Debate State Level Ranked Choice Voting In The Us Drutman Richie
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Medigov seminar. I'm Nathan Schneider at, you know, receiving of Colorado Boulder and Medigov itself. This is a really new kind of seminar that we're running today. We're trying a new format and it's an attempt to take a dialogue that I've been having in my head and many of us have been having in our heads in states in The United States right now where this idea of...
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Transcript
Welcome to the Medigov seminar. I'm Nathan Schneider at, you know, receiving of Colorado Boulder and Medigov itself. This is a really new kind of seminar that we're running today. We're trying a new format and it's an attempt to take a dialogue that I've been having in my head and many of us have been having in our heads in states in The United States right now where this idea of statewide ranked choice voting is on the ballot this coming election, and bring it into a social space and bring it into a shared conversation. We're going to hold a debate. We have two leading experts on rank choice voting who are going to argue pro and con on the particulars of the proposals being advanced right now. We're not here to debate the merits in the abstract of ranked choice voting. We're here to talk about what's on the table as a case study. Knowing, of course, that the MediGov community and the people who may watch this are not necessarily in states where this is being decided or in The United States at all. So we're treating this as a case study in governance design, but one that's very focused on, you know, what is on the table right now, what is being voted upon, and what kinds of calculations go into the question of of whether to adopt certain kinds of ranked choice voting as part of an electoral process at the on the scale of of a state. So we have, as I said, two really eminent speakers who will be arguing for and against. On the pro side, we have Rob Ritchie, the founder and senior advisor of FairVote, who has been advocating for ranked choice voting nationwide. And on the con side, Lee Drupman, a senior fellow at New America who has been an advocate of ranked choice voting, but has has changed his position on it and written really eloquently about why. Both of them have been informing my thinking along with others. And and and this question which initially seemed kind of clear to me has just gotten more interesting and more complex the more I've looked into it. So I really appreciate the chance to hear this debate and and to learn from it. The way we're gonna proceed is we're gonna have a kind of semi formal debate process. So we'll have ten minutes of opening statements from each speaker and then five minutes for a response from each speaker, and I'll I'll keep time pretty, pretty rigorously. And then we'll we should have plenty of time at the end for discussion with those of you who are here. Again, we're recording and we'll be sharing this publicly as usual, so just be aware of that. As we go, you can feel free to put questions in the chat or or just note in the chat that you that you have a question. But it would be great to see a sense of what your question is and then I can pull you in to to to speak it verbally if you like or I can read it. So, please, as we go, feel free to put questions as they come up. And at the end, we will we'll we'll we'll facilitate the discussion. So we will begin with Rob Richey. Are you ready, Rob?
I'm ready.
Alright. Take it away.
Time myself, so I'll try to be, I'll try to do it well, but we'll see. So and shall we go?
Go ahead.
Alright. Well, great to be able to to do this. Thanks for putting it together. And I'm a big fan of so much of what Lee has brought to this space, and I look forward to seeing where we might find some common ground even where you're gonna hear some differences today and peep seeing people like Mika who I've known for thirty years. So So my experience over the decades of working for ranked choice voting has been that the more voters learn about it, the more they support it. But people often have a lot of questions, and that's what we can get into today. My role is to make the case of voting yes on all five states counting DC where, they're voting to adopt ranked choice voting this coming week. And to vote, I would say vote no in the effort to repeal it in Alaska and an effort in Missouri to ban it, really, dog whistle kind of thing. And I'm gonna start by just saying that I think ranked choice voting as a general matter makes elections better. How it's played, how it's used matters and is is not the same. But let me just sort of talk about the general principles. So the, you know, the basic point is that it makes more votes count. I was sort of looking over some numbers. In all ranked choice voting elections, including those that don't, go to a second round, 17 more voter 17% more voters end up, voting in the decisive choice between the the top two candidates. When you only look at the races where it does go to a a second or or or subsequent round, it's more than 30% more votes count. That's a lot. And that's a lot more than you can imagine with really almost any other change that we might do for things to boost turnout or meaningful votes. And it does it in
a a a a
