Skip to content

Category: Politics

All posts related to politics.

What do we know about historic use of IRV in nominating primaries?

Alan Ware (2002, p. 231) writes the following. His book covered the politics of nominating primaries. Its key contribution was to argue that major-party leaders imposed direct primaries to help avoid party splits.

Maryland and Minnesota (both in 1912) had started to use the Alternative Vote electoral system for their primaries. The other possible solution for ensuring majority nominations – the run-off election – was deployed in six southern states, five of which had adopted it before 1917. Indeed, at various times other states had also used forms of so-called preferential voting to ensure that nominees were not the choice of merely a small minority.10 The solutions to the problem of vote fragmentation were well known. The far more intractable problems posed by direct primaries for the parties were, first, interest aggregation, because nomination decisions were now individualized, rather than being considered as part of a “package.” This increased the likelihood of intraparty tensions, and also the risk that unelectable tickets might result. The second problem was that the direct primary both reduced the ability of the party to control the “quality” of candidates selected, and in some cases made it more possible that wealthy individuals might triumph over poorer rivals having broader support among party activists.

Weeks (1937) gives the fullest account of these systems. Whether voters will use rankings sufficient to “guarantee” majority winners is an issue. There also is an open question in the literature: do single-seat reforms (like IRV) eventually induce coordination failure (so that voters do not use markings to get majority-supported outcomes)? Here is what Weeks says about these issues:

1. All states except Alabama and Oklahoma did not require the voter to register more than a first choice for any office. It seems to have been quite common in all the states indicated above that a great many voters failed to avail themselves of the privilege of registering second or more choices, which resulted in the practical restoration of the plurality system in many primary races. This failure was due to several causes: ignorance of the voter; his desire not to have his vote counted for any but his first choice; or his refusal to accept what was thought to be a complicated system, which, it was felt, could be easily corrupted or readily subject to mistakes in the count, or which seemed to provide for an unfair method of evaluating choices.

2. Failure of party leaders and officials to educate the public in the use of the preferential feature, due partly to their opposition to it as a complicated device and one the results of which could not be easily anticipated.

Weeks’ article contains a table of the 11 states that used IRV or the Bucklin system within primaries. Four had gone to runoffs by 1931. Six had gone to plurality. One more (Maryland) continued using a ranked-ballot system through 1937.

I touched on these issues here (pp. 177-180). The topic would make for an interesting research project.

Our contribution to the APSA/Protect Democracy report on parties

Matthew Shugart has a summary of our contribution, which asks how proportional representation might be made to work for U.S. national elections. Michael Latner is the other co-author. It was an honor to contribute to the essay and to the larger collection, which is excellent.

Our piece also tries to take representation seriously. Those thoughts relate to our ongoing project on U.S. descriptive representation in comparative perspective.

What is an elite?

It is common in political science to distinguish “elites” from “masses.” Elites are more polarized than masses, for example. We see this when comparing Congress to the public or activists to non-activists. But what is an elite?

I think it is useful to think of them as the folks who do the bargaining. It probably also matters that an elite “commands” some following. This doesn’t mean that they push people around. It just means that what elites say influence our vote choices — or the behavior of other elites elsewhere in the political system.

Looking at the matter in this way lets us see that democracy is a chain of nested coalitions. (Credit for that phrase goes to Hans Noel, who once used it in passing.) Elites might broker deals locally, then statewide, and then nationally. Some of those deals might concern which elites to send up to the next level.

This perspective also lets us add realism to some popular abstractions. I am thinking of social choice, Arrovian cycles, and Condorcet issues. Bargaining gets us to coalitions and therefore majority rule.

Bargaining does sometimes break down. Or the elites cut a deal we don’t like. The good news is that it’s easy for many to become elites (but see).

Good summary of my argument, plus a thought on lists

Ned Foley has an excellent summary of my technical argument about STV repeals.

I wonder if the fractional-transfer approach would mitigate vote leakage.

The problem is that voters don’t understand it, which is what spurred the original post.

I argue in the book that there are three ways to deal with this: have a multiparty system (that can dictate rankings and/or in which it is incentive-compliant for a majority to retain the system), use list-based allocation (possibly within STV), or somehow maintain a majority that can limit its own nominations.

My hunch is that similar issues (minus ranking and limiting endorsements) also might apply to D’Hondt. Thoughts?

The “disenfranchised independent” argument

The Fulcrum has a piece on “opening” New York State primaries. It makes a familiar argument:

Primary elections are crucial to our electoral outcomes because they determine which representatives have a better standing in the general election.

There is nothing stopping independent voters from running a candidate in a general election — except maybe their inability to agree on that candidate.

And getting people to agree on one candidate (or technically a number that can win) is a major reason why “parties” emerge.

I put “parties” in quotation marks for two reasons. One is that many hear it as an anti-reform cudgel. The other is that “parties” may not track the two-party divide. I am thinking here of quasi-party organizations like Cincinnati’s Charter Committee or the Murkowski organization in Alaska.

Numerous public officials have won office as independents. Names that come to mind include Bloomberg, Lieberman, Ventura, and Weicker. Each of them did so on their own ballot line in a general election.

It’s time to retire the claim that nominating primaries equal disenfranchisement.