Could Ranked-Choice Voting Fix American Politics?

Shanny talks with Andy Felt, mathematics professor at UWSP, about ranked-choice voting.  What is it?  How does it work?   Where is it already being used?  And how would it change the culture of extreme partisanship in the United States?

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Our intro music was written by UWSP music student Derek Carden. The No Cure for Curiosity logo was designed by artist and graphic designer Ryan Dreimiller.

Transcript

Oscar Nominees Clip: 0:00

And finally, I'm pleased to announce that the 10 films selected as Best Picture nominees for 2009 are Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, Up, Precious, A Serious Man, and Up in the Air.

Shanny Luft: 0:26

In 2009, the Academy Awards decided to change their system for identifying the best picture. For many decades, the system worked like this, the Academy picked five nominees, and then the voters selected the one picture that they thought was the best. But in 2009, the Academy Award voters had 10 options to choose from and it was clear to the academy, this could cause a problem in the vote, because the votes were being spread across 10 possibilities. That's the difference between majority and plurality. We are all familiar with a system of voting where the majority wins. If you have two presidential candidates to choose from, then the candidate who receives the majority of the votes is the winner, as my son used to say you need 50% plus one person with only two candidates, one of them is bound to get the majority. But when you have 30 candidates or 10 candidates, the votes are going to be spread across such a wide field, that there is much less likelihood that one winner is going to get the majority of votes, they may only get the plurality plurality means that the winner receives more votes than any other but does not receive an absolute majority. So what does this have to do with the Academy Awards? Well, in a year, like 2009, when there are 10 Pictures vying for best picture, you can win with only 15% of the vote if the other nine films all get less than 15%. How do we feel about that? Well, you might say, hey, if the film got more votes than any other film, it got the plurality and it should be the winner. But think about that math for a second. If a film wins best picture with 15% of the vote, that means 85% of voters actually preferred something else. So is it really the best picture of the year when 85% of voters prefer something else? That's the problem with plurality wins voting. And that's why the same year that the Academy Awards announced they were increasing the list of best pictures to 10 nominees, they also decided to completely change the way they counted their system of voting, they stopped identifying the best picture by a plurality vote, and instituted a completely different method. It's got a couple of different names, but we're gonna call it rank choice voting. The new system of voting required that the Academy voters not simply identified the one film they thought was the best. Instead, each voter had to look at the list of 10 pictures and rank them from the one they thought was number one, to the one they thought was number 10. So that's what this episode of no cure for curiosity is all about. I am Shanny luft, the Associate Dean of general education at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, my guest today is my friend, Andy Felt a professor of Mathematical Sciences at UWSP, I invited Andy to come on the podcast during this election season to explain what rank choice voting is, and why he argues, it would be a superior system over our current majority rules method for political office. So let's just start with that. What? What is rank choice voting? Basically? How would you describe it? And how does it How does it work?

Andy Felt: 3:31

So the entire discussion really is only valid if we're talking about three or more candidates, there are many different ways of voting. People don't realize this in America, or didn't until very recently, because, as you say, rank choice is starting to become more popular.

Shanny Luft: 3:53

Every different method of voting basically is equivalent if it's just your choosing between a and b.

Andy Felt: 3:58

Yes.

Shanny Luft: 3:58

Okay.

Andy Felt: 3:59

All the ones we're going to talk about at least. So we always say majority rule, but that's not true. It's called plurality is the base case, way of vote holding any election. And that is every voter gets to vote for one person for one candidate. And the candidate with the most votes wins. Now, that doesn't always mean that they have a majority the winning candidate, right? Sometimes the winning candidate only has 30% of the vote or 40% of the vote, something like that,

Shanny Luft: 4:32

right? If you have three candidates and one person gets 40, and the other to get 30, the one with 41. So he doesn't have a majority, or she doesn't have the majority of the population, but but he or she did get the majority of the votes. Exactly. It is that mathematical system, what led to why we only have two political parties?

Andy Felt: 4:52

I believe so yes.

Shanny Luft: 4:52

Okay.

Andy Felt: 4:53

And you want to talk about that. I can sort of try to explain that a little bit.

Shanny Luft: 4:57

Okay.

Andy Felt: 4:58

Um, so let's Start with plotting everybody, all the voters, let's say on a, a two dimensional canvas, on a piece of paper, you could say, one axis is how progressive you are financially, fiscally. The other axis is how progressive you are socially, I'm probably pretty close to the upper right hand corner, you're probably pretty close to me, but not right on top. And my brother is way down, you know, in the lower left hand corner, everybody is a.on this canvas. So let's also put two candidates then on that canvas, and they're running for the same office. And then you say, well, presumably, the people close to Candidate A, and on one side of candidate A, will vote for candidate A, and then the opposite. The other people on the other side will mostly vote for candidate B. But now let's add a third candidate in there may be close closer to Candidate B, okay, ah, who does that hurt?

