January 3, 2008 solidified my interest in politics. Even though I couldn’t vote, I went and observed the Iowa Caucus for the first time. In a lecture hall used by the sciences at Luther College, around 300-400 Democrats filed in, nervous and excited to see what our precinct’s results would be. Many sporting campaign merchandise for Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and a few other candidates, it was immediately clear that Obama had the advantage in this college-dominated electorate.
After listening to the instructions from the precinct chair, everyone was told to stand by the paper sign corresponding to the candidate they preferred. Over half of the room tried to stand by the Obama sign, but the amorphous blob of people took up too much space, so they leaked out into the hallway to count their numbers. Clinton held a strong contingent of 40-50 people, Edwards had slightly more in his camp, and there were only a few people hanging around signs for Biden, Kucinich, Dodd, and Richardson.
After performing an initial count of supporters for each candidate, the real fun began. In order to get one of the 11 delegates from our precinct, a candidate had to meet the 15% threshold. And since Biden, Kucinich, Dodd, and Richardson failed to meet that threshold, their supporters were encouraged and recruited to support the candidates who were going to hit that threshold. What followed was a 30 minute frenzy of advocates for Edwards, Clinton, and Obama talking to and recruiting the voters from the eliminated candidates. Because the 11 delegates would be split between those three candidates, a few voters swapping into the Clinton camp instead of the Edwards camp could swing a remaining delegate from Edwards to Clinton. During this 30-minute democracy bonanza I still remember hearing the Clinton supporters chanting “H-R-C!”, the arms-crossed refusal of a young woman to support any candidate other than Biden, and the fast-talkers trying to persuade undecided voters to one of the camps. After the post-frenzy recount, Obama walked away with six delegates, Edwards with three, and Clinton with two.
This was democracy in action but, most interestingly, it was a form of ranked choice voting in action. Because a caucus requires a candidate to hit that 15% threshold, supporters of candidates who fail to reach that level of support are left to determine which of the remaining viable candidates they support most. And with the ability to talk to supporters of each candidate and to see where their vote would matter most, their votes play a vital role in exercising choice, even as their top choice fell out of the running.
While the 2016 Democratic primary was a two-horse race from the start, the Republican Party saw 17 people throw their hats in the ring, which made it difficult for candidates to differentiate themselves from each other, which in turn made the unique demeanor of Donald Trump a differentiator that helped him get headlines and get his message out. And because he drummed up a small but consistent base that turned out for him across the country, he frequently won primaries and caucuses with 30-40% of the vote. But from a poll in August 2015, Republicans said they would be most dissatisfied with Trump as the party nominee compared to other candidates. If the Republican voters were allowed to rank the candidates in order of preference, it certainly would have allowed the more ‘establishment’ candidates to coalesce around each other, creating a higher chance to defeat the insurgent Trump.
The Democratic Party faces the prospect of a similarly crowded field in 2020, with up to 25 prospects expressing interest in running. The CNN poll in Iowa earlier this month included 21 candidates, and there are plenty of headlines already discussing how Bernie and Warren are vying for the same leftist voters or how Bernie and Beto are already fighting through an invisible primary to determine who will get the millennial enthusiasm in 2020. Leaving Democratic voters in 2020 the option only to vote for one candidate in a primary fails to allow voters to adequately express their preferences in a crowded field.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, a caucus is already a form of ranked choice voting, but the Democratic Party still uses traditional plurality primaries in most states in the presidential primary process, so I believe those states should switch over to using a single transferable vote (STV) system (often called multi-member ranked choice voting), which is used in Ireland. In an STV system, voters within an electorate rank candidates and multiple candidates are elected to represent that electorate. For the candidates that don’t hit the threshold to be elected, the voters who ranked them first have their ballots reallocated to their second choice and so on until only candidates who meet the threshold are remaining and thus elected. (For the podcast fans out there, Radiolab had an excellent episode on this recently).
I would make one change to the STV system, however. In standard STV the electorate elects a set number of candidates, e.g. for one district with five seats up for grabs, they need five people to meet the minimum threshold to get elected. All that matters is hitting the quota of votes needed to fill one of the seats. But because STV focuses on filling seats, it doesn’t allow one person to receive multiple ‘seats’. Because the presidential primary is focused on winning delegates in each state, a candidate needs to be able to win multiple delegates in one district. In order to preserve the delegate allocation method used by the caucus system, I would tweak the STV system to allow one candidate to get multiple delegates as appropriate. So for the primaries, voters would rank the candidates in order of preference, and candidates would receive delegates only if they pass a threshold of votes, e.g. 15%, and a candidate would be eligible to receive more than one delegate if they earn a corresponding amount of the vote share after all re-allocations are complete.
To see an example of STV in action, view this video. As mentioned above, though, instead of merely reaching a threshold, the ideal system should allow one candidate to receive multiple delegates, so excess votes from the first-place candidate should not be redistributed to other candidates and instead the redistribution should go bottom-up, reallocating votes from the last-placed candidate first, followed by the second-to-last candidate and so on. Eventually, the only candidates left will have breached the minimum threshold to receive a delegate, and the additional remaining delegates will be assigned by proportion of vote received.
If the GOP had used a similar system in 2016, Trump may not have received the nomination, and the rhetoric between the establishment Republicans likely would have been friendlier since each candidate would have been incentivized to fight for second and third preference votes from other candidates’ voters. Using ranked choice voting allows for a better reflection of voters’ actual preferences and it prevents someone with a small but loyal fan base from sweeping through the primaries without the support of most party voters. Bernie, Beto, and Warren wouldn’t have to compete for the same voters so aggressively, as they could instead campaign for second preferences. While the Democrats likely will not have a candidate as disliked as Trump, enacting this voting reform would help Democrats weigh in on all candidates instead of exercising support for only one of them.
Purple State Progressive 