ballot design that actually is very easy for voters. There there's some some dispute over that, but I think it is it is not difficult, and we'll get into some numbers. But when you think about what it's doing is it's saying voters, hey. You have rather rather than just one vote, you have backup choices, and those are kind of your the insurance policy for your vote. And a lot of voters wanna do it in elections that matter to them. How many voters make mistakes? There's some back and forth about this. There's ways of spinning the numbers, but here's the basic thing. FairVote looked at all 500 plus ranked choice voting elections where we had overvote data going back twenty years in The United States. The average overvote in races that, there were at least three three candidates was point 15%. That's over 99.8% were valid in the first round. Let's kinda compare that to other things that can be pro voter. Vote by mail. A lot of people think vote by mail. Colorado has vote by mail. In the twenty sixteen election, 4% of voters who were trying to vote by mail in the presidential election, according to an MIT study, didn't get their vote counting. We can make it better. I'm sure we have made it better since 2016, but that's a lot more than, you know, point 15%. You can cut the numbers. Maybe it's point three percent, but whatever. It's it's it's it's a small number, in exchange for all those votes counting. Here's also some basic things that ranked choice voting does. If If you're having a third party candidate in a presidential race, like my first year working at FairVote, Ross Perot running in ninety two and forty nine states went with a majority, or Ralph Nader in Florida in 2,000 or the controversies over the minor candidates in the ballot this year, it really does address that very helpfully. Not completely, not perfectly, but very well, and and and it's something that offers those voters a backup choice. In crowded primaries, which we see when we have open seats quite often and, you know, the party that's likely to win gets a lot of people running or the presidential races, it really has this nice unifying effect. When people win in ranked choice voting elections in that kind of environment, you typically see winners getting ranked first, second, or third by, like, 70% of voters on average. And, really, quite basically, it encourages voters candidates to engage with more voters, voters to learn about more candidates. You really see that happening. I live in a city with it, and it just it happens. And I think that's great. The turning to the ballots, let's let's let's let's skip over some some some other things. I so so we have so two groupings of ballot measures. Washington, DC and Oregon are not changing to all candidate primaries. See, in Oregon, put on the ballot by the legislature, it would add add renter's voting to the primaries and separately to the general election for other statewide offices, including president and governor and for the congressional offices. So these are elections that are pretty prominent, often don't have more than two candidates running when incumbents running in a primary or something, but it but it affects open seat primaries quite often and the occasional third party and independent candidate that can really be making a difference. I think it's a very sort of straightforward change in Oregon. It also has fusion voting, by the way, in Oregon, not the disaggregated form, but aggregated. And I think for those who are fans of fusion, which I am in a fan of fusion in the aggregated form, I think it's it's a really cool part of, what could what could emerge from Oregon. DC is the same. Couple couple differences. It would also open primaries. So in the way that unaffiliated voters could vote in a party primary of their choice, which is a very common practice around the country. Probably the biggest impact is on people who are automatically registered to vote, like young people who get registered as unaffiliated and they can't vote in a primary if if they don't get to to change their ballot. But it affects a pretty small number of people. In their at large races for council, there's two seats up every two years. It would actually be a semi proportional form of RCV, where you wouldn't need 50% to win both seats, which is kind of a kind of an interesting part of it. So those are those two measures. Then you have, three states trying to do the Alaska model of ranked choice voting. So this is the model where everyone, like the California ballot, the Washington ballot, some did, Nebraska, Louisiana. We we see some some some places doing this where all the candidates are together in the primary. So you really can call it a preliminary because it's it's a winnowing function. They run with party labels. You can add into that something that I strongly support, parties being able to show their nominations on that primary ballot, but that's not necessarily gonna be part of of of any of these votes, so it could be added. So that's Nevada, Colorado, Idaho. Really interesting effort in in Idaho. Very grassroots effort. And then you winnow the field of four rather than say in California where they would they they do it to two. This sort of expands what the general election electorate sees. It it makes the primary, less important, and makes the general election in contrast more important. And then use ranked choice voting with four candidates in Idaho, it would be five. But you for the voter, the RCB part is just in the general election. It's essentially choosing among four candidates or five. In Nevada, they've sort of seen what they did in the primary, and I think it'll be something that voters handle quite quite well. That has a bigger impact on elections overall. Right? Because you're shaking up the primary dynamics. And then I think it's poked the bear in Colorado and Nevada and did with Republicans in Alaska because parties that are feeling pretty good about being able to win tons of races in low turnout, separated primaries, and then coast and not have to do anything in the general election, that's kinda cool. And and and this means you you you you are gonna have more competition. I'm okay with that. Lee and I both really like proportional representation. That's gonna be more competition too. And and and, like, giving voters more competition for more more options, I think, is a good thing. I think there's things we can add into these systems. Like, New York City has small donor public financing, eight to one generous match, and really had some very exciting impact down ballot and and and some other races in on New York when they went to RCB. So I think there's ways we can complement these reforms, but it really does change incentives. Just briefly, if I have more time, Nathan, I actually haven't been keeping good track. But do I have a little more time?
Yeah. You have about two more minutes.