Shanny Luft: 6:15

It will is going to hurt Candidate B, right? It's going to split because some people are going to depending on how close they are to Candidate B, they know the second candidate, when you add a new person, they're going to pull away votes from the person they're closest to.

Andy Felt: 6:29

Exactly, exactly. So a great example, is Bush, Gore, Nader, right? And Nader famously hurt Gore, more than Bush, right, because Nader was closer to Gore in on this canvas on the political views. Or you could go Perot, Clinton, Bush, many people feel that Perot hurt Bush and helped get Clinton elected. Anyway, so the presence of that third candidate hurts the candidate that they're closest to. Now, think of a system where there aren't parties, okay? There are 10, basically, Democratic candidates can basically Republican leaning candidates, there may be in a cloud, but the more candidates there are in a single area, the more all of those candidates in that area are hurt.

Shanny Luft: 7:31

Right? Right, because they're splitting up the pie into smaller and smaller pieces,

Andy Felt: 7:35

right. And I think immediately in America, people realize this, and said, Holy smokes, we better get together, I hit a time and decide which of these 10 people that basically agree with each other. We're gonna try it out there as our candidate, because if we try 10 people out there, we're going to lose period.

Shanny Luft: 8:02

And so that's where primaries come in. Right? The parties, then will, will have these kind of run offs between four or five 610 20 people to pick the one person who's going to represent the party.

Andy Felt: 8:15

Exactly. So if there's two parties, and you add the third party there, who does they hurt, they hurt the party that they're closest to? So the greens are a great example of hurting the Democrats, right. And the Libertarians currently hurt the Republicans. So having sharing your political space on the canvas with another candidate or another party is, is really, really bad. Mathematically, really bad, right? bad for the person trying to win. Exactly. And so effect is predictable on candidates, you run away from the group, right? And most of the time, that means you run away from the center. Okay? So candidates, either explicitly or implicitly understand all of that, and, and they try to find space for themselves. Right. And so go back and look at the 2016 Republican primaries, the early states. Trump was winning those with 30% of the vote, 31% of the vote, and the next closest candidate was something like 20% of the vote. And so the headlines were, it's a huge win for Trump, right? But he blows away the rest of the field. But really, it's my memory that it was basically Trump and not Trump, you know, is not Trump was split 14 ways. And not Trump got 70% of the vote, but yet it was viewed as a huge, yes, huge victories for Trump and then momentum built and people started falling out.

Shanny Luft: 10:00

And so when you say Trump, not Trump, the point is that the not Trump was a group of people who if you were to graph them would have all been closer together. Right? And so you're saying Trump's by, for a number of reasons he stood out, because the other folks were too closely. If you if you map them, they were too close to one another.

Andy Felt: 10:21

Exactly.

Shanny Luft: 10:22

Okay.

Andy Felt: 10:22

I like to say, say that it pays to be a pirate candidate, a pirate candidate, you know, sets themselves apart from the rest of the group. And some people hate the pirate candidate. In fact, probably a lot of people hate the pirate candidate, but you're the number one choice of enough that that you can wind up sneaking through and winning the election.

Shanny Luft: 10:48

That's interesting way to think about it. And that's also that process of the Republican primary five years ago, benefitted Trump in a lot of ways, right. I mean, if he only had one other competitor that was running against, it might have been a really different story. Absolutely. But him having a dozen people who was running against, they were all cannibalizing one another.

Andy Felt: 11:07

Cruz would have buried Trump if it was one on one.

Shanny Luft: 11:10

Yeah, possibly. Okay. So that's, that helps me understand why our system of voting

Andy Felt: 11:16

plurality

Shanny Luft: 11:17

yeah the plurality model leads to essentially two candidates every single time. Right, the other there are other parties, but those parties tend not to win, they can have an effect on the election, although it's always Democrats versus Republicans.

Andy Felt: 11:31

Yeah, it leads to a two party system, and then are the say two major party system. And then also, those third parties when they make noise, tend to hurt their own side.

Shanny Luft: 11:45

Okay. So rank choice voting, then is a potential solution to the problem.

