Don't Be in Any Hurry to Enact Ranked Voting
In Theory, it Works. In Practice, It Disfavors Opposition to Dems
Several states use it, and it SOUNDS fair, to those who have not experienced it.
You make multiple choices, each representing your choice of candidate in multiple rounds of voting - typically, five rounds.
The candidates get totals in each round, and the one with the fewest votes is discarded. So, in the next round, there will be only four candidates. Each round, the one with the least votes will get eliminated.
It sounds a lot like Musical Chairs, doesn’t it? That was a popular children’s party game, that took away one chair in each round, and had people competing against each other when the music stopped. The one that ultimately was the one who was pushiest, willing to hip-check competitors, and ruthlessly grabbing for the remaining chair.
I did win my share of games. Yes, I’m a second child, and used to using force against a bigger competitor, if tears and charm won’t work.
Ranked voting works much the same way. In a contest to select someone who will work with other people - even those the politician may disagree with - the one who is completely out for himself, and willing to stab others in the back is one whose temperament is best suited to win.
It favors those who work to eliminate stronger competitors early - say, isn’t that what Barack Obama was expert at? - and is best played by Machiavellian types with no moral code.
Peltola won the state’s at-large congressional seat last year even though “nearly 60 percent of voters [cast] their ballots for a Republican.” As noted by FGA, this race also saw nearly 15,000 votes discarded due to so-called “ballot exhaustion.” The term “ballot exhaustion” is used to describe when voters select only one candidate on their ballot, and those ballots are tossed because their first choice didn’t win a majority in the first round.
Of the nearly 15,000 “exhausted” ballots thrown out in Alaska’s special congressional election, more than 11,000 were from voters who “voted for only one Republican candidate and no one else,” according to the report. RCV also played a major role in helping Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski win reelection during the 2022 midterms, which reportedly saw the “lowest voter turnout percentage on record.”
It explains why Sarah Palin didn’t win.
Here’s how it can work, for the record. The party machine keeps many fringe candidates off the ballot. That reduces the possibility that their favored candidate will get wiped out by a person who has no hope of going further than the second or third round.
Second, they encourage multiple candidates from the opposing party to run. Some have said that they also provide funds, but that has not - to my knowledge - been proven.
They manage to survive the nomination process by running the very professional signature process. Of course, ALL of these signatures are from “Lifetime GOP” voters, who ONLY want opposition to the dreaded strong candidate the Dems want to eliminate.
They manipulate the media to provide favorable coverage to these fringe candidates, and, with the assistance of newly unearthed “GOP” voters, create enough votes that, all of the candidates together manage to drive down the strong candidate’s lead to a precarious level, by siphoning off votes
Choice, right? And a neat way to deliver a message to the stronger candidate to listen to their concerns.
NO.
What happens then, is, with their fringe candidate eliminated, the voters find that their ballot is discarded. Each round, in a crowded race, ballots are gone.
There will ALWAYS be fewer Dem candidates. Their party leadership enforces the choice, and knocks off challengers, either in the nomination process, or later, shortly before the early voting and mail-in voting start.