Okay. I'll try to be quick. So people know that Mary Mary Peltola beat Sarah Palin. Part of that was Sarah Palin had a real low ceiling of support. So she's a classic person who would have won a Republican primary, maybe in a two person race, kinda like bash the heck out of Peltola. It it had a mix of candidates, and Peltola has really emerged, at least for now, as the most popular politician in the state and didn't have to run a single negative campaign while winning a an ad, while winning both a special election and a general election. Really interesting person. And has been a pretty centrist representative from a state that has a lot of independent sort of, you know, non ideological sort of partisan people. It's kind of an interesting state for the system. The state senate, kind of with some of these new incentives of the general election electorate mattering more, 17 of the 20 state senators joined together in a bipartisan coalition to, run the chamber, and that could happen in in in the house as well. And, so some interesting things happening there. Lisa Murkowski was able to be reelected in a way that she wouldn't have, been almost certainly in a, traditional, system. The briefly, I wanna say there are concerns about this. We'll hear about the voter confusion. I sort of I think I've addressed that, at least touched on. We can go back and forth on that. I think some money and politics issues. I think let's let's build on on on changes rather than not do them because voters might matter more. I don't think parties have to get weaker with these kinds of systems. That's sort of the assumption. Like, oh my gosh. You know, we're taking away their their their primary. Keep in mind that like all of these states voting on this, none of them have partisan elections in city elections, but parties are there. Parties are active. Parties can be active in the system. They are active in the system in Alaska. That's good. Like, that's what they should do. I would add to it that ability to show their preferences on the ballot. But regardless, they are active participants as they are in our local elections across all these states. And I think that we're not sort of removing that that power. We also really
ten minutes now, so just last sentence.
Oh, okay. So can I just say
Yeah?
Maybe four sentences. Okay. So, one, let's let's make sure as we look at this, and I know Lee kind of summarized the research. I think we need to give these things more time. He and I could talk about why Maine hasn't had more third party activity, but the basic thing is they have terrible ballot access laws. We've also had a lot of leaping to big conclusions based on, like, a couple uses in cities. Not all uses are the same. And fundamentally, nothing is perfect in this world. No voting method is perfect. No approach is perfect, but I think we have a lot of arguments to be made that renters voting is better, and I certainly would vote yes across all these states.
Fabulous. Thank you so much, Rob. And I will do better about putting warnings in the chat for Lee as we get to a minute and or two minutes and a minute. That sounds good. Lee, are you ready? Go ahead.
Yeah. I'll start a timer on my computer. So well, thank you for hosting this debate and delighted to be in conversation with Rob who I admire tremendously and have learned so much from over the years and is just a tremendous leader and visionary in the field of electoral reform. And someday when
we finally
get proportional representation, Rob Rob will Rob will will deserve a lot of credit for being being the, you know, the the true founder of of a movement that has really grown tremendously. So I, you know, I think Rob and I agree on an awful lot. You know, we both agree that there are some real fundamental structural problems in our democracy and electoral reform is the path forward. We both want a democracy that is more competitive, more representative, more pluralist, more fluid, more dynamic, and and able to solve the big problems that our democracy is just not solving. Now I think where we disagree a little bit is on the path to get there and, you know, specifically are debating these different ballot initiatives, you know, focus here largely on Prop one thirty one in Colorado and the the the similar propositions around the country because the you know, I think I thought that was what we were mostly debating. So I I just wanna talk a little bit about how how I've come and and I propose it. But I wanna talk a little bit about how I've reluctantly come to this conclusion because as as, you know, Rob knows and as you mentioned, Nathan, you know, when when I first heard about Ryan Trustpon, I said, oh, this is a great idea. Like, intuitively, it made a lot of sense. It it seemed exciting, especially at a moment in which there was so much darkness in our politics 2016. I said, well, here's here's one one bright spot. You know? And at the time, there wasn't a ton of research on ranked choice voting. There was some evidence from Australia, which had used it for a hundred years. You know? And so I said, alright. Well, this is this is exciting, makes sense. I understand why I think it should work. So, you know, let's do it. It it could shake up the system a little bit, create some some room for for new types of candidates, maybe even new parties. And at time again, there wasn't a lot of research. And so at New America, we pulled together a a big research project. We we supported 16 projects, academics, lots of studies for this electoral reform research group. And, you know, as the studies kept coming in, they kept finding, oh, there's, you know, no no real effect of ranked choice voting or maybe it's more confusing than we initially thought. Maybe voters don't really like it as much as some surveys had suggested and and this, you know, this was troubling for me because it contradicted a lot of my priors. I I thought this this is a reform that's gonna have