Range Voting vs ‘Ranked-choice Voting’
Suppose that your goal is to grow a populist third party, alongside of and without harming the Republican party, for the purpose of applying pressure to advance a limited-government philosophy in the Republican party. You realize that the threat of your populist party eventually displacing the GOP must be a real one, in order for your ‘gradual pressure’ tactic to be convincing and effective.
Which election system, Range Voting or Ranked-choice Voting, would you choose for this purpose?
Range voting is a benign system that allows each voter, at election time, to express his dissatisfaction with the incumbent’s stance on a particular issue, by alerting the incumbent to the fact that the voter has considered a specific third-party candidate as an alternative.
Thus, the voter can apply pressure to the incumbent, without having to take the drastic step of ‘throwing’ the incumbent ‘overboard’ for a third-party candidate.
Here’s how it works:
–Election #1: (Nov. 2021) Citizen X gives a full 1.0 vote to the major-party incumbent A, and, in order to express dissatisfaction with the incumbent on certain issues, also gives a fraction of a vote, say 0.7, to third-party candidate B.
–Election #2: (two years later) Because incumbent A has been unresponsive, Citizen X gives candidate B a larger vote. (say, 0.9)
At this point, incumbent A becomes fearful of what may happen in Election #3, which is coming up in just two years. He adjusts the policies of his administration accordingly.
Incumbent A’s submission to the applied ‘gradual pressure’ will become common knowledge among politicians in other districts; consequently, their responses to such pressure from their own constituents will be prompt.
So, range voting allows Citizen X to express himself at election time, and also allows the growth of a popular third party….a third party that up to this point has been benign in nature, and has effected policy without actually displacing a major-party candidate. Nor has the third party become a vote-splitter, by stealing any votes from an incumbent.
This third party has now achieved stability and permanence, and has become a readily-available tool of the citizenry.
….’Ranked-choice’ voting, on the other hand….
Ranked-choice voting, on the other hand, forces Citizen X into choosing on his ballot the number one spot for incumbent A, and the number two spot for the third-party candidate. Any other choice risks allowing the competing major-party candidate, whom Citizen X detests, into power.
There exists no ‘gradual pressure’ mechanism in ranked-choice voting. Citizen X has only two choices….Leave the incumbent in the number one position, or ‘throw’ him ‘overboard’ by moving him down to the number two position.
Just like the current ‘plurality voting’ in wide use, ranked-choice voting makes Citizen X fearful of giving a substantial vote to a candidate who has the ‘machine’ arrayed against him. It allows no flexibility in giving an incrementally larger vote to a populist candidate each election cycle, as a way of applying gradual pressure to obstinate major-party candidates.
This brick-like crudeness of ranked-choice voting has a demonstrated history in various parts of the world; this history is easily discovered with a little research.
The flaws of a newly-installed ranked-choice system will not be visible, at first.
When first introduced into a district, ranked-choice can, in fact, expand a small third party into a slightly larger third party; however, this expansion will trail off before the third party ever becomes an actual threat. In a close election, voters will not risk instigating a spoiler effect against a like-minded major-party candidate.
The act of moving candidates between the number one and number two spots is a huge step that can have a spoiler effect. Ranked-choice voting cannot grow a third party as effortlessly as can the more sophisticated Range Voting, which has absolutely no spoiler effect.
In the past two decades, the relatively well-known ranked-choice voting system has been proposed or implemented in over a dozen regions of the U.S. These areas are prime targets for conversion to Range Voting. Do some research, and contact your representative on the issue.
Do not be discouraged when your representative says “range voting is more complicated than ranked-choice”…it is actually much LESS complicated, and much more satisfying to the voter. Explain to your Rep. the following:
–RV allows voters more choices than ranked-choice, by allowing them to explicitly express their degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
–RV allows ballots to be counted in the precinct, rather than being shipped off to a central location for counting.
–RV allows election results to be counted immediately; ranked-choice often requires multiple recounts.
–RV allows the public to see how well each candidate did; ranked-choice only shows how the top candidates did, not the minor ones. (if your issue is minor, well of course you want to know how your candidate did!)
Before contacting your Rep, locate and download the article “Instant Runoff Voting: Looks Good, But Look Again” by Steven H. Unger, at cs.columbia.edu. We recommend skim-reading this article to locate the paragraphs that best allow you to prepare your presentation to your representative. http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html