get enough support their next choice may, then the final result is the one that best reflects the population’s preferences.
America’s problem, one of them, is that it still believes it is the “Land of the Free,” And that translates into a feeling of “you can’t make me do anything,” despite all the laws, regulations and hoops required to participate in bureaucratic society. To make RCV work best, I would suggest compulsory voting - that way you are certain that you have the best reflection of what the population wants and not a result of who has more busses or who can best pull the plugs on voting machines at strategic times.
Australia has preferential voting and has had it for over 100 years. Results are almost always available the night of the election via a totally manual, paper and pencil ballot system. RCV and Preferential Voting are largely the same - except the American system seems to take weeks to tally results. Dare I suggest the problem is with the counters not the voting system?
The basic principle of both systems is that the voter’s preference wins, though RCV adds the possibility that it is not just their first choice. So that if a voter’s first choice isn’t in the running then the next choice is applied and that is continued until his preference is counted. Note “his vote”, not “his votes” - he has one vote which he (or she) is assured reaches the person he would prefer to get his vote - as opposed to the system where if his first choice fails his vote extinguishes.
For example, if I want to watch a James Bond movie on television Saturday night, and for some reason it’s not on, I choose something else or just read a book. Nowhere is it written that because my first choice didn’t happen that I’m not allowed a second. And that does not subvert the “one person one vote” principle in your Constitution, which I’ll cover later.
In the American case of a presidential election there would be, let’s say, a Democrat candidate (regarded as left), a Republican candidate (regarded as right) and a Libertarian Candidate (proposing less government, more freedom - veering to the right of politics).
In the above case you might have 49.40% Dem, 49.20% Rep and 1.4% Libertarian. For simplicity let’s assume all Libertarians, given a choice, would prefer a Republican President to a Democrat President. As your system sits now, the Democrats win with the highest percentage, 49.40% - but with RCV the Libertarians votes, because their first choice is no longer in the running for president, would move to their 2nd choice - the Republicans - giving that candidate a winning total of 50.60%.
(Editor’s Note – Applying that concept to the 2020 presidential election, three states – Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin – would have flipped from Biden to Trump, leaving an electoral vote count of – get this – 269 to 269 – a tie. In that case, each state gets one vote – decided upon by their entire House of Representatives delegation - to break the tie. That would have led to a Trump victory as there were 27 Republican-majority state delegations, though Kamala Harris could very well have been dubbed the vice-president. It would have also shrunk Biden’s popular vote lead by about 1.5 million votes, meaning that about 95% of the remaining national lead would have come from Biden’s victory margin in just one state – California. Who do you think would have been the elections deniers then?)
In theory RCV also allows other parties to establish and grow - the capitalist ideal – while the American system entrenches the two-party binary choice (strictly enforced by the media.) That is another part of the problem.
Your current system allows a Bill Clinton to be elected Leader of the Free world with less than 30% of the vote - that means 70% of Americans didn't vote for him. They voted for Perot and Bush - the majority wanting a conservative leader and they got Bill - hardly a reflection of the democratic will.
(1992 Presidential election - 58% turnout - Clinton received 43% of the vote - which is 25% of total potential voters. Perot and Bush received a combined 57% of the vote - which is still only 33% of potential voters, admittedly neither a resounding mandate for anything.)
(There are benefits to being an American citizen, so it’s not asking a lot to require one thing - an occasional vote – to guarantee participation in their own government, to help make the democratic choice for leadership. There is a lot to be said for compulsorily requiring citizens to participate in the democratic process, but back to the topic at hand.)
In our example, if the percentages were more even - if other parties were allowed to develop - you might have a result like Party A 35%, Party B 32% and Party C 33%. For simplicity we will assume B and C are variants of Conservative philosophies and A tends towards Socialism. In your current system Socialism wins with 35% of the vote - but the reality is that 65% of voters want Conservatism. Under RCV Party C would win and reflect the will of the people.
The details don’t matter - just that the result better reflects what 100% of the electorate want. America’s biggest problem is that you don’t have to vote - so therefore there is something like 40% of the potential voters who don’t turn up, which allows someone (currently the Democrats and their preferred mail-in voting) to fraudulently fill any void easily.
Election fraud expert Jay Valentine -
https://jayvalentine.com/
- has shown that there are many more creative ways to “magic” voters, and without serious ID checks and security processes the American voting system has no integrity at all - and probably hasn’t had any for many decades.
One of the arguments against RCV is that it subverts the “one person one vote” principle – that is a position I find hard to justify. The rule more accurately should be “one person, one counted vote”.
The phrase “one person - one vote” actually implies the need for preferential or RCV, otherwise the Libertarian’s vote in the above example is lost as their vote doesn’t count towards the result. Their cry for an alternative does nothing except skew (by omission) the results in a potentially wrong way and those wanting an alternative are disenfranchised.
The current campaigns to discard RCV after the first few attempts would seem a lot like stopping little Mary learning the piano because her Rachmaninoff No.5 is less than perfect after two lessons.
Having said that, our (Australia’s) Preferential system has recently been hi-jacked by the left. It would appear that whatever system you use requires a level of honesty and good will - an honest understanding and desire for democratic outcomes. The left does not trust the electors and strives to subvert every system, hence the need for constant vigilance.
In Australia, the left has created false “independents” who take advantage of the “plague on both your houses” feeling in the electorate, but once elected almost always vote for the left side of politics. Not surprisingly our “Teals” - as they are called (a different shade of Green) - are almost exclusively funded
by Climate 200, an organization financially supported by Simon Holmes a Court -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Holmes_%C3%A0_Court . Climate 200 professes to have conservative roots, but only seems to contest important conservative seats to the detriment of that side of politics.
