ranked choice – Media Nation

Why the emergence of an effective third party will remain a fantasy unless we change how we vote

Lincoln led not just the birth of a new nation but of a new political party as well.

We are awash in terrible news, so this morning I’d like to address something completely different. On Saturday, Nate Cohn of The New York Times asked, “Is There an Opening for a Third Party?” (gift link). My answer is an emphatic no, with a caveat.

Cohn is a smart guy who understands numbers. But he omits some important reasons for why the rise of a real alternative to the Democrats and Republicans will remain a fantasy unless it is accompanied by a thorough-going change in the way we hold elections.

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Cohn’s reasoning for why there might be an opening is solid, though I think that opening is much smaller than he imagines. He argues that as the two major parties have both embraced different forms of populism, the neoliberals and globalists who were ascendant as recently as 20 years ago have been left behind. He writes:

What’s the group? It doesn’t have a name, but it favors things like deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration. It may be recognizable by the labels its critics on both the left and right have already assigned: “neoliberals” or “globalists.” (Though, to be fair, this new group doesn’t necessarily idealize markets or oppose government spending.)

So essentially Cohn is talking about Never Trump conservatives plus Joe Manchin. You could fit them all in a phone booth. (For you young ’uns, here’s a phone booth.) Cohn pays lip service to past examples of third parties like the Progressives of the early 20th century and the Republicans in the 1850s. But he misses some vital context.

A two-party system is baked into our politics not because anyone likes it but because we have winner-take-all elections in which the candidate who comes in first is the victor, even if they get less than 50% of the vote. Yes, I realize there are some exceptions, such as jurisdictions that hold runoffs or have embraced ranked-choice voting. But that’s how it works for nearly all of our major-office elections such as the House, the Senate and gubernatorial races. (Let’s not get started on the Electoral College.)

Now, I don’t want to take credit for an idea that I read somewhere else recently. I can’t seem to find it, but I thought it was something that Josh Marshall wrote for Talking Points Memo. But the examples of the Republicans and the Progressives actually show why third parties flop.

First, the Republicans couldn’t succeed unless they replaced the Whigs, which were one of the two major parties along with the Democrats. The Whigs were conflicted on slavery while the Democrats were all for it. Thus there was an opening for a party that was staunchly anti-slavery. Within just a few years’ time, the Whigs fell apart and were replaced by the Republicans, maintaining the major-party duopoly. So that’s my caveat, and it’s not much of one.

The Progressives actually ran a popular former president, Theodore Roosevelt, as their standard-bearer in 1912. Roosevelt managed to come in second, with the incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft, finishing in third and getting swamped in the Electoral College. Roosevelt’s challenge succeeded only in getting Democrat Woodrow Wilson elected, and he proved to be a racist warmonger with an unparalleled contempt for civil liberties.

Progressive ideas started to permeate into the two major parties, especially the Democratic party. And Roosevelt’s distant cousin Franklin embraced a progressive agenda once he became president in 1933.

So how would we have to change the system in order to give a third party a chance to emerge as a significant force? With congressional and state legislative races, the surest route to new parties would be multicandidate districts and proportional presentation, as explained in this data-rich opinion piece (gift link; trust me when I tell you this is well worth your time) published by The New York Times earlier this year. The piece even anticipates the emergence of five parties under such a system. (I’d be a New Liberal with some New Populist sympathies.)

Massachusetts has nine U.S. House members, so imagine dividing the state into two districts, one with five members and the other with four. Let’s say that in the five-member district 60% of voters chose the New Liberal Party (traditional Democrats, more or less), 40% chose the Growth and Opportunity Party (traditional Republicans) and 20% chose the Progressive Party. The district would send three Democrats, two Republicans and one Progressive to Washington. The other two parties under this scheme: the Patriot Party (Trumpers) and Christian Conservatives.

Such a system, the Times essay argues, would encourage coalition-building and would give voters the opportunity to feel like there’s a party that represents their beliefs and interests — something that is entirely missing today.

All of this is why talking about a third party is a waste of time unless it’s accompanied by deep, systemic change. Given our slide into populist authoritarianism and the emergence of millions of Americans who oppose that slide, either we’re further than ever from trying something completely new — or we’re closer than we’ve ever been before.

Boston’s looming mayoral campaign illustrates the value of ranked-choice voting

Two smart progressive women who serve on the Boston City Council will challenge Mayor Marty Walsh next year, assuming Walsh seeks re-election. I’m not sure I can remember a time that candidates who are the caliber of Michelle Wu and Andrea Campbell have taken on an incumbent.

Their candidacies are yet another reason that you should vote “yes” this fall on Question 2, which would create a system of ranked-choice voting. I’m not exactly making an intuitive argument — RCV, which I wrote about recently for GBH News, wouldn’t apply to the Boston mayoral race. But hear me out.

If municipal elections in Massachusetts were partisan, then Walsh, Wu and Campbell would all run in a Democratic primary, with the winner facing a Republican in the fall. Presumably it would help Walsh enormously to have Wu and Campbell split the anti-Walsh vote.

But that’s not how it works. All three (and perhaps others) will run in a preliminary election, and the top two finishers will face off in November. You could accomplish the same thing with RCV. The point is that Wu and Campbell supporters will be able to vote for their favorite knowing that Walsh will have to face one of them (or someone else depending on who else runs) in a head-to-head contest.

Walsh has been a popular mayor, so I’m certainly not predicting his defeat. But whoever wins will need to get more than 50% of the vote in a one-on-one election. That’s what democracy looks like.

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We need ranked-choice voting — and this November we can make it happen

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

Here we go again.

