Anti-democratic forces that have been gaining steam in recent years reached a boiling point in the 2020 election cycle, culminating in a full-blown crisis on Jan. 6. And while we have faced numerous challenges over the past year, this one is like none other because it is aimed squarely at democracy itself. The attack on the very symbol of American democracy, which was aimed at stopping the certification of the election, makes abundantly clear the urgent need to safeguard and strengthen our democratic institutions.
The good news in this dark time is that we have a reform, ranked-choice voting, that is a proven, powerful antidote to political extremism, and it has been introduced in the Minnesota Legislature this session.
Rep. Steve Elkins, DFL-Bloomington, and Sen. Kent Eken, DFL-Twin Valley, have introduced legislation (HF 89/SF 218) that would implement ranked-choice voting (RCV) in primary and general elections for state and federal offices, and would allow local jurisdictions to adopt RCV if they choose. With the bills receiving maximum sponsorship (35 in the House and five in the Senate), clone bills have been introduced by Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, and Sens. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, and Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton (HF 1375, SF 1651, SF 2159). HF 89 had its first hearing in the Minnesota House on March 17 in the Local Government Division.
How is our current system failing us?
The way we vote — our winner-take-all plurality elections — not only allows, but encourages candidates to run and win with their most fervent base of voters and without securing broad majority support. Elected leaders too often take office solely representing their base and ignoring the demands of most Americans. Hyperpartisanship and gridlock are the result.
The current system also makes spoilers out of minor party candidates so voters are essentially limited to two choices at the polls. This lack of meaningful competition means that candidates are not incentivized to appeal to voters beyond their base.
Extremists are present in other democratic countries but they are unlikely to wield the kind of political power they do in the U.S. under systems, like RCV, that promote majority rule and multiple parties. RCV, in conjunction with other electoral reforms, can serve as a bulwark against extremism. There is a growing consensus among political scientists that RCV is one of the top reforms we must enact to strengthen our democracy. This simple but powerful reform fosters political competition and requires winning candidates to build majority coalitions. Not only does the outcome more accurately reflect the will of the voters, more broadly accountable candidates make for more responsive officeholders.
[image_caption]Jeanne Massey[/image_caption]
RCV is used in Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Louis Park and, beginning this year, in Bloomington and Minnetonka — as it is in several cities across the country and statewide in Maine and Alaska.
Since candidates must earn both first and second choice votes, RCV diminishes negative, ad hominem attacks. It also allows voters to fully express their views and eliminates the spoiler problem with independent parties. Addressing this problem is critical to giving new voices a genuine opportunity to compete for votes and preventing the shenanigans we saw in 2020 when one major party ran candidates on the marijuana party ticket to peel votes away from candidates in the other major party. Both parties can play this game, and gamesmanship should not be deciding outcomes in a democracy.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, RCV opens up our system to new and diverse voices and leads to better electoral outcomes that more accurately reflect our pluralistic and multiracial democracy.
Democracy reform is our nation’s highest priority, and you can help push it forward in our state. Please contact your legislators and urge them to support ranked-choice voting (HF 89/SF 218).
Jeanne Massey is the executive director of FairVote Minnesota.
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Ranked Choice Voting makes a lot of sense. I do think it would tone down the partisanship, and allow more choice for the voter. I am not sure where the opposition comes from, except from those who benefit from our current system. Objections I have heard are: it would be too complicated for voters to figure out; it would mean too many candidates might run; and some votes would be dropped if some voters only ranked their top two or three choices in a race where there were more candidates to be ranked. It would be helpful to know how voters in Maine and Alaska view RCV since they have been using it for a while.
My objection is less to RCV itself, which is mostly harmless, and the falsehoods that are used to support in. Its a solution in search of a problem.
our winner-take-all plurality elections
RCV doesn’t change this. Under RCV, the winner will always take all. One candidate will win and all the others will lose. And that candidate will always have a plurlaity, at least at some point during the election process. What RCV does do is provide a chance for a mixed with each candidate getting different totals and perhaps a different ranking during the process.
RCV proponents prefer candidates with certain qualities over candidates with different sets of qualities. They don’t like the people who are elected under the current system. Well, it’s often the case that I don’t either. But elections will always have outcomes, and what that means is that one set of voters will be pleased with the outcome and another set of voters will not. RCV does nothing to change that.
While it is true that every candidate will disappoint someone, some candidates better represent more of society than others. The (theoretical) goal of elections is to pick the candidate with the broadest support. RCV does this better than FPPT, but only marginally. There are yet simpler and more representative options, like ‘score voting’, which is just like Amazon reviews, but for candidates.
