Rank Choice Voting Can Make our Politics Less Divisive
No more voting for the lesser evil
Many of us are distraught about the increasing polarization of politics in the United States. What once was unthinkable is now commonplace: violence in the name of online extremism. It’s the common thread connecting mass shooters (if we take many of their manifestos at face value) and coordinated militia attacks such as occurred on January 6th, 2021.
Other examples include recent armed protests at drag shows, attacks on power infrastructure in Washington, Oregon, and now North Carolina, and widespread instances of harassment and intimidation both online and in person. Many of these instances were directly provoked by malignant actors seeking to leverage their large social media followings to retaliate against others.
Something is amiss as our politics descends into a mess of chaos and divisiveness. And it’s not something that can be solved by a particular policy, or by a particular candidate. It might not be solvable at all with any sort of finality. It might, however, be manageable.
Rather than looking for a silver bullet, we should seek small, incremental structural reforms that taken together can realign our political incentives and turn down the national temperature. It’s about directing political self-interest towards the common good, which is a concept that forms the very basis of the American government and its checks and balances.
Changing how we select our leaders is a major part of that effort, and this is where rank-choice voting (RCV) comes in, as well as similar voting systems such as approval voting and STAR voting. Rather than limiting voters to only one vote for each office, rank-choice voting allows voters to instead rank multiple candidates by order of preference. Do you not like Candidate A? Well, then mark your first choice as Candidate B, and then your second choice as Candidate C.
What does this do? RCV also includes what’s known as an instant runoff. When the votes are tallied, and one candidate has not reached a majority, then the candidate with the fewest votes is thrown out and their second choice on those ballots where that candidate was ranked first receives those votes. So, if Candidate B receives the fewest votes, your vote would go to your second choice, Candidate C.
Even if Candidate A won the most votes in the first round, if Candidate C was the second choice of enough voters who ranked Candidate B first, then C could still win. This means that the candidate representing the preferences of the greatest number of voters wins. You could vote for the candidate that most represents your views without worrying that you might be helping a candidate whose views you detest win.
How has this played out in an actual election? An excellent example is the special election for the US House district in Alaska. The major candidates in this election were two Republicans, Nick Begich and Sarah Palin, and a Democrat, Mary Peltola. Begich was a moderate Republican with an independent streak, while Palin ran as a conservative firebrand, as was expected. Peltola ran as a moderate Democrat with a laser focus on local issues, such as preserving fisheries.
Moderate Republicans and some independents preferred Begich as their first choice. But many of these voters who might otherwise have voted for a Republican as their second choice were turned off by Palin’s divisive rhetoric that only appealed to conservative and MAGA Republicans. They either ranked the moderate Peltola second or left their second choice blank.
The result was Begich finishing third, Palin second, and Peltola first, with no candidate getting a majority. This is where the instant run-off came in. Since the combined vote of the Republican candidates was a majority, you might have expected that Palin would win the runoff. However, because more Begich voters ranked Peltola second (or did not rank a second choice), she won the election.
The instant run-off revealed the true preference of a majority of voters for a moderate candidate, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican. Because voters have the option of ranking candidates, it’s in each candidate’s interest to not alienate voters who have a stronger preference for another candidate. They still want to at least be voters’ second choice.
With rank-choice voting, candidates are incentivized to moderate their views and appeal to the largest possible swath of the electorate. Rather than focusing on driving up the turnout of their most committed voters, candidates must focus on the persuasion of less committed voters. The result is more moderate, less divisive politics, and better representation of the true preferences of the electorate.
Our current voting system in most jurisdictions, where voters only choose one candidate who wins with a plurality, is known as “first past the post” (FPTP) voting and is not common in modern democracies. In FPTP voters must choose the most likely candidate over a candidate they dislike. This is where the dynamic of voting for the “lesser of two evils” comes from. It’s a rational voting strategy based on how our election winners are determined.
Activists across the country are recognizing that it’s these incentives that are driving so many of our political problems. An entire political party has formed around promoting rank-choice voting and other systemic reforms. The Forward Party, created by current and former politicians and activists from both major parties, is now the third largest party in the country with plans to run candidates in local races across the country.
With a focus on building up from the grassroots to the national level, Forward’s strategy of implementing RCV at the local and state level might be what we need to reform our politics nationwide. Already these efforts have borne fruit in states such as Maine, Alaska, and Nevada, where statewide elections already use RCV. Additionally, many large cities, such as Seattle and Portland, have adopted RCV to run city-wide elections. The momentum is building quickly.
While it would not solve all our political problems, rank-choice voting would be a good first step towards changing political incentives in a way that turns down the national temperature. It would be a dramatic improvement in how we run our elections and allow voters to express their true preferences and feel that they have a genuine voice in our democracy.