Andy Felt: 11:51

Yeah. Right. So I mean, when you think about it, we're throwing away a lot of information by only asking you, who's your favorite? It has to be better to ask at least gather the information and use the information. Okay, who is your second favorite candidate? Who's your third favorite gun? So rank choice voting, you rank either all of the candidates or a certain number of candidates.

Shanny Luft: 12:18

So the voter would do this, the voter would see the list of candidates and then rank them one through five or one through 10. However many candidates that are,

Andy Felt: 12:25

yep, and, and then what you do, it is different depending on the voting method. So all of these voting methods were developed. In the 1800s, I think, soon after, the world discovered that plurality sucks. Instant Runoff is basically the first round is like plurality, you just write down everybody's first choices. Now, if nobody gets over 50%. In other words, if nobody gets a majority, then someone is eliminated from the group. One person is eliminated normally, as the person who gets the fewest first place votes, the person in last, okay, and those votes then would go to the second person on that voters list.

Shanny Luft: 13:16

So in the first round, you're only looking at everyone's first choice, right? And then if if somebody gets 50% plus one person, it's over? Yep. Is that right? Okay. Yep. But if nobody gets a majority, then these other processes kick in. So then what happens then if nobody gets, then

Andy Felt: 13:35

that just continues until someone has a majority. So after the first person is eliminated, that person's votes are scattered to the other candidates, depending on the rank list. And then you recount essentially, and everyone's votes have gone up, maybe someone's vote says, now put them over the threshold of the majority.

Shanny Luft: 14:01

So what's changed between round one and round two? In round one, you're looking at everyone's first choice. And then if nobody got a majority, you think go into round two. So in round two, what are you counting differently?

Andy Felt: 14:14

So let's just say is Bush, Gore, Nader? Right? Those are the only three candidates. Nader would have been in last, we think, and Nader's votes then would go to the second candidate on the list. So if you voted for Nader and put Gore as second then your vote would go for to Gore. If I voted for Nader and put Bush as second then my vote would go to Bush.

Shanny Luft: 14:40

Okay, so the people who voted for Nader first that first is thrown out because he didn't because nobody got a majority. And then those Nader voters basically get another shot. Right? They you just look at their votes and say okay, well, they're number two, what a certain percent went to Bush a certain percent went to Clinton,

Andy Felt: 14:57

right,

Shanny Luft: 14:57

and so you didn't move their votes.

Andy Felt: 14:59

Yeah. They're not wasting their votes. I mean, that was what you heard over and over again, if you vote for Nader, you're wasting your vote or or worse, you're voting for Bush, right? But here you get to say, All right, I know he may not win, but I'm gonna put him first. And then if nobody gets a majority, I'm then I'm going to vote for you know, Gore is my second and that'll, and my vote will count.

Shanny Luft: 15:24

So that's, that is advantageous, let's say to Nader voters, and so that it does give those the people who are voting for the third party who comes in third place, right, it gives it gives their votes more meaning.

Andy Felt: 15:37

Yeah, and I think more importantly, it helps the other major candidate that's close by right. Gore was I see. I mean, without Nader in the race, Gore would have won. Right, I think it's pretty clear. And those votes would have gone to Gore then and Gore would have won under that system.

Shanny Luft: 15:58

Okay, so people who rank Nader number one, they're, they're unlikely that to make their number two, the opposite of nature. Right there. Number two is going to be someone on that X Y axis, who you would presume, is somewhat close to Nader

Andy Felt: 16:12

exactly, rather than we talked about plurality, encouraging pirate candidates, encouraging candidates to run away from the others, and mostly usually away from the center. Rather than that, this encourages people to run toward the center. Because if let's just suppose Nader is to the left of Gore, right. And at bushes to the right of Gore, then Gore benefits from virtually all of the Nader voters, because being in the center, let's say, puts you in place to harvest all of those second place votes.

Shanny Luft: 16:51

Okay. So, so that pushes candidates to be more centrist then. Yeah, right. So in our current system, Gore might be motivated to try to emphasize the gap between him and Nader. Right, because he wants fewer people to vote for Nader more people vote for him. In a rank choice system, Gore might actually try to appeal to Nader voters. I've seen ads like this in some recent elections, where candidates say, Make me your second choice. It's so because it's still new. It sounds so fun to hear candidates say that. But essentially, you know, I may not be exactly what you want, but I might be I certainly am closer than these other guys.

Andy Felt: 17:34

Right? Now. There's another there's another system that's very popular with the same input. So the voter still ranks there, their candidates, either all of them, or some of them depending on on the system. But then there's what's the system called? Oh, so this system is called Borda Count. The Borda Count,

Shanny Luft: 17:54

board B-O, A-R-D?