Without all sides wanting a legitimate battle of ideas for the people to choose amongst, no nation can have a working democracy.
Australia’s system, wrongly I believe, allows parties to print “how-to-vote” cards which tell the voter who to vote for, even numbering the preferences for them, thereby essentially making the choice for the voter. No one has to follow a “how-to-vote” form, but a lot of the voters think they do - and it’s easier - and we know the voting public are generally lazy. Look at America’s “I can’t be bothered” statistics (42% in 1992).
What is insidious is that, for instance, a conservative candidate may make a deal with his arch enemy the socialist to put each other in positions 1 and 2 and his like-minded conservative opponent in last place - for purely political purposes. Essentially playing “RINO” in that he would prefer someone who represents everything he hates to be elected rather than someone who supports conservative values - in the preferential game, his like-minded opponent can be taken out of the counting as early as possible.
The influx of Teals - strangely, as mentioned, only contesting conservative seats - have changed the balance of power in Australia as all Teals support Labor and the Greens in parliament. So the public's desire for an independent balance of power is thwarted, once again, by the left. It is a minor coup under the cover of democratic choice - the voting public was tricked.
America has been the victim of a real coup - nothing minor or half-hearted about America – and the world is near war because your systems were corrupted and let this happen. I have been waiting for two years for the courts to overturn 2020 - it’s clear, the evidence is there. Remember - Fraud Vitiates Everything.
It really doesn't matter what the voting system is if the courts don't support your Constitution, the media promotes lies and misinformation, and any dissenting voice is stifled.
Compulsory RCV is philosophically the better democratic option. It’s hard to argue logically against it. However, it requires the population to engage in the electoral process and the political elites to accept other opinions may be valid. The American experiment works best when the people are allowed to have their say and have their way . . . and are trusted to make the right decision.
Gordon’s website is - https://www.dryeyeinthehouse.com/
I disagree vehemently, because ranked voting is ultimately anti-democratic, but for the reason cited here.
Much better would be a two stage election, with a runoff between the top two, or a three stage with first the top three or four, then the top two of those. Essentially the first election would become a national primary not run by just the two parties, but contested by as many as think they have a chance of being winnowed in to the next round.
The advantages are several. First, it would undermine the lock grip of the two party system even more so than RCV, as party organizations would no longer control who the finalists might be.
Second, the main problem with RCV is that a voter must make choices before knowing who the finalists are. By having a runoff, every voter gets a real second choice based on the availability of the remaining options. IN RCV, as the example in this article illustrates, the expectation still is that the two major parties are finalists, so the Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, etc ultimately can only choose D or R. The second choice for each is almost a foregone conclusion, so it not in fact challenge the supremacy of the existing ruling parties.
In a truly open primary across the board, any factions both outside and within the two current major parties might emerge with a real chance at the big prize, which will be decided finally by a majority in a binary choice. Applying that to the 2016 election, for instance might have given us four reasonably viable choices from which to choose. Why should Bernie drop out when he thinks he might have a reasonable chance of doing better than either Trump or HRC? For that matter, the Beltway Republicans who loathed Trump would be highly motivated to test the latter's popularity in e national general election. Would the result have been predictable in such a scenario? And whatever the final outcome the ultimate winner would have genuine credibility as having truly won a plebiscite over plural rounds of elimination.
Third, it would render our current primary system obsolete. Does it make sense, in a vast, diverse society as the US, for two small states to eliminate potentially viable candidates before anybody else had a chance to vote for them? It's preposterous.
Either reform would invite the abolition of the Electoral College, as both rely on a system of elimination as decided by popular vote. Without such an accompanying change, the two major parties would still dominate, soon reverting to their positions of unassailable power.
Any reform carries with it ripple effects of consequences that must be considered before enacting them. And any changes to the electoral system must be achieved by consensus, not, as is currently the case, by one party that felt short-changed by a recent electoral result. Only when the electorate broadly agrees that what we have is inadequate and must be altered, can we proceed in the confidence that it reflects national will. It is for this reason that the Constitution properly requires overlapping super majorities of consent in order to ratify any amendment.
I was remiss in not prefacing my comments with the observation that i have no opinion on how it worked for Australia, as I have no independent knowledge of that. Happy to take his and your word for that.
But it would not work here, for the reasons I cited. And as for the idea that RCV allows voting "for whom you want" is actually not true, unless you already know who the finalists will be. Otherwise, that second vote will be wasted on another also-ran, and you need not have bothered. As the "finalists" are most likely to be major party candidates, it actually strengthens their monopoly, as voters likely would place their second vote bets with one of them. That might explain why change was slow to come in Oz. Whereas in a runoff schema, it's quite possible that a "third party" candidate is one of the finalists, especially if there is a two tier runoff. So, better to withhold one's vote until one knows the actual choices left. Nor is it either desirable or consistent with our traditions to mandate everyone votes.
Although we can never know that until it's tried, I would guess that fairly quickly, the number of candidates would proliferate, and there would be no reason to assume that major party favorites would be preferred. All the more so if at the same time we abandoned our current byzantine primary and caucus system in favor of a nationwide general election that serves as a national primary, rather than having two rather odd small states limit the field before the vast majority of voters had a chance to choose. And the weakening of our current primary system also would hasten the demise of the parties' monopoly over elections. We'd have a better chance of electing true reformers.
A point I did not mention is that it's useless to project new systems backwards to previous elections. The rules changes themselves would alter the field of viable candidates, not to mention their strategies.