Vote For the Candidates You Want

Across the Progressive spectrum, support has been gathering to implement Rank Choice Voting (RCV). People commonly believe that it is the best way to weaken the political monopoly trust that the Democrats and Republicans use to share power between them. I seriously doubt the validity of that point of view, especially in statewide elections. Before I introduce all the reasons that RCV, or any of the other names it goes by, is a poor choice as a frontline fix, I would like to build the case for Approval Voting as an alternative.

Approval Voting usually allows people to vote for any candidate on the ballot. Instead of voting for the single person whom you want, you can vote for any candidate that you find capable and/or aligns with your policy preferences. Any candidate who fits your personal qualifications to hold the job. I recommend limiting the number of votes cast to a majority of the candidates on the ballot, with any write-ins counting towards that majority. So, if there are two candidates, you can vote for up to two people. You could use all your votes on two write-ins, or one write-in and one ballot candidate. You may even want to vote for both. If there are seven candidates, then you have up to four votes. Voting for more than one person up to the maximum is optional. No votes for an office, including no write-ins, are by default None of the Above.

What advantages does this method have? First, it is easy to count. Second, it will cause a majority victory in most elections. Elections with either a small field or an enormous field of candidates pose the largest risk of a rerun. By counting blank slates as NOTA, it encourages dissatisfied or uninterested people to express that dissatisfaction. Counting write-ins will expand democratic choice. NOTA votes being counted pushes some non-voters to the polls, since they can express their dissatisfaction and their non-vote counts. It makes voting more than just a beauty pageant where some people place their vote for the most likely winner. There should be a process where NOTA wins. I suggest a do-over election where the bottom half of all ballot candidates cannot appear on the do-over ballot. Write-ins have a choice to be on the do-over ballot, and other candidates could step up to run. Another NOTA win defaults to the governor or the legislature filling the seat. Any seat where NOTA wins three elections in a row, takes the position off the ballot until the legislature restores or designs an alternative selection process for the position. The aim here is to eliminate voting for dogcatcher or even lower on the totem pole, registrar of deeds. Last of all, each candidate runs independently but knows that they can earn a vote from an opponent’s base who has similar policy ideas, which strengthens the message from the electorate about popular agenda items.

The biggest plus of Approval Voting is its simplicity. It is like current Plurality Voting and it lends itself to local hand-counted tabulations for audits and validation of computer tallies. That is an enormous advantage over RCV, which is not simple. Do you rank the person you most prefer #1, second most #2 and the least of all evil #3? Would it be better to vote the lesser evil #1, because #2 has no chance to win and #3 might have a better chance at #2 leaving your top choice at #3? Then there is the counting; it absolutely must occur at the highest step. In a city, for example, each precinct’s vote has to be handed up to the ward, subtotaled for each candidate’s ranks, then passed up to the city for final tabulation; so that the ranking “instant runoffs” can take place. Who would want to be one of the people charged with walking through a hand count? I would say, human nature being what it is, that replicating any count results will be next to impossible. That means that all ballots must be totaled by machine, especially at state-level elections. Let us not even contemplate a national presidential election instead of the state-by-state elections we now have. Many of the proponents of RCV point out that it empowers third parties to win more elections. There is no forensic evidence to prove this point or the other claim that it forces candidates to run kinder, gentler campaigns. Two points that I pointed out about Approval Voting, at the minimum balance of these two advantages claimed by RCV. Approval voting levels the playing field so that candidates are vying for votes, which all count equally, across similar voter demographics. As regards third parties having a better chance at winning, possibly true, but it does little to advance the more democratic ideal of advancing ideas. Many votes but not a winning count for a political outsider show that there is support for that person’s agenda. In the long term, more ideas punch their way into the mainstream.

There are a few changes to the political rules to enhance the value of Approval Voting. As in CA, all primary candidates would appear on a single ballot. This is a major alteration in our election, and adding the ability to vote for a few candidates improves the quality of the resulting candidates. How likely was it in the early Republican 2016 primaries that Trump would have appeared on enough ballots to win many of those states? RCV, many times, replaces primary voting altogether. Now, if Democrats and Republicans had been on a single ballot, it is conceivable that both Clinton and Trump would not have been the nominees. Another major change is to relegate machine counting to optical scans of hand-marked ballots. The machine’s vote count is a check against faulty manual counting, but critically, it can validate each ballot for stray marks and other irregularities that disqualify ballots. Voters presented with their on-site disqualified ballot can re-vote. Last of all, I prefer using a limit on how many candidates can be on the ballot for one office. In an extensive field, it would empower parties to supply people with a list of people and, by restricting the slots, that risk is reduced. In a field of over ten, very few people really know anything about over five of the candidates.

Elections have been broken for many years. We need a plan to correct problems with vote counting and to weaken the stranglehold the two-party monopoly trust has on American voting.

Information on approval voting is available at: https://electology.org/approval-voting