Happy Emergency |
When you have to do something wonderful. the web, startups, governance, urbanism. by Lucas Dailey |
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Notes The Revolution We Need Isn’t At The Ballot Box, it’s To The Ballot Box
We have highly dysfunctional public policy in this country. Despite the incredible work being done to make government more transparent, responsive, and honest, our political dysfunction has been getting worse and will continue. Why? Because politicians and political organizations are competing, specializing and generally getting better at getting elected. That means closer races, a more divided and negatively motivated (read: scared/angry) electorate.
Dysfunctional policy will continue to be made while we’re limited to the dysfunctional politicians that are selected by a dysfunctional voting system. Every political problem in this country would be lessened, some even immediately solved, by a voting system that allowed for better candidates.
Plus, if you like warm-and-fuzzy concepts like “liberty” and “democracy”, our voting system is the very worst.
Let’s look at why our voting system is so ineffective, then discuss some alternatives.
FIRST PAST THE POST (FPTP)
In U.S. Federal elections, and in most elections nationwide, we use First Past the Post, an archaic type of plurality voting.
Concept
Each voter selects a single candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins.
Good
It works perfectly when there are only two candidates. Conceptually simple.
Bad
It doesn’t work well when there are more than two candidates, and there are always more than two candidates. It also requires two completely separate elections.- Due to Duverger’s Law, FPTP leads to a two-party monopoly, as we’ve seen for almost all of our history.Two parties in power will continually shift to each represent 50% of the electorate, preventing the creation of “third parties”.
- Two party systems encourage deadlock and obstructionism, as one party only has to be less bad than the other party. “Standing up for your beliefs” to shut down compromise becomes absolutely necessary in many cases to keep your “base” motivated.
- Two party systems will tend to only advance two solutions to a given problem. Those solutions are tailored to each appeal to 50% of the electorate, which generally has nothing to do with how “good” those solutions are.
- Most voters must vote tactically. That is, they don’t vote for who they want, they vote for who they like best that is “viable”, or very often they vote for the least bad candidate. If you ever hear someone say anything like “Don’t throw your vote away.” “viable candidate” “Anybody But X” “I don’t really like X but he’s way better than Y” these are all endorsements of tactical voting. Tactical voting is not democratic as it forces you to choose between voting for who you want or whether you want to affect the outcome of the election. You can’t do both in FPTP.
- With multiple candidates, a majority is no longer necessary. A four-candidate race could be won with the support of only 25% of the electorate. It goes against the ideals of a democracy if a very small minority can pick its leaders.
- Requires Party Primaries. Party primaries exacerbate all of the problems listed above, encouraging oppositional, us-versus-them political sport designed to win elections, not govern well. It is also a highly costly and unnecessary expense for all levels of government.
First Past the Post Summary
Behavioral psychology and economics push FPTP systems toward forming two dominant parties, which then spit out candidates picked and designed to win elections. There is very little incentive to govern well, or compromise when you only need to be less bad than your single competitor in the eyes of 50% of the population. Fear and anger become major motivators for voters. FPTP is the very worst voting system in use today, but because no currently elected federal politician would be reelected with a better system, they have an incentive to fight to keep it.
RANKED PAIRS
A more modern system, Ranked Pairs is a form of Preferential Voting and a Condorcet Method.
Concept
Voters list candidates in order of preference. Each pair of candidates is compared in head-to-head matchups to identify which candidate is preferred over all other candidates.
Good- Identifies the most popularly supported candidate.
- Simple, intuitive, and conceptually popular.
- No Tactical Voting, it can’t be “gamed”.
- Voters can fully express their preferences with their vote. Fully democratic.
- Many candidates can enter the race at no risk of “stealing”, “spoiling”, ”hurting” or otherwise negatively effecting the chances of other candidates.
- Primaries become not only unnecessary, but may become detrimental to parties.
- Since parties are not harmed by endorsing multiple candidates there is no need to select a single representative.
- Diminishes undue party influence.
- General election candidates no longer have to first “appeal” to a passionate minority of the electorate.
- Optionally, candidates can self-identify party affiliation on ballots, listing all parties they agree with.
- One less election in every race in the country would save meaningful amounts of money at all levels of government.
- Less negative campaigning. Negative ads are pervasive because two-candidate races are zero-sum. If the other guy looks worse than you, you’ll win. When you can safely vote for whomever you please with no fear of “wasting” your vote because “viability” is no longer an issue, elections will have many candidates. When there are many candidates, throwing political mud will get both the thrower and the target candidates dirty, to the advantage of the “clean” candidates, thus discouraging mud-slinging.
- Can be used just as successfully in multi-seat elections. For example, an election where the top three candidates get seats in a legislative body.
Not conceived of in the 1700’s.
Ranked Pairs Summary
Ranked Pairs is my voting system preference because it is conceptually simple and arguably the “best” or one of the best modern systems. It allows voters to fully express their preferences with their vote, and will lead to more substantive elections with a broader and deeper range of candidates. (For a wonkish dive into how Ranked Pairs compares to other voting systems, learn more about the different voting system “criteria” here.)
SCHULZE METHOD
Another modern system, the Schulze Method is also a form of Preferential Voting and a Condorcet Method.
