Responding to the response to one of my critiques of the Alaska system

This post’s purpose is to clarify a point I made in this essay about coordination failure under nonpartisan Alternative Vote, AKA “the Alaska system.” I have suggested in a few posts that elaborate single-seat electoral systems do not perform well in high-dimensional policy spaces.

DemocracySOS recently ran the following, a version of which also appears in a journal article by Reilly, Lublin, and Wright (2023: 4-5):

A more subtle critique holds that the idea of centrist politics relies on simplistic median voter models which ignore the complexity and multi-dimensionality of contemporary politics in advanced democracies such as the U.S. (Santucci 2021). But even in a multi-dimensional policy space featuring voters and activists with competing preferences or ideologies, a vote-maximizing equilibrium position exists (Miller and Schofield 2008), and ranked systems are far better at identifying this than a straight plurality contest.

In an election with more than two candidates, it is likely that more than one issue dimension is active. This seems especially true if identifiable factions of the major parties are fielding those candidates. They might position themselves, respectively, as socially conservative but fiscally liberal, socially liberal but fiscally conservative, liberal on both dimensions, and conservative on both dimensions.

Let’s focus on Alaska because it has been deemed a successful case. In my mind, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) reflects what Reilly above alludes to as ‘activist’ coordination on a “vote-maximizing equilibrium position.” The Senator is at once the candidate of two and possibly three factions. She enjoys the backing of one of the two major parties. Spatially, her coalition reflects concerted effort to reduce dimensionality.

What would happen in an election with three or more competitive candidates? One might argue, as the article does above, that voters’ rankings would do the job that ‘activist’ coordination did not. I am not so sure. Also, the candidates might discourage their respective supporters from ranking competitors. You can read about some real-life versions of such situations here.

My overall view is that these reforms cannot be counted on to ‘work’ without other interventions. That can mean compulsory ranking, parties telling would-be candidates to “wait their turn,” and so on. Maybe I will be proven wrong. In my mind, however, successful use in other states would not be convincing unless it outlasted the conditions that produced adoption in the first place.