some real important effects and the studies that were coming in said, maybe not. And and those studies have continued to come in. I I have been collecting them. I went through my Zotero library this morning and found I now collected 65 academic studies testing the effects of ranked choice voting with which is just an explosion. And as articles keep coming out, you know, some suggest some small positive results, some suggest some small negative results. I would say the majority are pretty much it doesn't really make much much of a difference one way or the other. You know, so at this point, my conclusion on ranked choice voting is ranked choice voting qua ranked choice voting is I'm kind of ambivalent on it. I see some positive benefits to it. I see some some negatives. Mostly, I think, doesn't doesn't make a whole lot of difference. There are circumstances where I think it it it it adds it solves a clear problem. Rob mentioned crowded primaries. I think that is a good use for it. I think nonpartisan local elections where you have crowded fields, ranked choice voting clearly, solves that problem. It solves the problem of of plurality winners. And, you know, I mean, I think if the main problem in American democracy right now were that we had a lot of 40% plurality winners and a lot of split vote problems, then RCV would clearly be the the solution. But, you know, I I think given the level of partisan polarization, two party partisan polarization, a lot the the dominance of one party dominant elections in most of our elections, you know, I I think ranked choice voting doesn't make a whole lot of difference there. Now, you know, I can certainly see a case for for why ranked choice voting, qua ranked choice voting, you know, would maybe bring in some more choice and, you know, maybe that's worth the the slight rise in voter confusion. It it all you know, as as Rob said at the beginning, you know, all systems, you know, have trade offs. There's no perfect voting system. And, you know, I I think we should be honest that so, I mean, some of that is a is a question of what we value most in in electoral system. You know, Rob mentioned the the the problems with mail in ballots. You know, do we value convenience more or or, you know, votes being counted? Now when we come to the Colorado and the Alaska and the others, you know, now we're adding something different. And this is something else that I I've really come to understand as my thinking has evolved, which is the fundamental importance of political parties in modern representative democracy. Our The US parties are weak. The US parties are hollow. US parties are problematic. This is because many reasons they're they're they're too few of them. They're stretched too big, but also they have no control over who represents their parties. So the way Colorado one thirty one, the other reforms are designed is they don't give parties any control. Now I I agree with Rob. I would love if if we're having if we're doing this over, we should give parties control of their their nominations. We should let parties decide who gets the party endorsement. But I you know, that's not how how ballot one thirty one or any of these current ballots are designed, and you can see the flaws with this. You know, in in Alaska, the Republicans have figured out after one election, they figured out how to circumvent this. You know, the the in the congressional election that Paltola is unfortunately probably gonna lose. Republicans coordinated, so anybody who wasn't the top Republican finisher dropped out. So that kind of defeats the purpose of of this reform if Republicans are basically coordinating around it anyway. And the effect of that is that the sixth place finisher, a guy named Eric Hafner, who claims to be a Democrat, runs on the Democrat line, or claims to be a democrat. Democrats say, we don't want him because he is in federal prison in New York, but democrats have no control over that. So here he is on the ballot. Now that's a that's a fix. We could we could design the system better to prevent that from happening, but that's not what the the system is doing. So, I mean, I think that what what what I come down to, you know, when I think about these reforms is, you know, what is the problem that this particular reform is solving? Now, again, all pros and cons to all these reforms, what I see particularly in Colorado reform and these other all comer primary plus RCV reforms is a system that makes parties even less relevant in selecting candidates and that further further weakens political parties in The US. And, you know, my view is we ought to have more parties and we ought to to have better parties, and the way to get better parties is to have more of them and more competition and more parties organizing and competing for voters. And in what this reform is really just opening up to any candidate who wants to claim to be a member of any party and could be running from prison out of state and claim to be a party member, and here here they are on the ballot. So I I'd like to see reforms that that actually make stronger, healthier, and more parties. You know, I mean, the this cal Colorado one thirty one, the other, you know, ballot initiatives, you know, I I have mixed feelings on them. I I see some benefit and certainly some of the things that Rob talks about, more choice, more candidates running potentially more competition. But then when I when I look at the evidence and and see what's happened, you know, in places that have opened up primaries that have implemented ranked choice voting reforms, I see pretty meh results and I see some real trade offs of of voter confusion. So on balance, you know, I I think that that I I would if I if I were registered in Colorado, I would be voting against one thirty one and I will probably vote against the the DC initiative as well because it also opens up primaries.
Thank you, Lee. Rob, five minutes to respond.