Concept
Voters list candidates in order of preference. Each pair of candidates is compared in head-to-head matchups, then those match-ups are composited based on preference-strength to compare relationships between candidates, selecting the candidate at the top of the strongest relationship chain or “path”. (This method is often called the Path Method).
Good- See the Good list under Ranked Pairs above.
- Allows for listing candidates as equals, ie candidates can “tie” for 3rd favorite, etc.
- Not conceived of in the 1700’s.
- Complex conceptually and difficult to explain.
Possibly “the best”, Schulze is the most used by wonky organizations. The winner results are nearly identical to Ranked Pairs but in some rare virtual-tie/circulary instances (circularity is when A beats B, B beats C, but C beats A) Schulze may produce a different winner. Ranked Pair solves circularity by “locking-in”, Schulze solves it by “beatpathing”. I wouldn’t advocate Schulze for public elections because of its conceptual complexity. Ranked Pair is as good or nearly as good, but conceptually much easier to grasp for the average voter. I only mention Schulze out of obligation to the wonks out there, and to explain why it is inferior for public elections.
INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING (IRV)
A somewhat modern system, Instant Runoff Voting is also a form of Preferential Voting and a partial (the less important part) Condorcet Method. IRV is used in many countries and some states and municipalities in the U.S.A.
Concept
Voters list candidates in order of preference. The candidate with the fewest number of first-choice votes is eliminated, repeating until there is only one candidate left. This simulates holding repeated Runoff Elections in a single election, hence the “Instant” runoff moniker.
Good- Simple, intuitive, conceptually popular.
- Less Tactical Voting than FPTP.
- Many candidates (more than two) can enter the race at little risk (no risk for Schulze and Ranked Pair) of “stealing”, “spoiling”, ”hurting” or otherwise negatively effecting the chances of other candidates.
- Primaries not only unnecessary, but detrimental to parties.
- Since parties are not harmed by endorsing multiple candidates there is no need to select a single representative.
- Diminishes undue party influence.
- Optionally, candidates can self-identify party affiliation on ballots.
- One less election in every race in the country would save meaningful amounts of money at all levels of government.
- Less negative campaigning. Negative ads are pervasive because two-candidate races are zero-sum. If the other guy looks worse than you, you’ll win. When you can safely vote for whomever you please with no fear of “wasting” your vote because “viability” is no longer an issue, elections will have many candidates. When there are many candidates, throwing political mud will get both the thrower and the target candidates dirty, to the advantage of the “clean” candidates, thus discouraging mud-slinging.
- Can be used just as (relatively) successfully in multi-seat elections, where say the top three candidates get seats in a legislative body.
- Doesn’t always Identify the most popularly supported candidate.
- Can encourage Tactical voting. It is more difficult than FPTP, but possible to “game”.
- It does not fully capture the intent of voters, and is thus not fully democratic.
- IRV selects the candidate with the highest number of passionate supporters, not the candidate most preferred versus all other candidates. In an election with 4 candidates, for example, if 100% of voters list candidate A as their 2nd choice, but 33% list candidate B as their first choice, 33% list candidate C as their first choice, and 33% list candidate D as their first choice, candidate A couldn’t be elected even though they are clearly the consensus candidate. Ironically they would be the first eliminated.
IRV is a vast improvement over FPTP, but it is still a deeply flawed system that not only selects winners that are less popularly supported than other candidates, it also allows for tactical voting which prevents the true expression of preference when voting that is required in a democracy.
SUMMARY
Our government is functionally broken because the people that control it are selected by a fatally flawed voting system from the 1700s. Our voting system not only does a poor job of picking winners from candidates, the most devastating defeat is that the people best suited to govern simply don’t run because they couldn’t be elected. If you ask a highly-intelligent, motivated person that cares deeply about their city, state or nation if they would consider running for public office, 99% of the time that person will laugh at you. They’re intelligent people and almost no intelligent person would run when they have no chance of winning. (Unless they were narcissistic, wealthy, or ideally both. See: modern American politics).
If we adopted a preference voting system, particularly Ranked Pairs, it would create a political renaissance in this country. The oppositional battle-lines drawn on every political issue would be replaced by a myriad of options that more truly reflect the totality of policy choices available to us.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this issue, it’s at the heart of every single stalemate, inaction and obstruction we see in the political world. And worst of all we’re robbed of the best individuals who should be leading us.
If you see the wisdom in this, don’t just spread the word to your friends (which you should do), bring this up with your city council members and mayor. The two largest national political parties and their state branches have a direct disincentive to see this crucial reform happen. You won’t find stronger boosters to a system then those who’s jobs rely on it, no matter how “good” they may be; they were picked because they are true-believers. Local politicians are generally least influenced by party affiliation and tend to be more consensus driven than divisive; we should convinced them first. When people see the incredible results of preference voting first-hand at the local level they will soon demand it at the state and national levels. So get out there and get your neighborhood behind it and the city will follow.
We’ll never stop needing to Throw the Bums Out as long as our voting system only selects bums. - Due to Duverger’s Law, FPTP leads to a two-party monopoly, as we’ve seen for almost all of our history.Two parties in power will continually shift to each represent 50% of the electorate, preventing the creation of “third parties”.
