Why Ranked-Choice Voting Won’t Fix Our Democracy
Ranked-choice voting is a system where voters rank candidates on their ballots in order of preference to determine a winner. Some systems, including many in the United States, limit the number of candidates voters rank, but other systems have voters rank all the candidates. If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate in the last place gets eliminated and the second-place votes from their supporters get added to other candidate’s totals. This process repeats until one candidate gets over 50% of the vote. Ranked-choice voting has gained popularity lately, with former presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Pete Buttigieg all expressing support for the system during their campaigns, and comedian Hasan Minhaj recently endorsing ranked-choice voting on his show, Patriot Act. Maine is currently the only state in the U.S. to use ranked-choice voting, although many cities, including San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland, use it as well. Advocates of ranked-choice voting claim that it will reduce negative campaigning, make elections fairer, and ensure that a majority of voters support winning candidates. In reality, ranked-choice voting often does none of these things and in some cases does the opposite, all while causing unnecessary confusion which can result in unintended consequences.
Many supporters of ranked-choice voting argue that ranked-choice voting will reduce negative campaigning because candidates will be afraid of losing second choice votes by attacking their opponents. However, a lot of negative campaigning is done not by candidates, but by political action coalitions, who will still be incentivized to go after candidates that disagree with them. Another claim that supporters of ranked-choice voting make is that ranked-choice voting is fairer. According to an article titled “Ranked Choice Voting: The Good, The Opaque, The Endgame,” one major issue with this argument is that ranked-choice voting counts second and third choices with the same weight as first choices. This means that candidates with the second-to-last number of first-place votes could eventually gain enough second- and third-place votes to win, which does not seem particularly fair.
Ranked-choice voting does not even deliver on its main selling point of the winning candidate always being supported by a majority of the population. One study looked at local elections that took place between 2008 and 2011 in Oakland, San Francisco, and San Leandro in California and Pierce County in Washington. All four places used ranked-choice voting systems where voters are supposed to rank their top three candidates. The study found that none of the winning candidates received a majority of votes, with the average percentage of total votes cast for the winners being about 45%. Part of the reason this occurred was that voters could potentially pick three candidates who get eliminated before any candidate has a majority. This means their vote would not influence who wins the election even if the voter had a strong preference between the remaining candidates. The percent of eliminated ballots in the elections ranged from 9.6% in San Leandro to 27.1% in San Francisco. As the study points out, ranked-choice voting advocates could argue that these numbers would go way down if voters were asked to rank all of the candidates instead of just three; however, this ignores another main problem with ranked-choice voting: many voters do not rank enough candidates. In smaller elections like those in Pierce County and San Leandro, ballots without enough candidates accounted for close to 100% of wasted votes because it was difficult or impossible to pick three candidates who did not make it to the final round. However, even in the San Francisco election where 16 candidates ran for mayor, ballots without enough choices accounted for 66.5% of ballots that were not used in the final round, and in Oakland, where 10 candidates ran for mayor, these ballots accounted for 77.5%. As these numbers show, even if these cities were to switch to a system where voters ranked all the candidates, many ballots would not end up counting towards the final round. If we assume that all the voters in these elections who completely filled out their ballots would rank every single candidate under a new system and that the number of people who did not complete the ranking remained consistent, 18% of votes in San Francisco and 8.9% of votes in Oakland would still not count in the final round. While our current system might force voters to sometimes choose the lesser of two evils, ranked-choice voting in all its forms prevents many voters from being involved in the final runoff altogether.
Another issue with ranked-choice voting is that it can be unclear who actually won an election. A good example of this occurred in the 2020 Iowa caucus. Caucuses work similarly to ranked-choice voting, with low ranking groups eliminated in each round and those group members joining the group of their second choice candidate. In the 2020 Iowa caucus, Bernie Sanders had the most first-place votes and claimed victory. However, Pete Buttigieg was enough people’s second choice that he won the delegate count and claimed victory, as well. Fortunately, the confusion over who had won did not seriously affect the rest of the race, but this might not be the case in other elections if ranked-choice voting is expanded. Under our current system, Donald Trump was able to convince almost half his supporters that he won the popular vote just by outright lying about millions of people voting illegally. If we switch to a ranked-choice voting system, there could be legitimate confusion in many elections, including the presidential election, about who the winners are. This would make it much easier for Trump and people like him to claim undeserved victories and spread mistrust in the system even farther than they already have.
Ranked-choice voting might not be the cure-all many hope it is, but there are other steps we can take to make our elections work better. One obvious reform for presidential elections is getting rid of the electoral college. While this still will not guarantee the candidate favored by the majority wins, it will at least make sure that candidates always have to win a plurality of votes to become president. There are also many suggestions about how to increase voter turnout without ranked-choice voting, ranging from universal voter registration to mandatory voting to having ballot stubs double as lottery tickets for a state-run lottery. Another possible reform is using more open primary systems like the one in California. In open primaries, candidates from all parties compete in the primary and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, run against each other in the general election. Open primaries result in more moderate politicians because candidates all have to compete for voters from across the political spectrum, and they get rid of third party spoiler candidates, two of the biggest benefits supposedly offered by ranked-choice voting. While we cannot completely fix our elections just by changing how we vote, there are many reforms we could implement to improve our elections.