Yeah. I think Lee and I do have a lot in common that I hope we can keep building on. Let me but let me just go quickly through some of the my quick notes here. So on research, my frustration with a lot of scholarly research, maybe there's some researchers on here, is I think there are incentives to pick at flaws rather than sort of sometimes look at the very big elephant that of positives. And and And I'll give one example. And so as I would say, a lot of these studies, I think, are not looking at what I would look at and what voters look at and what actually elected officials look at, you know, effect on candidate behavior that actually changes changes incentives for what they do, reasons to vote. How many more votes count in one round versus another, which is just extraordinarily more? Like, that's a huge thing. And I don't know. I don't think any academic has studied it because it's maybe not interesting enough or doesn't have the academic incentive to sort of say a positive. But, like, there was a critique of Santa Fe, like, academics, like, picking up on on a fact that, wow, 15% of Latino voters found it some confusing. That didn't mean that they didn't rank right. And, actually, 99.9% of voters in that five candidate race that had just been established, RCV, with sort of a two month runway test about more than 60% ranked all five candidates for mayor. The overall overwhelming percentages of of of all groupings of voters were positive about the change, and yet this sort of critique of it, like, left an impression of negativity. And that's sort of like this ongoing frustration that I can have, and there's a longer topic there. I think looking quick no. We're sad that Lee would vote against DC because it allows unaffiliated voters to to vote in a primary. We're talking about 15% of voters. A lot of them are automatically registered as unaffiliated. I don't know. That doesn't seem like a great great reason to oppose a system that say their Ward seven city primary was one with 23% this year. That would allow PR Lee in the two at large seats to the extent that you can do it in a two seat race. But but but I would say, as a general matter about Alaska is that if you look at what has happened in Alaska, I think it has created a real difference. You look at what it the state senate is doing and the rewards they're getting for working together and and having actually sort of objective views as the state senate is, doing a lot of good things in Alaska, and it's because they can take their case to the general election electorate. The senate's president, before she got elected in top four, had actually lost as senate president by a separate primary. Then she was able to get back in in the senate president again and and, you know, needs that system to be able to govern that way. I think on a pathway to reform that we have a really interesting conversation about what The US way to win reform is, what we can ultimately win here. We have a political culture that has sort of expectations of the parties actually not being homogeneous, but having some real differences within them. In some ways, when our country has sort of governed most effectively, it has been when there have been sort of differences within the party. And And so I'm a big fan of the single transferable vote, the proportional form of RCV, you know, used in primaries, used in general elections to kind of allow a flourishing of sort of factions within parties, but but but a cohesion around, the, major party. So they're kind of truly become big tents versus can we impose a kind of a European style six candidate you know, six party system? Can we get people to buy into that? Can we do we wanna have legislators sort of voting robotically based on what their party leaders have negotiated? I think a lot of people don't want that, and so I think we have to decide how that could be won. And keeping in mind, 70% of cities use nonpartisan elections. And if we're gonna get, like, changes and models at that level, it's generally gonna be within that environment, which is why I think proportional RCB is the way to go. So that's a longer form conversation, but I think that, just as a final point oh, actually, on Alaska. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Nathan. We can have weird guys like this guy, Eric Hafner, has run-in two other states. Okay. That's a weird part of our system that you can do that. But they got ranked just voting. Big deal. The guy's gonna get, like, 1.5% of the vote, whatever it is, and and almost all of those people are gonna rank probably Mary Peltola second. And the fact that this system allows people like that to get to the general election ballot is the same. It will also allow libertarians and and greens and some other people that sort of jump in the race because he got to advance with a very small percentage, which is partly the thing. It doesn't actually keep small parties out as long as they run and compete and start making use of the system. Finally, let's make, some really interesting uses of ranked choice voting in Oregon. Let's win it. And then I think, like, the Oregon Working Families Party has endorsed it. They can work FUSION and RCV and actually kind of do some really creative work to, I think, show that those reforms work well together. And it's just a basic point is things can work well together.
Thank you. Finally, Lee's response.
Alright. Well, let let's I'll respond to to what Rob said here. So there's first question about the academic studies and, you know, I'm yeah, I'm a PhD in political science, so I understand the academy's skepticism towards any reform and a sort of contrarian stance to poke holes in everything, and, you know, so I certainly agree that there is an emphasis on that in some academic studies, you know. On the other hand, you know, I think that's important to understand what the weaknesses are with any system. And then, you know, we have a debate about the pros versus the cons. And, yeah, I mean, certainly the the this is something that keeps showing up in academic studies is that lower income communities tend to find RCV more confusing, tend to make errors, tend to get their ballots miscounted at higher rates. Now now we can argue whether that's something that that's a that's a cost, but the benefits outweigh the costs, and, you know, that's a that's a reasonable argument to have. But, you know, on on balance, you know, the the the the studies do find that, and it's not just one study. It's it's study after study after study. And, you know, so, you know, I I you know, certainly, you know, in the, you know, in in the research that I was was involved in in New America, this whole whole suite of research proposals, you know, I I went into it thinking that the research was gonna show that RCV had some significant benefits, and, you know, I I was surprised and it was that and other stuff that changed my view, and I think academics