Letter to the editor: Is ranked-choice voting skiing down a slippery slope? – My Edmonds News

Editor:

When I was Republican chairman of the 21stLegislative District, we held a caucus for choosing the State Representatives. The process is that each candidate is nominated, a convention is held, each nominee is allowed some time to speak, then a vote is taken (with runoff votes until a candidate gets a majority). The caucus was mostly fair but there was some unique cheating that happened. Nominees arrived at the convention to give their nomination speech, but instead resigned on stage and threw their support to another candidate. The caucus was gamed by adding bad-faith nominees who just took theirtime to voice support for someone else. This was a strategic operation, brokered behind doors more than likely. I favor the caucus system, but I just described a serious problem with the way this one was run.

The Edmonds Civic Roundtable put forward a terrific pro-ranked-choice voting (RCV) presentation on Monday (see story here). They held a mock RCV election with the audience for which Olympic sport should be chosen forthe games. The options were:

The ECR presenters handed out ballots and held an election. People chose multiple sports in a ranked order (1-2-3). If none of the sports got a majority of rank-1 votes, then the sport that got the least would be exhausted and the rank-2 votes would get added instantly. The process repeats until there is a majority. RCV (also called instant-runoff voting) has a runoff scheme just like a caucus, except (unlike a caucus) a new vote isnt taken after a candidate is dropped out. Its all done instantly by the rank-order.

Theres a lot to like about RCV. In theory it prevents the vote-splitting effects that a third-rail candidate (e.g. Ralph Nader and Ross Perot) can have. A third candidate in a general election splits votes and hurts the candidate with a more similar platform. Ralph Nader is often blamed for splitting Al Gores votes. On the contrary, ranked-choice voting can have the opposite effect to the same advantage. Unlike how Nader may have weakened Gore in the general election, in a RCV election a third-fourth-and-fifth candidate can give Gore the advantage. A political party can easily cultivate more like-minded candidates; and even do so in bad faith. Ironically, coalition-building is another positive claim by RCV advocates, but rest assured this also would happen behind closed doors to the end that it advantages the most established incumbent party. Id argue that this tactic (if crafted) could be more effective than gerrymandering.

Lets take the example provided by the Roundtable. Imagine if downhill skiing (the most funded incumbent sport) cultivated other sport to run. The ballot would look more like this:

Ice Hockey

Cross Country Skiing

Biathlon (also skiing)

Snowboarding.

Downhill Skiiing can simply spawn more candidates to appear on the ballot, creating a coalition. The new candidates will add an illusion of more choice, but will just end up instantly resigning and being a second choice for the main candidate. In an RCV election Al Gore would be delighted that Ralph Nader was on stage too, criticizing George Bush. Gore might even help and encourage more candidates to run, and the election would be a race to see what party can getmore second-place proxies on the ballot. The coalitions will share money, voter databases, and be mostly non-adversarial to each other. Would a newer, naive candidate even know how to navigate this? Does a city councilperson also need to be good at Hunger Games in order to get elected?

Matt RichardsonEdmonds

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Letter to the editor: Is ranked-choice voting skiing down a slippery slope? - My Edmonds News