reform

How often did ‘proportional RCV’ have ‘a bad year’?

An emerging narrative holds that ranked-choice voting is in trouble as a cause due to its performance at this year’s general election. It therefore might be useful to look at historical data on the incidence and potential consequences of ‘bad years.’ I don’t see much evidence for the effect of a ‘bad year’ — at least from the perspective of failed adoption.

The data cover efforts to adopt the single transferable vote (STV), in almost all cases alongside the council-manager form of government.¹ Close readers will note that this is not the same as what lost earlier this month: instant runoff voting with jungle primaries. I do not have the kind of data you see above for “single-winner” adoptions (i.e., instant runoff), at either the state or local levels. What I can say is:

I am not aware of any effort in this period to impose nonpartisan instant runoff for statewide elections.²
Statewide-election use of instant runoff was restricted to party primaries. I do not know if this was in state law or a decision internal to parties themselves.
I think these data provide a decent if imperfect comparison because we are dealing with the same basic phenomenon: an effort to break up parties so that more independents might win.

The data show a string of bad years in the late 1930s. They clearly did not end adoptions; more than half of winning referendums came after. Also, these ‘bad’ years followed a few in which STV did very well.³

Millard (1924) in the *National Municipal Review*.

Why Alaskan RCV might survive

It has been fascinating to watch the evolving count of votes in Alaska Measure 2. This would replace jungle primaries followed by an RCV round with a ‘conventional’ system of closed primaries followed by a plurality vote. As of Election Night and the days immediately after it, Measure 2 looked to be going the same way as several other statewide measures: no RCV.⁴

Here is why retention in Alaska would not be very surprising despite what might seem like a ‘wave’ against this reform.

Advice for the reform-curious

I recently received a thoughtful email from a young person “concerned about the state of democracy in the US.” This person found me via Fix Our House tweets, which he’d found via Andrew Yang/Final Five tweets. His question:

I know there is no such thing as “the best reform that once we get passed all of our problems will go away”…it’s just, I keep reading about this stuff and how to help and want to be sure I am pursuing efficient and meaningful avenues towards improvement. But it all seems to go in circles sometimes…

My reply:

Thanks for reading so much of my work but especially for this set of questions. It’s easy to forget that I am in the weeds.
I am busy visiting family right now, but I would be happy to chat at greater length some time. For now, two or three thoughts:
1) A bigger priority than changing rules should be strengthening parties — their connections to community groups, ability to mobilize voters, and thus hold politicians accountable. If one’s politics are conservative, an added task might cultivating respect for democracy (and knowledge of the country’s troubled history with voting rights) among conservative politicians (as well as self-styled moderates/centrists).
2) If the people doing that work also understand electoral systems, that is even better. That knowledge can be used to fight bad reforms as well as promote good ones. Bad reforms often pass because they’re not well-understood by the underlying communities, and many people therefore abstain.
3) I used to be an “RCV” supporter as long as that was understood to mean partisan systems of PR via STV. Now I have new worries about even that system. That’s for a much longer discussion. The point for this short email is that don’t see the RCV lobby building strategies to move us toward such systems, let alone less complicated forms of proportional representation. Rather, I see many reformers promoting systems that can break connections among voters, parties, and intermediary interest groups.

Related ideas are expressed in my recent brief on ballot fusion and an accompanying blog post.