The More the Merrier?

By the time this is posted, who knows what Americans will have lived through. The 2024 state and federal elections will continue to use Plurality Voting which comes with enormous problems.

Here’s an example: You’re a new congressional candidate (usually Dem or Rep) and get enough notice and support to begin to challenge the incumbent, the party’s favorite.

Next, words like “spoiler” and “outsider” begin to appear, then access to large funding dries up, and super PACS put their money on the predicted winner in the horse race. Soon, you’re encouraged to act for the good of the party and drop out. You obey and watch as the reasons you wanted to represent your constituents in a new way – to address their needs – fade. Politics as usual and an increasingly unsatisfactory environment for new ideas or changes in policies. Mainly, the status quo rules.

This election season (which feels like it’s just short of eternity), on the Dem side, the party eliminated all competition. By disallowing public debates among multiple in-party and other candidates, voters have even less of an idea who stands for what and why.  And more recently, elections are increasingly driven by mass media campaigns and big donors and super PACs, who expect something back for their generosity.

This predictable two-party system is what authors Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter describe in their book The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy. “Plurality voting also creates incentives for negative campaigning and dividing voters. And sometimes a majority of voters do not support the winner.” Money well spent? Many Americans, who want big dollars out of politics and a focus on what’s needed here at home, don’t think so.

What an RCV ballot might look like.

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)

Authors Gehl and Porter describe what might be a cure for voting in the future – Ranked Choice Voting in General Elections. “When you arrive at the polling station on Election Day, you receive a ballot with the names of the nonpartisan winners. You make your first choice and can also pick the candidate you like second best, third best, etc. After the polls close, the first-place votes are counted. If one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first-place votes (a true majority), then the election is over.

            “If no candidate gets a 50 percent plus one, the candidate in last place is eliminated, but votes are transferred to their second choices. With numerous candidates, the likelihood of a majority vote in the 1^st round drops, meaning the decision will be made through multiple rounds of 2^nd and 3^rd choice voter allotments. More details of how RCV could work is too lengthy for this post. The point, however, among several, is that RCV ensures that the winner will always have support from the broadest possible portion of the electorate. Most importantly, RCV eliminates the enormous barrier to entry that plurality voting creates.”

RCV could eliminate what we have now – virtually little or no connection between our political leaders actually solving problems and getting reelected. And RCV would solve the access to voters policies that have shut out Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Jill Stein, Marianne Williamson, Dr. Cornell West, and the Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, among others who gave up early.

The Pros and Cons of RCV

Pros Include:

• Lowers barriers to entry for lesser known or new candidates
• Allows in more ideas, more diversity, more addressing the issues voters care about
• Determines the candidate with the strongest support of the electorate
• Encourages more civil/issue focused campaigning and less on divisiveness
• Could shorten election campaigning
• Could lead to eliminating primaries and move to “jungle” elections. Jungle elections are held with no party affiliations. California is now doing that with its primaries followed by a general election between the top two winners.

Cons Include:

• It’s too complicated to explain and implement
• It’s too expensive to switch from Plurality voting
• It still mainly helps Democrats or Republicans
• It delays results
• It appears to violate the “one person, one vote.”

What Do You Think?

 The authors, Gehl and Porter, make a strong case in their book for breaking up partisan gridlock that threatens a true democracy. They also champion getting elected officials to begin to represent the interests of the people who voted them into office. And by “people” they mean ordinary citizens who are not part of the elite, tech giants, monopolistic industries (think of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies as examples), global-industrial leaders, the military-industrial complex, and private foundations.

What citizens want and what is currently being provided are most often at opposite ends of the spectrum of possibilities. Save for one – with inflation, price gouging, and low wages paid to many in the U.S. workforce, Congress and the executive branch have through their endless spending bills made the United States as broke as individual citizens.

I think that any effort to take the money and the politics industry out of voting is worth considering. And if it shortened the campaigning slog and eliminated fund raising as chief among the duties of congress, it would be a big improvement. Also reducing the bitter and media-supported division based not on principles or ideas but personal slurs would be a breath of fresh air. Less shenanigans happening in the smoke-filled backrooms of the major political parties would also clear the air. And, of course, arbitrarily shutting out any other independents, political parties and ideas couldn’t do anything but educate voters, and possibly build a government that serves the people and not the other way around.

I’ve always liked this unattributed photo because on some days this is closer to what is passing for party politics.

• A note about The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy. There is much to like about this book and highly recommend it as a way to re-think, not just voting, but what it would be like as citizens to have more emphasis placed on a candidate’s ideas rather than how much PAC money they can raise.

Photo credit: Vote – cyrus crossan.