Ranked Choice Voting: A Different Way of Casting and Counting Votes David C. Kimball and Joseph Anthony 1 Can changing the way votes are cast and counted change how campaigns are conducted and who is elected? This chapter examines ranked choice voting, a different set of voting rules than the plurality system we are accustomed to in the United States. Ranked choice voting asks voters to rank candidates by order of preference, allowing for a more complete expression of a voter’s candidate preferences. Several American cities have recently adopted ranked choice voting for local elections. Based on our limited experience with these new voting rules, ranked choice voting appears to improve on plurality voting rules in several ways: (1) attracting more candidates for local office, particularly women and people of color; (2) reducing incentives for negative campaigns; (3) and lessening the burden on voters and local governments by consolidating two elections into one. However, there are concerns that ranked choice voting rules are more complicated for voters and some voters may not take full advantage of these rules. Issues with Plurality, Winner-Take-All Voting Casual observers of American politics may not appreciate how crucial the voting rules are in shaping political competition and determining whose interests are represented in government. Since the nation’s founding, the United States has relied almost exclusively on plurality, or “winner-take-all,” rules for electing government officials. Plurality voting rules are very simple. Candidates compete for an office and voters mark their ballots to indicate the single candidate they prefer the most. The ballots are then counted and the candidate receiving the most votes wins the seat, even if it is not a majority of votes. This is how most elective offices are filled in the United States, and this is how most party nominees are chosen in primary elections. In some states and in many cities, if no candidate receives a majority of votes then the top two finishers advance to a winner-take- 2 all runoff election held a few weeks later. The winner of the runoff election then wins the office. Plurality voting rules are as American as apple pie. Since plurality rules have been used for over two hundred years in the United States, there is a certain amount of comfort and familiarity with these rules. Since the rules are simple, they are easy for voters to understand, and election results are determined as soon as the ballots are counted. Furthermore, by electing a single representative, plurality systems provide clear lines of responsibility about which constituents are supposed to be represented by a particular official. However, there are some important consequences of plurality systems. As the name implies, in an election featuring several candidates the winner may receive less than a majority of votes. In other words, the winning candidate may be someone not preferred by a majority of voters. Isn’t democracy supposed to mean that the majority rules? This is not a minor feature of plurality voting rules. For example, in nine of the last eleven gubernatorial elections in Maine the winning candidate received less than a majority of votes (Greenblatt 2016). Similarly, plurality rules helped Donald Trump win the Republican nomination for president in 2016 even though he earned less than a majority of the popular vote in the nomination contests (McGill 2016). Thus, plurality voting procedures can sometimes thwart the principle of “majority rule,” a central principle of democracy. More often, however, plurality rules tend to exaggerate the political power of the majority party. Voters in the majority tend to support candidates that share their political 3 views and demographic traits. If voters in a minority group prefer different candidates, then they usually lose because they simply do not have the votes to compete with the majority. For minority groups to be competitive, district boundaries need to be drawn in such a way that the minority comprises a significant portion of the voting population (i.e., close to a majority) in some districts. However, drawing districts to favor a particular group is controversial (see Chapter X in this volume). Furthermore, the winner-take-all nature of plurality elections means that the majority party (which usually controls the redistricting process) has an incentive to create as many districts as possible that favor the majority party. As a result, plurality systems tend to award the majority party a larger share of seats in the legislature than its share of the popular vote, particularly if voters in the majority party are roughly evenly distributed geographically in a state or country (Dahl 1998; Calvo and Rodden 2015). For example, in the 2014 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic candidates in Maryland won 57% of the popular vote but earned 7 of the 8 seats up for election (87.5%). Republican candidates in Maryland received 41% of the votes but won only 1 of 8 seats (12.5%). In the same election in Pennsylvania, Republican candidates received 55% of the vote but won 13 of the state’s 18 seats (72%). When votes are translated into seats in plurality systems, the largest party tends to win a disproportionate share. A related consequence of plurality rules is that smaller, minor political parties rarely win any elected offices. Under plurality rules, voters can only express a preference for one candidate, and that vote is not transferable to other candidates if a voter’s preferred choice loses. Thus, a voter may prefer a third party or independent candidate, but if he or she chooses this candidate the voter has essentially “wasted” a vote on a lost cause. 4 Furthermore, a third party voter may see her least preferred candidate win the election. In other words, third party candidates are often perceived to be spoiler candidates rather than viable choices for voters. Thus, supporters of minority parties or independent candidates usually wind up casting their votes for the least offensive major party candidate. Similarly, in the American plurality system ambitious politicians are advised to run as a Democrat or as a Republican in order to have a decent chance of winning an election. Thus, plurality rules tend to produce a system of political competition with two major political parties, limiting the number of choices for voters (Duverger 1954). Finally, plurality rules seem to influence the tactical side of political campaigns. Plurality elections produce one winner and many losers, hence the “winner-take-all” moniker. There are no partial winners. The zero-sum nature of plurality voting rules provides a strong incentive for candidates to engage in negative campaigning. Most other countries do not use plurality rules. Instead, most countries use voting rules which ensure that legislative seats are awarded in close proportion to a party’s voting strength. For example, in national elections in countries such as Belgium, Finland, South Africa, and Turkey, voters select their preferred political party on the ballot. When ballots are counted each party is awarded a number of seats in the legislature in proportion to its share of the vote. For example, if a party wins 30% of the vote it is awarded 30% of the legislative seats. Since plurality voting rules attract fewer parties and choices for voters, voter turnout tends to be lower in countries with plurality systems (Blais and Carty 1990; Franklin 1996). Furthermore, plurality rules encourage local party leaders to recruit candidates with broad appeal in their district. Party leaders, who tend to be men, usually 5 look for candidates with the characteristics of previous winners, usually men. A strong incumbency advantage in plurality elections also makes it difficult for female challengers to defeat men who already hold a seat. Thus, women tend to win a smaller share of seats in national legislatures elected under plurality voting rules (Norris 2004). Similarly, since plurality rules favor majority groups, some argue that racial and ethnic minorities tend to be underrepresented to a greater degree in legislatures chosen by plurality voting rules (Lijphart 1999), although evidence on this hypothesis is mixed (Norris 2004). Nevertheless, plurality voting rules tend to exaggerate the political representation of majority parties and groups at the expense of minority groups, particularly when the minority population is geographically dispersed. No voting rules are perfect, and plurality rules seem to fall short in terms of giving equal representation to various groups in a democracy. Ranked Choice Voting as an Alternative Plurality voting rules are not required by the Constitution or any national law in the United States, and some states and cities have considered or adopted alternative voting rules.1 Several American jurisdictions now use preferential voting rules, which allow voters to provide a fuller reporting of their candidate preferences. Preferential rules, which are designed to address some of the weaknesses of winner-take-all, plurality systems, differ from plurality rules in two important ways: (1) how voters complete their ballots, and (2) how ballots are counted. Ranked choice voting (RCV) is one type of preferential voting system that has been adopted in several American cities and in some other countries. In 1 A 1967 federal law requires single-member districts for elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, but the law does not require plurality voting rules. 6 RCV systems, voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference. For example, Figure 1 shows a portion of the ballot from the 2013 mayoral election in Minneapolis. Voters mark their first choice for mayor in the first column, their second choice in the second column, and their third choice in the third column. By allowing voters to rank their preferred candidates, RCV allows voters to express preferences for multiple candidates in the same contest.