American Voting Methods

Voting Methods in America
The current state of voting and political rhetoric and gridlock seeming to be the new normal begs the question. What if there was a different voting method employed to select our elected officials would the outcomes and focus of the campaign change? What if there was a method choosing our leaders that fostered positive communications and message in order to garner the support of constituents instead of tearing your opponent down and never really focusing on the issues that matter to voters. Is a voting system like this even possible? If you would’ve asked me when I turned eighteen or even a few years ago if a change was necessary regarding the way America votes the answer would’ve been a resounding no. However,
the current state or gridlock and chaos surrounding local and national elections and the overall state of government seems to have hit an all-time low. Several years ago conducting research for a country study on Panama, I was taken back by the State Department assessment that the political upheaval and a complete rewriting of the rules that occurs every time a new president is elected was negatively affecting growth and stability in the country and region. Comparing the US to Panama may be a stretch, but most would not argue the point that our political system is not functioning properly. So with this in mind, let’s explore some fairness criteria, define the current system, identify some alternatives, share some cities that use the methods, and finally address some possible strategies to modify the voting methods.
Current System
The majority of US cities and national elections use the plurality method when citizens cast their votes for leaders seeking public office. The is arguably the simplest and cheapest of the voting methods, the winner is determined simply by the member with the most 1st choice votes. There is no need for preference ballots, because where the other candidates rank has no bearing on the outcome of the election. One of the major problems with this method of voting is when there are more than two candidates the odds of having winner declared who has not received majority support i.e. 50% of the votes is a common occurrence, secondly when multiple candidates run elections can be determined by a small number of votes making this method susceptible to manipulation by insincere voters and is quite common in real world elections. (Tannenbaum, 2014) The most recent Republican and Democratic primaries point out the challenges and possible outcomes being heavily influenced by the number of candidates and insincere voting affecting outcomes. Arguably, neither candidate has the majority of support from the two party’s bases, but have made it through the nomination process because of weaknesses in the plurality method and weighted methods used for delegate allocations. To further illustrate this point the Republican primaries began in February, Mr. Trump didn’t receive 50% of primary voters’ support until April 19. (Trump's Nomination Showed a Problem With How America Votes, n.d.)
Maine will be one of the first states to take to the ballot and decide if they are going to change the way they elect state officials, this fall a ballot initiative is being proposed to make the change to ranked-choice voting (RCV). The state has long been plagued by races that end without a clear mandate from the voters 9 of the last 11 governor races have ended with the winner being declared with less than majority support and support as low as 35% in the 1982 and 1988 races. (Trump's Nomination Showed a Problem With How America Votes, n.d.) Another shortfall of the plurality method is in races requiring a majority for a winner to be declared results in protracted, expensive run-off elections that often times are not decided until weeks or months after the election is held. One possible solution to avoid expensive run-off elections is the use of preference ballots and employing the plurality-with-elimination method or RCV this gives election officials a method to quickly determine the candidate with majority support as compared to the other candidates. Now that the current state is defined, let’s explore some of the criteria of fairness relating to voting methods.
Fairness Criteria Of all the voting methods that have been tried over human history the question of which is the best has stumped social scientist since the mid-1700s when two French mathematicians and philosophers defined and developed there prospective voting criteria and methods.
The analysis of the best voting method was tabled by economist Keith Arrow and he set out to at least define basic fairness criteria which is famously known as Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. Here are few of the criteria he determined to be essential in any fair election. The first criteria, Majority Criterion: states a candidate with a majority of 1st place votes should always be the winner. Next is the Condorcet criterion: a candidate that beats each of the other candidates in pairwise comparison should always be the winner. The next criterion is the monotonicity criterion that states if a candidate is declared the winner, he or she should still be the winner had a voter moved the candidate higher on their preference ballot and should not hurt by being moved up. The last criterion is now as the independence-of-irrelevant alternatives criterion, which states that the winning candidate should not be affected if one of the losing candidates had not been in the race. If a voting method violates one of these four criteria, the potential for an unfair result from using the voting method exists. (Tannenbaum, 2014) Presently social scientist and mathematicians have been unable to develop a method of voting that
doesn’t violate at least one of the criterion in every given scenario. The Next topic will be ranked-choice voting, some of the benefits and drawbacks associated with this method, and some US cities and states that have moved to this type of voting system.
Ranked-Choice Voting Method The prospect of moving away from the plurality method of voting in America has been gaining support nationally to shift to RCV and is already in place on the local level in some US cities like Cambridge, MA, San Francisco, CA, and Cary, NC to name a few.
Additionally, several states use this method for overseas voters in the event of a run-off election. (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff- FairVote, n.d.) Some of the benefits of a RCV system include promoting majority support, decreasing negative campaigning, minimizes strategic voting, mitigates impact of money in politics, saves money and time when replacing primaries or run-offs, provides more choice to voters, promotes reflective representation, and provides fair representation when electing multi-winner elections. (Ranked Choice Voting - An American Voting System, n.d.) One of the negatives of a system of voting like this many would argue is it could potentially lead to a large number of candidates for a particular election giving the citizens so many options leading to a blurring of the principles between the candidates. To address these issues of inclusion and fairness states like California and Washington have moved to a top-two system where a primary is held including all party affiliated candidates compete for the top two spots in the general election. Using RCV and moving to a top-four system in the primaries would allow more opportunity for third-party or independent candidates inclusion in elections.
As referenced earlier when addressing fairness, no system of voting will meet the four criterion in every situation. A weakness of RCV is a problem explained by political science professor Vladimir Kogan of Ohio State University know as ballot exhaustion in were either a voter doesn’t rank enough candidates leading to all of a voters’ choices being eliminated prior to the final rounds of RCV election. (Trump's Nomination Showed a Problem With How America Votes, n.d.) For the concept and process of moving to a RCV system nationwide both major parties would have to agree to rules changes in the way they conduct primaries and would likely require an amendment to the constitution to implement the method for presidential elections.
Summary
In closing, the need for a shift in the voting methods employed in America have come under intense scrutiny in recent elections locally and nationally. The current state of gridlock, never ending negative campaigning, and candidates winning without having majority support have shifted the paradigm to the point were many local governments have shifted away from the plurality method in favor of ranked-choice voting. The calls for national and state governments to make the shift may continue to grow louder as the problems with plurality voting garner more attention from the public and media. Nothing illustrates these issues more than the Republican and Democratic nominees for president currently are seen by a large majority of both parties as flawed and untrustworthy candidates. Which begs the question how did they get to nomination with such a lack of support from voters. The least bad option is not a very positive prospect for America going forward, but that is the choice American voters will have to make this November. Ranked-choice voting will not solve all of the problems with the current system but, should receive serious consideration as an alternative. The unintended consequences or outcomes would not be fully realized until it was implemented and would no doubt change the trajectory of voting in America for quite some time but it bears serious consideration and research because of the problems it would address.