have looked at this from a lot of lot of different perspectives, and, you know, there's some some evidence. And, again, you know, I mean, I think it's important to to say that some RCV has has strengths in certain types of elections, those strengths may be more apparent than in other types of elections. And, yeah, I agree with with Rob what Rob said, that thing, you know, the trajectory is long and it takes a few cycles, which is why I think the research coming out now is even more important. You know, on on Alaska, you know, we have one one two year period that a lot of people have studied, a lot of people have drawn conclusions from. I think a few things to note about Alaska. One is that the state has had a long history of bipartisan governing coalitions in both the house and the senate in this in the state legislature. So many ways, this is just to continue what what has happened in the last election is largely a continuation of what has happened in the past. And Alaska has a very unique and distinct political culture. It is by far the state with the highest number of of independence. It's kind of a a sui generis political culture, very small state and states that has only 20 members, smallest state senate in the country. So, you know, I think we should be careful about overlearning from any single two year period. And, you know, this is why I I would say any any study by itself, take it with a grain of salt. 65 studies collectively, you know, that that that helps us to, you know, to think about, you know, what what do we really know? And and we're continuing to learn. You know, you know, in terms of pathway, you know, in terms of the role of political parties, you know, again, this has been a long standing debate that Rob and I have had. I think there was a period in which American parties were more factional and that worked reasonably well, although there were it created a lot of confusion for voters. I I think it would given the nationalization of our politics and the diversity of our country, it would be better to have more political parties. And, yes, political parties are never popular even, you know, even in countries with a lot of them, people don't like political parties in general, but I think it's really important for the health of democracy for people to feel that they have at least one political party that represents them that they feel connected to and this is a really crucial role of political parties is that they connect people to government. They make people feel part of something and factions, individual candidates can't do that in the way that political parties do that. So I think it's really important to put political parties and healthy political parties at the center of our reform efforts.
Excellent. Thank you for staying on time so beautifully. It was perfect.
Yeah. Go ahead. A timer going. Good work.
Alright. We're gonna turn over to to questions. We've already got some coming in. Great discussion. There's a lot to talk about here. Steve, you were asking about what was being measured in the studies. Do you wanna elaborate on that at all, or do you feel like that was answered by the discussion since you asked that?
I I mean, I can I mean, there's all kinds of outcomes? Better than
five of them. Right?
Yeah. It's hard to it's hard to summarize. I mean, you know, some of it measures candidate entries, some of it matter measures voter turnout, some of it measures voter error, some of it measures the effect on on on policy outcomes, you know, some of it measures civility and and campaigning style. So, you know, there there's a lot of a lot of research questions here, and, you know, and each study looks at a different set of elections and uses a a different different method. Some some studies are better than others as is always the case. Some of them are just frankly crap, and some of them are really well done.
Alright.
Let me just put into chat Yeah. The the FairVote info, and it it off you know, I I feel very proud of the research work that the FairVote team does. Obviously, we are looking at this with a kind of an affirming lens that it was valued, but we do take on the tough questions. And and I think there's, there's there's really quite a lot to look at there that has not been subject of studies, like how what percentage of voters rank, rank a winner in the top three in crowded fields. Like, I think that's actually super interesting for what it means for the engagement that happened and so on. And my new colleague, Eve Evelyn Dowling's done done a done a really good one on turnout showing showing that there is this very positive impact on turnout that she's seen. So look at them all, but it's something that you're you're gonna hear some more come about. I did wanna actually, if I can, Nathan, because it relates to the last question about the sort of low income voters and and British minorities. So so just to put it in perspective, like, when Lee was saying, yes, it shows that, but it shows it in these really small ways. Like, there's a whole paper saying that in New York City, you know, some of the more, you know, heavier concentrations of racial minorities, the overvote rate was significantly more. Well, it was 99.6% valid versus 99, you know, what whatever it was, eight five or or or eight or something like that. Right? Right? It's like it's it's still almost all voters weren't making a mistake. It's relatively a little different, but it's not nearly the kind of numbers that I was, like, lifting up with, say, the vote by mail problems. Right? Other things that can have a much, much bigger impact. And on the reverse side, it's not looking at how many more votes are counting, including those out of racial minority communities. And there's a lot of good data about be particularly where RCB has been used over time, about what is happening with people of color as candidates. Like in, the Bay Area, there was a big jump in people of color over, the first ten years of the four cities that have used RCB for a while, And the big growth was almost all in white plurality, nonwhite majority districts where not that it's so simplistically polarized that all, you know, nonwhite voters were voting for nonwhite candidates, but it depolarized elections and and and and created opportunities where there was this big surge in that kind of area. That's really interesting. No one I've seen has studied that academically.
Evelyn, do you wanna raise your question about impact on political parties?
Yeah. This is a great discussion. Hi there. My name is Evelyn Dowling. I'm I'm a colleague of Rob's. Sorry for joining a little bit late. Yeah. I just wanted to have a I have a question for Lee. Would you say that RCD's impact on political parties depends on whether it's implemented alongside other reforms, like multi member districts or national popular vote or something along those lines? Is it does it depend on, right, these other reforms?