Andy Felt: 17:57

B-O-R-D-A.

Shanny Luft: 17:58

Okay, so how does Borda Count work?

Andy Felt: 18:00

So you're let's just say that we're ranking five candidates, then your first choice gets four points, your second choice gets 3/3 Choice gets to fourth choice gets one and fifth choice gives zero. You can do it a lot of different ways. You can bump up the number one if you want, by a couple points just sort of reward that. But that's a very popular thing that's used by a lot of a lot of systems, for example, the Academy Awards, when they vote for Best Picture, they realize that fly and so now they they use the Borda Count. Same thing with all the MVP for sports, the Heisman Trophy, all of these elections where there are many candidates, whoever is running the election has realized that plurality is terrible, and has changed most of them to the Borda Count, one of my students was active in the SGA. And this was when they were running the vote on a smoking ban. So the

Shanny Luft: 19:16

A vote to ban smoking anywhere on campus.

Andy Felt: 19:18

Right. And here was the ballot. I'll tell you the candidates it was there were three pseudo smoking bans, okay, like a different kind of variation, right. And the fourth candidate was status quo. In other words, no ban at all. So you tell me, Shanny, you've got three flavors of smoking ban. And one, no ban at all? Who is that an advantage if they run a plurality vote.

Shanny Luft: 19:48

So based on what you have taught me today, I would say the the status quo has a serious advantage. huge advantage. The three versions of a smoking ban are all kind of bunched together. And so 75% of the campus or 70%, might want one of those three, but a plurality might vote for that fourth one.

Andy Felt: 20:09

Exactly.

Shanny Luft: 20:10

Is that what happened?

Andy Felt: 20:11

No. Because my, my student was in SGA, he raised this issue and said, This is what we're heading for. So they did that using the Borda Count.

Shanny Luft: 20:22

So when you're asking people to rank, which I, as you put it earlier, you're getting more information, which is not just what is that people want the most, but also, what hemisphere? Are they in? What are they in those options? What a second place matters?

Andy Felt: 20:37

Yes, math, and then they get points? Exactly. Right.

Shanny Luft: 20:42

What strikes me is the first part of rank choice voting is very easy to understand, right? You can explain to a young child, you've got three ice cream flavors, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry rank, your first favorite, your second favorite third favorite, that part? literally anybody can. The harder part to explain then is why that concept, why that's more consequential why that's more useful, why that method would be preferred than just vote for the one flavor you like the best, right? It's like how the math is done, he comes up with a different result. But it's, you do have to it takes a little bit longer to explain the value of that process.

Andy Felt: 21:21

Yes, if we were to wave our wand and change every state to a rank choice vote, I think what would eventually happen as the lesser parties would become greater, would grow in popularity, because voting for them wouldn't hurt. And you'd probably see more than two major parties, you'd probably see three or four major parties, and and a bunch of lesser ones.

Shanny Luft: 21:49

What I really have enjoyed about this conversation is you've helped me get a better sense of how rank choice voting is not just a different way to count or do a math problem. But it actually gathers information that it gives us more information that our current pick one or the other candidate vote for one out of four or five, and then that information can have an impact on how candidates run on what legislation is proposed. Right, it can make candidates, it would, as you've explained it, push candidates to be more centrist, which would affect policies. And so that's the part of this is fascinating to me is that it's not just a clever math problem, but it actually has a there's a there's a clear line between how the math is done, and what the consequence is for the country. When it comes to politics.

Andy Felt: 22:44

You know, one of the things is I think, so many other advanced countries, use the parliamentary system where lots of parties get in to the parliament. And that sort of is it works around. The weakness of plurality just doesn't really have a problem.

Shanny Luft: 23:04

Because in a parliamentary system, you have 1015 different parties, no party will often get 51% of the vote. And so they're forced to create coalition's, and that then has the same effect of moving people through the center and forcing people to cooperate exactly to get anything done. Our system of politics seems to encourage lack of cooperation. Yeah. So thank you so much for this conversation. I've really enjoyed it. It's been great to talk to you about this.

Andy Felt: 23:33

You're welcome. Happy to happy to talk with you and thanks for inviting

Shanny Luft: 23:41

I hope you found the conversation as interesting as I did and that you learned a little more about how rank choice voting works. If you're enjoying the podcast, please subscribe and share it with other people. The more listeners we get, the more I'll be able to do in the future.

Oscar Winner Clip: 23:58

And the winner is The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow, Nicholas Sharkey --

Gretel Stock: 24:05

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