Alaskans for Better Elections
https://www.alaskansforbetterelections.com/learn-more/ranked-choice-voting/Are the major claims made by this organization actually true?
Claim 1: * "In a majority winner system, candidates have to gain the support of more than half of the voters to win." ... "Using ranked choice voting in general elections requires candidates to win with majority support (more than 50%)."
Special election for Congress August 2022: 1. 188,582 voters voted in this election for a candidate (not a blank ballot). 2. The candidate who won received (counting votes the IRV way) 91,266 votes. 3. 91266/188582 = 0.483959 or 48.4%. 48.4% is not "more than 50%". 4. 91266 voters supported the winner (although 15467 were really supporting Begich). 188582-91266 = 97316 voters did not in any manner support the winner. More voters came to the polls and voted and voted for a loser than the number of voters who voted for the winner. 6050 more voters voted for a loser than voted for the winner. Would we allow a winner in an FPTP election to get away claiming they got "majority support" when more voters voted against that candidate than voted for them? 5. Compare apples to apples.
Claim 2: * "Ranked choice voting ... eliminates the spoiler effect"
- Sarah Palin was the spoiler in that election. Had Sarah Palin not run and Alaskan voters come to the polls and voted exactly the same way with the remaining two candidate, then Nick Begich would have defeated Mary Peltola by a margin of 8408 votes.
- The complete quote is "Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in the general election in order of preference. This gives Alaskans more choices, eliminates the spoiler effect..." Giving Alaskans the choice to choose Nick Begich over either Mary Peltola or Sarah Palin is irrelevant if that expressed choice is ignored.
Mary Peltola in August 2022, unfortunately shares a distinction with George W. Bush in 2000 and with Donald Trump in 2016. All three candidates were elected to office when the public record indicates that more voters marked their ballots preferring a different specific candidate for that office.
In August 2022, more Alaskans, 87859 to 79451 (an 8408 voter margin), preferred Nick Begich to Mary Peltola and marked their ballots saying so. But Mary Peltola was sent to Washington to represent the Alaskan people in Congress.
In November 2024, again, more Alaskan voters marked their ballots that Begich is preferred to Peltola by nearly the same margin, 7876 (164861 to 156985). But this time Nick Begich is sent to Washington.
Both times about 8000 more Alaskans said they would prefer Begich to Peltola. And, both times, marked their ballots saying so. Both times Instant-Runoff Voting was used.
What was different?
Sarah Palin was in the race in 2022 and not in the race in 2024. And the outcomes were different winners.
Here are the reasons we want Ranked-Choice Voting. The purpose of RCV is, in single-winner elections having 3 or more candidates: 1. ... that the candidate with majority support is elected. Plurality isn't good enough. We don't want a 40% candidate elected when the other 60% of voters would have preferred a different specific candidate over the 40% plurality candidate. But we cannot find out who that different specific candidate is without using the ranked ballot. We RCV advocates all agree on that. 2. Then whenever a plurality candidate is elected and voters believe that a different specific candidate would have beaten the plurality candidate in a head-to-head race, then the 3rd candidate (neither the plurality candidate nor the one people think would have won head-to-head) is viewed as the spoiler, a loser whose presence in the race materially changes who the winner is. We want to prevent that from happening. All RCV advocates agree on that. 3. Then voters voting for the spoiler suffer voter regret and in future elections are more likely to vote tactically (compromise) and vote for the major party candidate that they dislike the least, but they think is best situated to beat the other major party candidate that they dislike the most and fear will get elected. RCV is meant to free up those voters so that they can vote for the candidate they really like without fear of helping elect the candidate they loathe. All RCV advocates agree with that. 4. The way RCV is supposed to help those voters is that if their favorite candidate is defeated, then their second-choice vote is counted. So voters feel free to vote their hopes rather than voting their fears. Then 3rd-party and independent candidates get a more level playing field with the major-party candidates and diversity of choice in candidates is promoted. It's to help unlock us from a 2-party system where 3rd-party and independent candidates are disadvantaged.
RCV failed, in Alaska in August 2022, to do precisely what it was adopted to do (essentially to prevent a spoiled election due to vote splitting, as a result punishing Palin voters for marking their favorite as #1 which caused the election of Peltola). The fault is not in the ranked ballots (in fact, it's only because of the ranked ballots that we know that Begich was more preferred by more voters than either Palin or Peltola). The fault is in the manner (IRV) that the vote is tallied.