Yeah. So if you implemented RCV with multi member district, which is the single transferable vote, that would probably create space for more political parties. Depends on district magnitude, the larger the district magnitude. So if you've had a three member district, maybe not. If you moved to a five or seven member district, probably yes. And then then some of that would also depend on ballot design. So there are two versions of STV. There's the Australian version of STV, which just lists candidates in alphabetical order, which doesn't group them by party, and then there's the Australian version of STV which does group candidates by party and also allows voters to rank the parties in order. And so that functions more like a a list proportional system with some ranking, which actually I think I think would be a good combination of of RCV and open list, which is the type of proportional representation that that I would prefer particularly that, you know, Australia has made a number of changes over the years to make that STV ballot more voter friendly. In in in early earlier versions of it, there was a a lot of voter confusion and a lot of a lot of flawed ballots. And over the years, they've made it more they as they've grouped it by party more, voters have found it a lot easier to use. And most most voters are, like, 95% of Australian voters vote what they call above the line, which is they just vote for the party, which suggests that people like the convenience of just voting for parties when they have that opportunity.
Great. Thank you. Thank you very much.
May maybe I'll just add very briefly that, I'm a I'm
a big fan of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
It's sort of on my mind this year as everyone, focuses on only seven states, and 43 states are essentially out sort of out of play. We don't have to have that system. National Popular Vote is a state based reform effort that I've been involved in over the last twenty years that could get another win in Michigan and actually get be that much closer. We're really not that far away from it having enough electoral votes to kick in before 2028. So, some people said, well, how would RCV work with that? And, Maine, is part of the compact. You know, Alaska has ranks for spreading for president as well. They just would run RCV down to their usual, whoever has won the state, and then that would be reported out. There are ways to go further, and and the strict fund proposals, I did a long academic article on that. But but I think it also speaks to the fact that we're gonna see some other changes, I sure hope so, that create the recognition that we are able to change things. And when we've seen changes in this country, they've generally come in clusters. And I think it's when people realize, oh, we can actually do stuff, and it usually comes after kind of challenging times, and and we're certainly in that too. So this is a really exciting time for all these conversations because I think change change is coming.
Alright. Great. We have we have a lot of good questions coming in. There's one from MetaDAO Academy that they can't speak up, but I'll read
the
questions. Does RCV presuppose orthogonal options? If my top rank choice is eliminated, is it fair or accurate to assume that my other selections are unchanged? This seems more pressing when the level of education or awareness about different options may be uneven. And also a question that, about whether more parties equal stronger parties are these separate issues. So so can you, and this is for Lee, say a bit about the relationship between more and stronger parties.
Well so, I mean, my my view is, yes, that more parties and stronger parties do go together. I think it's given the vast expanse of this country and the pluralism and diversity, The the two parties, although they are more homogeneous internally than they've ever been, still cast a quite wide tent, which makes it hard for them to be strong in addition to they they just have no control over who their nominees are. So I think if you had more parties, the parties would be a little smaller and they would be healthier because they would they would not be trying to be so many things to so many different people, and they could focus on a more core set of concerns and link voters to their government more effectively. Also, competition strengthens parties, and if you had a proportional system with multiple parties competing in lots of different places, you would naturally strengthen the parties. I mean, you look at a state like Wisconsin. Wisconsin Democratic Party is a strong party. It's a strong party because Wisconsin is a fifty fifty state, And so there's a lot of reasons for for the party to raise support to actually be a strong and vibrant party as opposed to in most places where the the parties are, you know, entirely empty and hollow because there there's no real competition. So when your your votes when every vote matters as it does under a proportional system, parties are just gonna invest more. I mean, there there's a larger conversation about the the failure of political parties more broadly, and I think they do need to adapt. I mean, I and I saw another question in the chat about whether first past the post precludes multiple parties. I mean, not necessarily. You could look at The UK, which has first past the post, and there are, you know, some smaller parties that are gaining Canada, which is first past the post and smaller parties gaining although that makes the the distortions of first past the post even more apparent as the last UK election. Labour won a third of the votes and got two thirds of the seats. So, you know, I I I think there you know, it's possible you could start seeing some some local parties running in different parts of the country. You know, look at look at Nebraska where Dan Osborne is running as an independent and there's no democrat, I I think we should see more Osborne style candidacies. I think they might develop into some local parties, but, you know, also if you had fusion voting with first best post voting, that also strengthens multiple parties. I'll let Rob take the question about preferences within RCV. That was the first question.
And that would can you clarify the preferences within our was I I missed the the prompt. Nathan, do you have the
Yeah. It was it says, does RCV presuppose orthogonal options? If my top top ring choice is eliminated, is it fair or accurate to assume that my other selections are unchanged?
