Hurray for Second Choice?
Ballot question no. 3 on the November 2024 ballot is a bad amendment to the Nevada Constitution to implement ranked-choice voting (RCV), which requires that voters rank their preference for multiple candidates for election. There are two frequent arguments for RCV that are made by proponents. The first argument is that everyone is confronted with ranking in their everyday lives so it’s nothing new or confusing. The second one is that giving a vote to a winning candidate, even if that candidate wasn’t your first-place choice, gives you a feeling of empowerment and pride that you took part in the election; your vote was counted and made a difference. But do these arguments hold up? Let’s look at common sense examples.
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Thank you for bringing the discussion from the theoretical level, where I usually work, to the concrete level that is easier to understand.
I oppose "RCV" for different reasons. It's really STV = single transferable vote, in which the supporters of the least popular alternative are the most influential. That is inappropriate.
That doesn't invalidate the usefulness of recording voter preferences. Allow me to use the metaphors you employed in your column. Suppose your first choice could not win a majority or even plurality of first-place votes. The existing rules might well give the election to the alternative that is your absolute least favorite choice. Under those circumstances, you might very well welcome the chance to award victory to your second choice.
Although personally I am to the right of Donald Trump, I can still look at the political landscape of America and realize that it is being torn apart to some extent by the extremes. I wrote about this on my old Wordpress blog and also on my current Substack, when I wrote about abortion. While I am personally pro-life, I recognize the truth of President Trump's observation that an absolute, no-exceptions ban on abortion is suicide for Republicans. If voters' only choices are an absolute, no-exceptions ban candidate versus a no restrictions at all candidate, they will choose the latter in most states.
This raises the question of whether one wants to win elections and get anything done. If so, we may benefit from a positional voting method that rewards breadth of support as well as depth. That would not be RCV, but some of the better one-round positional voting methods.