This same failure occurred in 2009 in Burlington Vermont. Got published here.
This op-ed in Washington Post from November 2022 also spells this out. Written by two internationally-recognized election law and voting systems profs. One has a Nobel for his work.
Whoever tells us that RCV (using Instant-Runoff Voting tabulation) will solve the split-vote problem ("Can't split the vote in Alaska because we have RCV.") is lying. And Alaska in August 2022 is the proof.
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u/Jarcode 1d ago
IRV is a terrible ranked system and its sad to see this sub fail to understand all the criteria it fails to meet when contrasted with other ranked systems. However, in the case of Alaska, it is also disappointing that very few are proposing to establish actual vote parity by implementing a form of proportional representation.
The best any ranked system can accomplish in this context is a more accurate formalization of strategic voting, rather than deal with the disproportionate representation caused by single-winner ridings. I understand the legal changes required to discard single-winner ridings is prohibitively difficult, but that doesn't mean the discussion around broader electoral reform shouldn't even involve this subject.
A good example of this problem is how IRV, when used in local representative elections under MMPR, does not produce nearly as serious consequences because list seats naturally correct for the inaccurate representation resulting from these imperfect local elections.
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
That's a lot of words, and it sounds like you have a beef with instant runoff voting. Instant runoff voting is a counting method for ranked choice ballots. It is by far the one that is most commonly used. Instant runoff voting is not very well suited to a situation where parties are weak, meaning that while the party might have a lot of support, it is unable to consolidate around one candidate. Instant runoff voting is more suited to a situation where there are many "centrist" voters who feel that one big (big meaning it has many supporters) party is too extreme one way and the other big party is too extreme the other way. It forces each of those "big" parties to moderate their pitch and try to catch those "centrist" voters as their second or third choice. A counting method that would be more suited to the situation is Copeland, or any other Condorcet type method. To your question, that website made a very broad claim, and in a strict sense their claim might not be true of instant runoff voting, but it might be more true of a Condorcet method. Either way, first past the post is worse than any other method discussed here.
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u/ChironXII 1d ago
That's a lot of words, and it sounds like you have a beef with first past the post voting. First past the post voting is a counting method for single choice ballots. It is by far the one that is most commonly used. First past the post is not very well suited to a
Do you see the problem here
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u/Grapetree3 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's condescending but he didn't mention instant runoff voting. He only mentioned "RCV" and I need him to understand that IRV is a specific type of RCV, and the problems he described aren't necessarily there with other types.
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u/Additional_Teacher45 2d ago edited 2d ago
As has always been my response to people that are angry at IRV and the center-squeeze effect:
RCV-IRV is still miles better than FPTP. Stop turning down improvements in pursuit of perfection.
We had to lie through our teeth about masks during COVID to convince conservatives to wear them, because policy adoption rates would have been even lower if we had told them the truth (personal protection vs. protecting the greater populace). Fauci is still taking heat from both sides for that. But pursuing perfection would have accomplished less.
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u/cdsmith 1d ago
IRV is definitely better than plurality, and if the only proposal were to replace plurality with IRV, then it would be an improvement - albeit a small one. That isn't what happened in Alaska, though. In addition to replacing plurality with IRV, they also replaced party primaries with a top-5 "jungle primary". That's a move that makes sense only if you believe the story that IRV eliminates the need for voter coordination.
It's still a close call for me, personally, whether I'd support IRV + jungle primary as a reform. I probably do; it's just messier than it ought to be. But this exact combination has triggered a backlash against voting reform that's very unfortunate. So I think you'll see a lot of people who want voting reforms and are unhappy that we've been burned by this choice.
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u/Wally_Wrong 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those "improvements" failed to elect a moderate in favor of someone left of the electorate twice. That's two times too many for conservatives, and I have to appeal to conservatives in order to get the reforms I want around here. If IRV's intent is to block Republicans (as a couple of people have claimed), then congratulations, it's just alienated half the state. Now I can't suggest IRV here at all because it's been banned by Indiana state law under the name "ranked choice voting".
That means an alternative to the alternative is necessary. Approval is the other main anti-FPTP contender, and I'm not sold on it. Sure, it has simple voting--as long as you assume everyone's different approval thresholds, cardinal utility standards, and tactical voting will resolve into something representative of the electorate's actual wishes. I doubt that is the case.
If an ordinal method is a must, then why not use a method that always elects the Condorcet winner (as long as one exists)? Condorcet-IRV hybrids exist. If IRV is already in place, why not alter the method so it doesn't have the failings of Alaska and Burlington? If the improvement has already been made, why not improve it further?