I think so. I mean, it's one thing I'll just sort of say, there are tons, I mean, literally thousands of NGOs and political parties that use ranked choice voting by their own volition for their leadership elections, organizational elections. All five Canadian parties do it. They're not using other funky variations of ranked choice voting. They could, but they don't because I think this is a pretty tested psychologically, sensible way of thinking about voting, which is if your candidate is in last place, then you're out. And that's sort of the Republican Party when they were picking their speaker and, you know, finding their candidate for it. They were voting. They didn't use RCB, but they always knocked the last person out until they got down to Mike Johnson or whomever it was. There's a certain logic to that. And I think it works. And, you know, voters are used to it. So I'm not really worried about, you know, spending a lot of time on variations. Let me just say quickly about the sort of question about party building and so on. One thing we have to factor in, we're the only state that really invests in government spending on primaries and holding primaries. If you follow the Iowa caucuses in 2020, people aren't really anxious to kind of turn the keys over to parties to pick their nominees, and I think that's gonna be a whole conversation as as we create architecture for reform. But when you do that, they're sort of inherently lose some control of at least party bosses or something picking picking their nominees or kind of organizing who, wins nominations. And I so the Fair Representation Act contemplates ranked choice voting in the primary proportional style as well as the general, and that could have was modeled by the cumulative voting system they used to have in Illinois from 1870 to 1980 in three member districts and created some really interesting variations or factions within the parties, but also this virtue of both parties winning everywhere and both parties being able to have incentives to build and grow themselves everywhere. So if you just think of having stronger major parties, that's kind of they're getting really weak in certain places. And, then the last thing I'll just say about parties is that we and there's quest someone was saying, like, yeah. I I think the renter's voting ballot in a multi STB system would allow the emergence of minor parties, but they have a long way to go. We we can, like, turn the keys and say, oh, yeah. Suddenly, the Libertarian party is just, like, totally ready to have candidates win 20% of the vote and and and be part of our, representational system. There's a lot of, from changes can create opportunities, to do there. But our parties are complex is an easy way to say it in the sense that a lot of elected officials from their parties kinda look down on their party activists, and there's some pretty wild party activists. And, like, even in Idaho where we're doing this campaign, the Idaho party is kind of a little different than than a lot of the Idaho elected officials, and it's just something that we just have to recognize that they're not the same thing.
Right. Thank you. Last question real quick. If we could keep the question and the response as brief as possible so we stay on time, but, Micha, who helped put this together, could you wrap this up with a
question? Sure. Very quickly, and I put it in the chat. If they could just address how a blanket primary plus RCV, which is what one thirty one is, affects the chances of wealthy or well financed candidates versus those with less money?
I'll I'll just address this, which is that point I made during the talk, which is that we should, I think, explore things, and Colorado will have to do this because any implementation statute in Colorado has to go through the legislature because they did this kind of midnight sneaky bill that kind of makes it hard to implement it without further action of the legislature. But I I think in a kind of a pro democracy, like, the solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy, I I would like to see them explore that because it's the fundamental
Rob, you're not answering you're not answering
my question.
Well, here here Is it here?
Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah.
I'm starting to answer.
All the other things you need to do, just does this make it easier for rich people to win elections
or harder? For rich people to win elections or
Yeah. Unbalanced.
I think, like, the Alaska evidence is very uncertain as as to what it did for the role of money on outcomes. So we have more to learn. But I think this, if if the case is based on the fact that their voters have more agency and more voters are part of choosing, I think that's a good thing. If that means, more money is needed, that doesn't necessarily mean more money wins. And that's something we've really seen in RCB elections that more money doesn't necessarily win. You you see real value in
other states. New York City where I'm from is sort of a counterexample. But okay.
I would say not not, Mika. So we should offline work that out because I think that's actually not true about New York City.
I'll just say as a as a general matter that when parties are weaker, outside groups are more important and the money that flows through outside groups and outside donors becomes more important. And certainly money became a lot more important to who wins in California when California moved to a a top two system, and there have been a number of papers on on that topic. So I think, you know, part parties have their problems, but at least they can sort of meld together a bunch of different interests when you have can candidates who come and go and can often rely on the the donations of one or a few particularly wealthy people. I think that creates some problems in political accountability that parties can help solve a little bit.
Well, thank you. That's a really important topic to end on because it really highlights some of the stakes at play here. Thank you, both Rob and Lee, for taking up this challenge of the of this debate. This has been really insightful. And thank you all for bringing your questions and for for being part of this discussion. We'll share the recording out, share it with your friends, and and and for those of you who are who are, making decisions about about this in the coming weeks or
in the coming week, I hope this is informative for the rest of us.
I hope this can inform our our ongoing work in the study and and development of of more accountable democratic systems. So thank you all. Have a wonderful rest of your day or night wherever you are.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.