Ranked-Choice Voting: Technocracy Run Amok

“twenty years of RCV in San Francisco has neither moderated the city’s politics nor produced any novel outcomes worth replicating.”

A bit of history was made last month when New York City became by far the most populous jurisdiction in the United States to use ranked-choice voting (RCV) in an election. Its debut in the Big Apple was a mixed bag: There was a large and embarrassing hiccup on the part of the widely despised New York City Board of Elections, which forgot to remove 130,000 test ballots from the initial results. But exit polls gave RCV enthusiasts more than a few data points to tout.

While RCV is still niche, its salience is increasing, and I think New York City’s use will ultimately help rather than hurt its popularity. fifty-three jurisdictions, including the states of Alaska and Maine, either use RCV or are slated to within two elections. Some truly powerful financial and intellectual winds are at its back as well. With RCV likely to continue its proliferation, now seems like a good time to interrogate some of the assumptions and motivations of its adherents.

Some Quick Background

For those unaware, RCV, also called instant-runoff voting, is an alternative to the first-past-the-post system with which most Americans are familiar. In the latter, voters cast one vote for their candidate of preference, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. RCV, on the other hand, asks voters to rank their preferences, eliminating contenders and reassigning votes until one of the remaining candidates achieves a majority.

For example, if there are three candidates, A, B, and C, and A and B each receive forty percent of the first-choice votes, C is eliminated. The twenty percent of voters who chose C as their first-round pick will then have their second-choice votes counted. As soon as A or B passes the fifty percent mark, they will be declared the winner. According to proponents of the system, this is preferable to traditional voting for a number of reasons.