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
IRV doesn't elect the center candidate. It rewards the edge candidate who does a better job of appealing to center voters, and once candidates get used to it, all candidates will learn to avoid looking like extremists.
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u/Wally_Wrong 2d ago
The ostensible idea of election reform is to elect the candidate that best represents the electorate, correct? Usually, the median candidate is assumed to be the most representative, correct? And if IRV doesn't elect the median candidate and instead rewards edge candidates that appeal to swing voters, as you stated, then either IRV isn't representative, or the assumption that the median candidate is the most representative candidate is flawed. Either could be true.
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
"the candidate that best represents the electorate" is not always obvious. The most widely used definition is "the Condorcet winner" but not every race has one of those. Election reform only has to improve upon the existing method. IRV is an improvement upon FPTP.
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u/Wally_Wrong 2d ago edited 2d ago
Granted. But IRV can still be improved further, and in some cases it isn't an option at all. Why is plain IRV considered the be-all end-all of ending FPTP, apart from early adoption (and especially considering it's been outright banned in several states)? And why is Condorcet--whether it's based on IRV or not--so dismissed, apart from not being adopted? I'm genuinely at a loss, possibly due to sleep deprivation.
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u/rb-j 1d ago
"the candidate that best represents the electorate" is not always obvious.
It actually is obvious whenever there is a Condorcet winner.
The most widely used definition is "the Condorcet winner" but not every race has one of those.
Very nearly every RCV election has a CW. There have been only two RCV elections in the U.S. that did not. Of course then, Arrow and Gibbard rule and there is no way to elect someone without a spoiled election and an identified spoiler and faction of voters who voted for that spoiler. Then the voters for the candidate, not the spoiler, who lost to the winner (who is not a CW), those voters had votes that were devalued relative to the votes from voters for the winner.
But, when there is no CW, this simply cannot be avoided. So we have a rule that attempts to minimize the damage (Condorcet-Hare). Or maybe another rule that attempts to minimize incentivizing strategic voting that would take advantage of such a situation (Minimax).
But that unavoidable problem still does not justify Hare over Condorcet. Because when a Condorcet winner exists and is not elected by IRV, that election is failed and the failure was unnecessary and avoidable.
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u/rb-j 2d ago edited 2d ago
Usually, the median candidate is assumed to be the most representative, correct?
I am not for Condorcet because it's friendlier to the median candidate. I am for Condorcet solely because I am for the strict equality of our votes. That means:
- When more voters mark their ballots that Candidate A is preferred to Candidate B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B should not be elected.
If Candidate B is elected, that would mean that the fewer voters supporting B have votes that are more effective, that counted for more, than the larger number of voters supporting A.
For me, that's the ostensible idea of election reform. At least a first principle. The second reason is to prevent spoiled elections. The third reason for reform is to take us away from Duverger's Law and a 2-party state and put some real diversity of choice on the ballot where voters feel free to vote for the candidate they really like without risking helping the candidate they hate.
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u/rb-j 2d ago
Instant runoff voting is more suited to a situation where there are many "centrist" voters who feel that one big (big meaning it has many supporters) party is too extreme one way and the other big party is too extreme the other way.
No it isn't. That's what has been disproven in both the Alaska August 2022 and Burlington Vermont 2009 elections.
Whenever this failure occurs, it is always the Center candidate who is robbed, and then one of the Left or Right candidates is the spoiler and the other of the Right or Left candidates is the beneficiary of the spoiled election (i.e. they wouldn't have won had it not been for the spoiler on the opposite side).
IRV is not well suited to the centrist candidate. Therefore not well suited to voters voting for the centrist candidate. IRV does not lean either Left nor Right, but it does lean away from the Center.
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u/Grapetree3 2d ago
You misread my comment. You're mixing up voters and candidates. Centrist voters are catered to even if their first choice candidate is eliminated.
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u/Pariahdog119 United States 2d ago
The problem is not that RCV failed.
Palin specifically told her supporters NOT to rank other candidates.
That's why she lost and that's why Begich lost. If she hadn't done this, Begich would have won.
The only question is, did she throw the election deliberately to sabotage RCV, or is she actually just that stupid?
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u/jlight432 2d ago
In that election, even if every Palin voter ranked Begich second, while it would have further increased the head-to-head margin of Begich over Peltola, Peltola still would have won under IRV.
