In a moment of zest, I took a few minutes aside to write my local legislators about an issue which concerns me, which is our voting method. Few people are aware of the effects that our voting method have on politics, or even that there are alternatives. But there's a growing grass-roots movement of people who recognize the benefits of better voting systems, such as Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet Voting Methods (such as the Schulze Method).
Why should you care about the voting method? Well, one of the many good reasons I didn't discuss in my letter is that our voting method makes us stuck with choices we don't like, and it picks a winner who is often not the best candidate in the eyes of the electorate. For example, look at the federal landscape today. Not one branch of government has an approval rating above 30%. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have only the good Democrats and only the good Republicans, or how about someone in the middle?
But you can't do that, you're stuck with just 2 choices, and there's a reason. At the core of it, is the Spoiler effect. This is what comes into play when a third candidate 'spoils' the election toward the least-preferred candidate, as Nader and Perot in these past few elections. Basically, a rising star builds up their momentum up until the moment when they split the vote enough to spoil the election, and at that moment, their very constituency turns against them. I witnessed this first-hand in Austin, where the liberals vilified and actively opposed Nader's efforts in 2004, even though they agreed with him, because they believed he had spoiled the election to Bush the Younger. This whole process is known as Duverger's Law, and this is the reason people speak of our system as a "two party system." This is, as they say, a bug, not a feature, that is, it's a flaw in our system, not something we've taken on by choice.
Another way of looking at this is through the academics' eyes, who call this the voting criterion of Clone Independence. Basically, 'clone independence' is the question of what happens if you taking an existing race, clone one of the candidates, and carry on the race with the clone included. Different systems react differently. In our system, plurality voting, the clones together are less likely to win than the original on their own. For example, 2 qualified liberals or 2 qualified conservative are actually less likely to win than a single qualified liberal or conservative. In others, they may be more likely to win. The proper answer though, is that they should collectively have the same chance of winning as the original did on their own, and their are several systems like that. Including both Instant Runoff Voting, and my personal favorite, the Schulze Method, for which I prefer the name 'Full-Runoff voting.'
In any case, for those of you frustrated with what's going on, I recommend you pick a subject which has local significance, because your voice is 100x louder when you speak to your local legislators, who have far fewer constituents. Go to your legislators, show your interest, and speak to them on the specifics which actually affect their constituents, which they recognize could affect their chances of re-election. As a politician once said, whether they agree with you or not, "when I feel the heat, I see the light."
Dear [Mr./Mrs. Legislator], I hope you'll consider supporting Instant Runoff Voting, aka Ranked Choice voting, ala [HB 2202/ SB 6000], which I'll refer to as IRV. If you're unfamiliar with IRV, it's a form of voting which allows the voter to rank each of the candidates according to their preference. At the time of tabulating the votes, if no candidate has a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and their votes are re-alloted to the second-choice candidates of those voters. Candidates are successively eliminated until one of the remaining candidates has a majority of votes. It may not be obvious from my telling, but IRV presents the opportunity to solve several of our problems in Washington at once. First of all it removes the need to limit choice through the restrictions of the pick-a-party primary. This is a problem which has been generating frustration on the local level across Washington, as evidenced by Pierce County's adoption of IRV to solve just this problem. Second, it ensures that all our elected officials must win the support of at least 50% + 1 of the electorate in order to be elected. Not the out-right support mind you, but enough to put them out ahead of their other major opponents. In many local races this makes a significant difference, for example at the Port of Seattle Commissioner election just a few days ago, Place 2 was won with just 33% of the vote! Only a third of voters supported that candidate (Gael Tarleton) and yet she won. Likewise, Redmond's mayor was elected with 39% of the vote, and had strong opponents with 36% and 24% of the vote. It's very possible that more of the electorate actually preferred the candidate who received 36%, but were unable to have there preference heard, because of our limited voting system. The principles of representative democracy suggest we can do a better job of forming a consensus for who to choose as representatives, and IRV can help us do that. I've spoken with a number of people about this, and just about everyone I've spoken to thinks its a great idea once they know about it. It's encouraging that Pierce county has voted to adopt this method, and it shows that there is a grass-roots movement growing up around the issue. I hope you'll be there to work with that movement. I'm looking forward to working with you on this issue, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Regards, Ben Woosley P.S. Another alternative to IRV, rather than eliminating the least popular candidate each round, uses the voters' ballots to run a "virtual" runoff between each and every pair of candidates, simultaneously. The candidate who beats each of the other candidates in this "virtual" runoff is the winner. In the rare case there is not a single candidate who wins all run-offs, IRV-style elimination rounds are used. This is known as Condorcet's voting method, and is technically better than IRV. Both are much better than our current system.
