by Jack Santucci
Notes on preferential voting in America, emphasizing developments from about 1990 to present.
When you can’t agree on the one you want, but you can agree on the one you don’t.
I mean instant-runoff voting, which goes these days as “single-winner ranked-choice voting.” As readers of this blog know well, IRV manufactures a majority. If no candidate has a majority of first-choice votes, the last-placed candidate is eliminated. Ballots for the eliminated person flow to next-ranked picks on each. Rinse, repeat.
Two developments now catch the eye.
They blocked RCV. It’s hard to say why.
At the same time that they use it in party primaries, Maine voters this June will vote a second time on retaining ranked-choice voting. This second referendum is the next stage of a people’s veto, a citizen-initiative process that can overturn acts of the legislature. The first stage was collecting more than 66,000 valid signatures, or 10 percent of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
What brought about the people’s veto was a classic, legislative roll. Last October 23, in a special session, eleven Maine Democrats joined their Republican colleagues to scuttle ranked-choice voting. This behavior was strange because the Democratic Party is poised to benefit, at least as public sentiment now stands.
I have started a bibliography of recent, empirical, and peer-reviewed work on ranked-choice voting.
My hope is that the page will be useful to policymakers and researchers. So far, it covers burdens on voters, burdens on election officials, effects on candidates and parties, causes of adoption/repeal, and book-length historical accounts.
Please reach out if you have something to add.