If you want to see why voting systems matter, check out: https://ncase.me/ballot/
There is a ton of information about Ranked Choice Voting on the FairVoteMN.org website. It has been used in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and many other locations around the world for decades. Check out their FAQ for answers to all your questions. It is very popular wherever it’s been used. Once voters learn about the benefits, they do not want to give it up.
Sadly, a lot of the information on the website (like the information in this article) is completely false. Fairvote relies on misinformation and – in the case of claiming majority winners – outright falsehoods.
And actually, a number of jurisdictions that adopted it have later repealed it. In some cases because it led to perverse, undemocratic results. And some where people just figured out that the benefits falsely claimed by groups like Fairvote are nonexistent.
The ONLY thing about good thing about RANKED CHOICE VOTING is that it allows me to vote against Chelsea Clinton 6 times by listing any of the above ahead of her.
You would be better off not listing Chelsea on your ballot at all, because depending on how the candidates ahead of her do, your vote might count for her. That is one of the perverse outcomes of RCV.
It’s a pity she isn’t running for anything. All that venom, and nowhere to direct it.
Fairvote really is no better than the Republican groups trying to disenfranchise voters in Georgia and elsewhere. If you want to change voting laws, you shouldn’t be telling outright falsehoods to do so. But that’s how it happened in St. Paul. The group behind the campaign in St. Paul was cited and fined by a court for deliberately misleading voters.
https://www.twincities.com/2009/12/01/st-paul-group-that-backed-instant-runoff-voting-fined-5000-for-campaign-mailing/
The biggest falsehood here is the idea that RCV elections guarantee a majority winner. Some of the jurisdictions that have RCV don’t make this claim because they don’t lie to voters. Fairvote still has no such limitation.
The last two Minneapolis mayoral elections produced plurality winners. In 2017, there were 104,522 valid ballots cast. After all the rounds of re-allocation, Jacob Frey had 46,716 votes, or 44.7 percent. Ray Dehn, who finished second, got 34,971 votes (33.5 percent). But 22,835 voters (21.8 percent) did not put either Frey or Dehn anywhere on their ballots. Those voters showed up and cast legally valid ballots.
The only way you can say Frey won a majority is only counting the votes that went to either Frey or Dehn. The fifth of the electorate that voted for neither candidate apparently don’t count because they voted for the wrong people. This is no different than taking a regular election and discarding third-party votes and determining a majority based on the votes for the top 2. It would mean Clinton got a majority in 2016.
Obviously, the people who show up and cast legal, valid ballots count, despite Fairvote’s efforts to disenfranchise them. They can pretend there are majority winners, but if the point of a majority is consensus, you don’t have that with a candidate with 44 percent.
Betsy Hodges got just under 49 percent in 2013, but again was not a majority winner. Of course, under the old top-2 runoff system, there always were majority winners. RCV eliminated the guarantee of a consensus mayoral choice.
The other arguments regarding civility aren’t so much false as unsupported by evidence. And what you call negative campaigning may just be distinguishing yourself from your opposition. Its a solution in search of a problem.
I am open to making changes to voting. I actually do enjoy the number crunching from RCV even though it is an undemocratic system. But you can’t base your arguments on outright falsehoods. And that’s what Fairvote does.
Good article Jeanne, thank you.
It is important that our country provide more opportunities for candidates from other than the two entrenched parties. Other countries have congressional representation from minor parties. Why not the USA ? RCV is an eye opener out of our stilted system. Time is right for that now.
Except that RCV doesn’t do anything to help 3rd parties. It may help prevent 3rd parties from spoiling elections, because people who otherwise waste their votes on 3rd parties can have their votes reallocated to serious candidates.
These days, and for a while now, we have become accustomed to minority rule. In this century, two presidents took office while losing the popular vote. Because of gerrymandering in Congress, the political agenda is largely controlled by the minority instead of the majority party. It’s natural that we should want to do something about it. RCV is one way to do it, assembling as it does the assorted fragments of the electorate into a sort of jury rigged majority. For it’s supporters, it seems to be a way of electing candidates we like who lose under the current system. We can tag the candidate who are elected under the current system with focus group tested labels like “extremism” but really it comes down to the fact that we don’t like them. I don’t like some of them either, but is the election of people we don’t like really a justification for changing the system so that it does what some of us would like it do. And even if we did do that, can we really count on it to do it, to not mutate into a system which we end up disliking even more?