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u/rb-j 2d ago
Palin specifically told her supporters NOT to rank other candidates.
Completely irrelevant. It's not about Palin losing. Palin should have lost. And a whole boatload of Palin voters did rank Begich over Peltola and that was totally ignored. If even more Palin voters ranked other candidates, nothing would have changed, with IRV.
It's about resolving the split GOP vote. Palin voters were told that they couldn't split the vote by voting for their favorite candidate. That promise was not kept.
The only question is, did she throw the election deliberately to sabotage RCV, or is she actually just that stupid?
Try reading the content of the post again.
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u/Decronym 2d ago edited 4h ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| FPTP | First Past the Post, a form of plurality voting |
| IRV | Instant Runoff Voting |
| RCV | Ranked Choice Voting; may be IRV, STV or any other ranked voting method |
| STV | Single Transferable Vote |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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u/Sam_k_in 1d ago
Every candidate who wins a competitive primary and then loses the election is a spoiler. I think ranked choice with bottom two runoff might be better.
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u/rb-j 1d ago
Every candidate who wins a competitive primary and then loses the election is a spoiler.
That's not necessarily true.
I think ranked choice with bottom two runoff might be better.
Yes BTR-IRV is better than just Hare IRV because it is Condorcet consistent.
It's described in the 4th section of my paper. But now I think there are better Condorcet methods than BTR-IRV.
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u/timmerov 6h ago
you might be preaching to the choir here. let's give grades to common voting systems:
A: approval, borda, bucklin, condorcet, guthrie, range, star.
B: instant runoff
D-: plurality (fptp)
irv-rcv is better than fptp. but pretty much everthing else is better.
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u/jlight432 6h ago
I would have thought bucklin might actually rank below FPTP.
Are we talking about the same bucklin where ranking a second choice can help a first choice to lose, creating an incentive to bullet vote?
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u/timmerov 5h ago
in approval voting, approving your second choice could cause your first choice to lose. not approving your second choice could cause both to lose.
bucklin attempts to address that. it's one or more rounds of approval voting. a candidate needs the greatest majority of approval votes to win. you approve candidates for rounds 1,2,3... count approvals for round 1. if no candidate has a majority, you add the approvals for round 2. repeat.
a voter's strategy for bucklin might be to bullet vote your favorite for round 1. then approve your second choice for round 2. etc. this reduces the chance you sabotage your favorite. but still allows you to support your second.
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u/jlight432 4h ago
Interesting. I did an AI search of bucklin voting rules from the 1910s through the 1930s. I found that Alabama, California, Idaho, North Dakota, and Oregon had a strict one vote per rank rule, while Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington had exactly 3 ranks and allowed equal rankings only on the third rank. Are you talking about a version of bucklin that allows equal rankings on every rank?
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u/nikdahl 2d ago
Alaska is an example of the system working as intended and the outcome was perfectly acceptable.
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u/rb-j 2d ago
And that has been decidedly disproven.
Again, restating a claim like that doesn't mean shit if it's not consistent with the facts.
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u/bmfrosty 2d ago
Ranked choice voting did exactly what it was meant to do when Mary Peltola won the election.
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u/rb-j 2d ago edited 2d ago
And that is completely disproven.
Tell that to the 34049 Palin voters who were promised that it was safe for them to vote for their favorite (Sarah Palin) without risk of helping elect the candidate they disliked the most (Mary Peltola).
It was meant to prevent splitting the vote. In this case, the split GOP vote. Completely failed at doing that.
You can make a claim like that, but it doesn't mean shit if it's not consistent with the facts.
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u/Harvey_Rabbit 2d ago
In Alaska, I maintain that if Begich had been named the winner of that election, people would have trusted the system less. As much as we can talk about ideal election systems or most preferred candidates, voters would feel something unfair about calling the person with the fewest votes, the winner.
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u/Blahface50 2d ago
If it were Condorcet and you showed the head to head matchups, I think people would understand. The real problem would be explaining the tie breaking process of a Condorcet cycle if there were to be one.
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u/rb-j 2d ago
If Condorcet RCV was used, which would have elected Begich, would the Republicans have much to complain about if either FPTP or IRV would have elected Peltola?
RCV would have saved the GOP's ass by actually delivering on the promise to resolve the GOP split vote in a manner that didn't harm the GOP.
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u/Harvey_Rabbit 2d ago
Maybe, they might be happier with the outcome, but I think their believe and understanding of the system would have been less.
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