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The paradox of rankedchoice voting

Ranked-choice voting is a technical fix to voting problems. But it
can often make matters worse.
In ranked-choice voting, aka instant runoff voting, you rank the
candidates in order. Then the candidate with the lowest number of
first preference votes is eliminated, and people who voted for him
have their second preference counted instead. Keep eliminating
candidates until theres only one left. The aim is to make sure
people dont worry about wasting their vote on a comparatively
unpopular candidate.
Proponents of ranked-choice voting generally fall into two camps.
The first hopes to get more centrists elected, like the UKs Liberal
Democrats, or Californias Tom Campbell. Another popular reform of
this type is open primaries, and centrists will keep coming up with
these ideas as long as they cant get anyone to vote for them.
The second hopes to get more left-wing parties running, like
Greens or Socialists. The argument goes that people dont vote for
Greens like Nader because theyre worried about splitting the leftof-centre vote and letting the right in, as in 2000. But with
ranked-choice voting, Nader could have run, disaffected Democrats
could have indulged themselves with a protest vote for him, and it
would have all worked out OK Naders votes would have been
redistributed to Gore, letting him win. Its an attractive position, as
it lets you be smugly superior in your purist vote without actually
having to face the consequences of eight years of Bush-Cheney.
So how can it make things worse? One example is San Francisco,
where its combined with public campaign financing to give 16
candidates for the mayors race. Mercifully, San Franciscans dont
have to rank order the whole set they only need choose their top
3. But that gives 16*15*14 = 3360 possible choices, quite enough
to induce analysis paralysis among anyone who took the task
seriously. The paradox of choice says that all these options will
give worse results.
And how is the election shaping up? With 16 candidates, all the
messages blend into one vague mush of centre-left platitudes
protecting the environment, encouraging sustainable growth and so
on. Nobody attacks anyone else, because they want their
supporters to put them second or third. Its San Franciscos most
boring election.
Who benefits from all of this? The same people who always benefit
incumbents and moneyed interests the only ones who can cut
through the chatter. What the reformers have forgotten is that,
since Ancient Rome, any election worth anything has been, at
base, a contest between rich and poor. Not that the patrician
candidate is always worse the rich didnt get to be rich by being
dummies. But the best way for the rich to win the class war is to
deny and obscure its existence, and ranked choice voting is an
excellent assistant.
Update: The left-wing SF Bay Guardian notes Several consultants
and election experts [the editor] talked to this week said that
[incumbent mayor] Lee would be far more vulnerable in a traditional
election. He would lose a runoff against almost any of the top
challengers, one person said. and quotes Corey Cook, a political
scientist at the University of San Francisco as saying Rankedchoice voting clearly favors incumbents.

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This entry was posted on October 23, 2011 at 9:07 pm and is filed under politics, san
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8 Responses to The paradox of rankedchoice voting

JB Says:
October 24, 2011 at 6:42 am | Reply

Funny that the rich folks in San Francisco are the ones trying to get rid of
ranked choice voting. That suggests you dont have it right.

erehweb Says:
October 24, 2011 at 8:52 am | Reply

Thanks for your comment, JB! Definitely possible I dont have

it right, and Im genuinely interested in your source.
Its perhaps a little foolish to say that one knows better than
the rich how to manage their affairs, but Im not afraid of that
I will say that the local public radio station this morning
asserted that ranked choice gave an advantage to
incumbents. And if I were the incumbent, I would much rather
be running in this ranked-choice election than have to possibly
face a runoff against the best of the rest.

David Cary Says:

October 28, 2011 at 8:40 am | Reply

Thanks for the disinformation.

Youve demonstrated the foolish extremes some people will go to make
even simple things sound complicated.
RCV favors incumbents compared to what? How often did KQED say
incumbents were defeated under traditional systems? O r d i d t h e y
conveniently omit that crucial point?

erehweb Says:
October 28, 2011 at 8:55 am | Reply

Well, it was a throwaway remark, without a statistical analysis

done. Ill stand by my point that if I were the incumbent
mayor Ed Lee, I would rather be running under RCV than
having to deal with a runoff (probably against Avalos?). I dont
think he would fare so well in a one-on-one contest.

erehweb Says:
November 5, 2011 at 1:40 pm | Reply

See also the update to the main post. The SFBG appears to
agree that RCV favors incumbents compared to the traditional
system in general, and advantages Ed Lee in particular. In and
of itself, this is not necessarily an argument against RCV. But
its as well to know what were dealing with.

Clay Shentrup Says:

November 5, 2011 at 7:27 pm | Reply

Approval Voting is a vastly simpler system which results in more

democratic results as objectively measured via Bayesian Regret
calculations.
Voters get an ordinary ballot, but can simply vote for as many candidates
as they wish. The candidate with the most votes wins.

http://www.electology.org/approval-voting
http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv
Lets make this happen in San Francisco. Call me at 206.801.0484 if you
want to find out how.

erehweb Says:
November 6, 2011 at 8:15 pm | Reply

Thanks for the comment and links, Clay. Approval voting

looks interesting, and I wonder why RCV won out over it. I do
think that traditional runoff voting has some value in that it
helps people to form preferences its fairly easy to decide
once things have been narrowed down to the top 2 not so
easy to decide which of the 16 are acceptable. Yes, traditional
runoff has problems with encouraging people to vote for an
electable candidate, but I think these are overstated, and not
so bad, since everyone understands the game. But I look
forward to diving more into the information youve shown.

Clay Shentrup Says:

November 9, 2011 at 10:11 pm

> I wonder why RCV won out over it

Because FairVote (originally called Citizens for
Proportional Representation) has a long-term goal
of getting parliamentary democracy in the USA,
using a multi-winner proportional system called
STV. IRV is just the single-winner form of STV, so
implementing IRV is a stepping stone strategy
which gets them much closer to STV. Therefore
they dont seem to care whether IRV is a good or
bad voting method, as long as it helps get them to
their goal. No credible force was around to make a
counter-proposal in favor of Approval Voting back
when FairVote worked to implement this change.
Thus their torrent of misinformation went
unchecked, and they won.
> I do think that traditional runoff voting has some
value in that it helps people to form preference
True, but it may not matter. If the best candidate
to go to the runoff is, on average, worse than the
candidate who would win with Approval Voting,
then it doesnt matter how much value that runoff
has. Even if it causes voters to make the best
decision they could possibly hope to make
between those two candidates, theyll still get a
worse result than they would have with Approval
Voting.
There is significant statistical evidence to suggest
this is the case. Particularly the Bayesian Regret
calculations. A concrete example would be the last
French presidential election. Royal (socialist) went
to the runoff against Sarkozy (conservative), and
Sarkozy won. But Bayrou (centrist) was preferred
head-to-head vs. BOTH Royal AND Sarkozy. It
seems pretty clear that Bayrou was the social
utility maximizer (most preferred by the most
people). And in fact a large Approval Voting exit
poll (and other evidence) says he would have won
with Approval Voting, even though we would have
only gotten something like 44% approval.
However, your point is still taken, and I think its
valid. Its quite reasonable to still use a runoff with
Approval Voting, if no candidate is approved by a
majority of voters. In that case, Approval Voting
still causes runoffs to be less frequent, AND it puts
better candidates INTO the runoff.

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