As of Wednesday morning, it was still unclear who had won the Democratic primary in the Fourth Congressional District. In a field of nine candidates, including two who had dropped out before the primary, Jesse Mermell was running ahead of Jake Auchincloss by the razor-thin margin of 22.4% to 22.3%. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that whoever is nominated in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy will have received far fewer than a majority of the votes.

That also happened two years ago in the Third Congressional District, when Lori Trahan edged out Dan Koh in a 10-candidate Democratic primary. Trahan received 21.7% to Koh’s 21.5%, which was enough to propel her to victory that November against token Republican and independent opposition. This time around, Trahan, now the incumbent congresswoman, ran unopposed in the primary.

This is no way to run a democracy. Elections that produce winners lacking majority support fail to reflect the will of the voters. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

One solution would be to have a runoff election between the top two finishers. That’s the way they do it in some states, and it would be preferable to what we have currently in Massachusetts. But that’s expensive and time-consuming. Even then, it looks like Mermell and Auchincloss together will receive less than 50%, as was the case with Trahan and Koh in 2018 — which means that a majority of Democratic voters wanted someone else.

That’s why ranked-choice voting — also known as the instant runoff — is a better solution. And it’s on the ballot this fall. If Question 2 is approved, the system would go into effect in 2022, covering most state and federal offices but exempting presidential and local elections.

Here’s how ranked-choice voting works. Let’s say five candidates are running. You can vote for one, just as you do now. Or you can designate a second choice and, if you like, keep right on going from one to five in order of preference. It’s entirely up to you.

If no one wins a majority, the fifth-place finisher would be eliminated, and the second choices of voters who supported that candidate would be awarded among the remaining candidates. The instant runoff continues until someone emerges with a majority. Third-place (or lower) votes would be counted if more rounds are needed to produce a majority winner. (For more information about ranked-choice voting, visit Yes on 2.)

This accomplishes two things. First, it eliminates the possibility that a minority winner might be someone who is loathed by voters who backed other candidates. Instead, the winner will be someone who had broad enough support to have been the second or third choice of many voters. Second, it eliminates gamesmanship at the polls. No longer would voters have an incentive to pick someone who isn’t their top choice in order to block someone else. Instead, they could rank their favorite first and their backup second.

The bane of this sort of strategic voting — or, rather, non-strategic voting — is why Maine adopted ranked choice in 2018. The bombastic Republican Paul LePage was elected governor in 2010 and 2014, each time with less than a majority, because a strong independent candidate split the anti-LePage vote with the Democratic nominee. Given what a polarizing figure LePage was, it seems likely that most independent voters would have picked the Democrat as their second choice (and vice versa), thus reflecting the will of the majority that someone other than LePage serve as governor.

I’ve been a fan of ranked-choice voting since 2000, when Ralph Nader’s independent candidacy may very well have cost Al Gore the election and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. As I wrote for The Boston Phoenix at the time, if you make the reasonable assumption that most Nader voters would have ranked Gore second, Gore would have taken Florida and thus the White House.

The question now is whether Question 2 will pass muster with voters in Massachusetts. It’s got a lot of support. According to State House News Service, all but one Democratic candidate in the Fourth Congressional District, including Mermell and Auchincloss, said they supported ranked choice.

Moreover, a recent poll by WBUR and the MassINC Polling Group showed that respondents were evenly split on the measure — but that among those who said they understood ranked choice “very well,” 52% were in favor and 37% were against. With two months to go before the November election, proponents have a chance to win over skeptics.

Of course, the power of inertia is difficult to overcome. Ranked-choice voting isn’t as simple as the system we have now, and there’s a lot to be said for simplicity. But elections should reflect the will of the voters as closely as possible. Ranked choice does that. Which is why I’m voting “yes” on Question 2.

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Rashida Tlaib and the perils of our first-across-the-finish-line elections

I was reading a New York Times story about a serious primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib when I came across this sentence: “Had the 2018 primary been a head-to-head race, many believe Ms. Jones would have prevailed.” Jones is Brenda Jones, the Black president of the Detroit City Council, against whom Tlaib is running once again. I decided to look a little more deeply to find out what had happened.

Tlaib, as you no doubt know, is a member of “the squad” — four progressive women of color, all Democrats, who were elected to the House in 2018. (The others are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.) What I didn’t know was that Tlaib’s brief political career stands out as an example of what’s wrong with our first-across-the-finish-line method of determining elections.

Tlaib first ran in a special election to replace John Conyers, who resigned following charges of sexual harassment. She came in second in a multi-candidate field. Jones, the winner of the Democratic primary, received 37.7% of the vote, becoming the acting congresswoman. (In Tlaib’s district, winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to winning the election.) Tlaib came in second with 35.9%

A few months later, another primary was held to choose a regular replacement for Conyers. This time, in a five-candidate field, Tlaib finished first, with 31.2%, and Jones came in second, with 30.2% Note that Tlaib’s support had actually dropped nearly five points since the special election. About 69% of voters cast ballots for someone other than Tlaib. But she was declared the winner, which is how it works under our system.

According to Ballotpedia, the 2020 primary, which will be held Aug. 4, will feature just two candidates, Tlaib and Jones, thus guaranteeing that the winner will receive a majority. That’s the way it should be. If no candidate receives a majority, then there ought to be a runoff election between the top two finishers or ranked-choice voting. (I wrote about ranked choice, also known as instant-runoff voting, and other election reforms for WGBH News in 2018.)

In any case, this will be an interesting primary to keep an eye on. The outspoken Tlaib, who’s Palestinian-American, is, along with Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. Jones represents a more moderate African American constituency.

At least this time, we’ll have a chance of finding out whom voters actually prefer.

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