Throughout history, candidates have won critical elections with less than a popular majority, from the presidency to Congress to city halls, both in the US and abroad
'RCV also directly improves the fairness and legitimacy of outcomes and makes it harder for operatives who seek to game the system. When electing powerful leaders, elections should uphold “majority rule.”'
That's not true, though. The form of RCV (Hare/IRV) promoted by FairVote does not uphold majority rule in any meaningful sense. A majority of voters can rank candidate A higher than candidate B on their ballots, and RCV can still elect B.
In the 2009 Burlington mayoral election, held using RCV, a 54% majority of voters ranked Montroll higher than Kiss, yet RCV ignored some of their preferences and selected Kiss.
In the 2022 Alaska special congressional election, held using Top-Four RCV, a 52% majority of voters ranked Begich higher than Peltola on their ballots, yet RCV ignored some of their preferences and selected Peltola.
RCV's "majority support" is a fabrication created by eliminating candidates and then only counting the preferences for those candidates who remain, which is meaningless.
Imagine a hypothetical alternative voting system based on ranked ballots: Each voter is asked to rank the candidates in their order of preference, just like IRV. Then the candidates are eliminated in a series of rounds, just like IRV. However, let's imagine that it eliminates the candidate with the *highest* number of first-choice rankings instead of the lowest. So the candidates that the voters liked most are eliminated first, until only the worst two are left in the final round. Now if there are only two left, it's guaranteed that one of those candidates will be preferred by a majority over the other, right? We can claim that this system "ensures majority support" in exactly the same way that Hare RCV does. Is that "majority support" meaningful? No. All the most-preferred candidates were eliminated.
Unfortunately, FairVote's IRV can do exactly the same thing: eliminating all the highest-regarded candidates through vote-splitting until only the worst two are left, and then declaring that "RCV worked great, exactly as intended!" because the 2nd-most-hated candidate beat the most-hated (nevermind that there were many better candidates on the ballot who were prematurely eliminated). We need to demand better than this broken system that FairVote pushes to the exclusion of all others.
Fall River, Massachusetts recall election, 2019: Mayor Jasiel Correia was recalled by a landslide, 61% to 39%. But his 35% of votes was enough to win the plurality election to replace himself. Later, he lost his re-election bid and is now incarcerated for crimes in office.
RCV has the potential to dramatically improve American elections. What is particularly encouraging is that among the many possible positive reforms to US elections, RCV is probably the easiest to implement. Many places already have. The political parties could apply it to their primary processes tomorrow if they wanted. Let's hope it continues to spread.
'RCV also directly improves the fairness and legitimacy of outcomes and makes it harder for operatives who seek to game the system. When electing powerful leaders, elections should uphold “majority rule.”'
That's not true, though. The form of RCV (Hare/IRV) promoted by FairVote does not uphold majority rule in any meaningful sense. A majority of voters can rank candidate A higher than candidate B on their ballots, and RCV can still elect B.
In the 2009 Burlington mayoral election, held using RCV, a 54% majority of voters ranked Montroll higher than Kiss, yet RCV ignored some of their preferences and selected Kiss.
In the 2022 Alaska special congressional election, held using Top-Four RCV, a 52% majority of voters ranked Begich higher than Peltola on their ballots, yet RCV ignored some of their preferences and selected Peltola.
RCV's "majority support" is a fabrication created by eliminating candidates and then only counting the preferences for those candidates who remain, which is meaningless.
Imagine a hypothetical alternative voting system based on ranked ballots: Each voter is asked to rank the candidates in their order of preference, just like IRV. Then the candidates are eliminated in a series of rounds, just like IRV. However, let's imagine that it eliminates the candidate with the *highest* number of first-choice rankings instead of the lowest. So the candidates that the voters liked most are eliminated first, until only the worst two are left in the final round. Now if there are only two left, it's guaranteed that one of those candidates will be preferred by a majority over the other, right? We can claim that this system "ensures majority support" in exactly the same way that Hare RCV does. Is that "majority support" meaningful? No. All the most-preferred candidates were eliminated.
Unfortunately, FairVote's IRV can do exactly the same thing: eliminating all the highest-regarded candidates through vote-splitting until only the worst two are left, and then declaring that "RCV worked great, exactly as intended!" because the 2nd-most-hated candidate beat the most-hated (nevermind that there were many better candidates on the ballot who were prematurely eliminated). We need to demand better than this broken system that FairVote pushes to the exclusion of all others.
Ya gotta love MA very own Jasiel Correa...
Fall River, Massachusetts recall election, 2019: Mayor Jasiel Correia was recalled by a landslide, 61% to 39%. But his 35% of votes was enough to win the plurality election to replace himself. Later, he lost his re-election bid and is now incarcerated for crimes in office.
RCV has the potential to dramatically improve American elections. What is particularly encouraging is that among the many possible positive reforms to US elections, RCV is probably the easiest to implement. Many places already have. The political parties could apply it to their primary processes tomorrow if they wanted. Let's hope it continues to spread.