The Legality of Ranked-Choice Voting

Grounded in experience in 2020, both major political parties have reasons to expand use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in their 2024 presidential primaries. RCV may offer a ‘win-win’ solution benefiting both the parties and their voters. RCV would build on both the pre-1968 American tradition of parties determining a coalitional presidential nominee through multiple ballots at party conventions and the modern practice of allowing voters to effectively choose their nominees in primaries. Increasingly used by parties around the world in picking their leaders, RCV may allow voters to crowd-source a coalitional nominee. Most published research about RCV focuses on state and local elections. In contrast, this article analyzes the impact on voters, candidates, and parties from five state Democratic parties using RCV in party-run presidential nomination contests in 2020. First, it uses polls and results to examine how more widespread use of RCV might have affected the trajectory of contests for the 2016 Republican nomination. Second, it contrasts how more than three million voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries backed withdrawn candidates with the low rate of such wasted votes for withdrawn candidates in the states with RCV ballots. Finally, it concludes with an examination of how RCV might best interact with the parties’ current rules and potential changes to those rules.

This chapter extends the discussion of ranked choice voting (RCV) to state elections generally, including detailed descriptions of its adoption in Maine and Alaska, and application of ranked choice methods for presidential elections. Potential applications of RCV are explored in these state and national election contexts. After a 2016 ballot initiative and lengthy adjudication, Maine began using RCV for party primaries and for federal elections in November 2018. Following a 2020 ballot proposition, Alaska adopted a top-four primary election with RCV in the general election. Both states instituted electoral change as a response to strong two-party polarization and extremism. RCV has also been suggested as a reform for the presidential nominating system, particularly for primaries with multiple candidates running, and even in the US general election for president. These possible applications in party primaries, national nominating conventions, and in relation to the Electoral College are explored in this chapter.

Ranked choice voting (RCV) has become increasingly popular in recent years, as more jurisdictions in the US adopt the voting system for local, state, and federal elections. Though previous studies have found potential benefits of RCV, some evidence suggests ranking multiple candidates instead of choosing one most preferred candidate may be difficult, with potential demographic disparities linked to age, gender, or racial or ethnic identity. Further, these difficulties have been assumed to cause individuals to improperly fill out RCV ballots, such as ranking too many or not enough candidates. This study seeks to answer three interrelated questions: 1) Which demographic groups find it difficult to rank candidates in RCV elections? 2) Who is more likely to cast under-voted ballots (not ranking all candidates)? 3) Is there a relationship between finding RCV voting difficult and the likelihood of casting an under-voted ballot? Using unique national survey data of 2020 Democratic primary candidate preferences, the results indicate most respondents find ranking candidates easy, but older, less interested, and more ideologically conservative individuals find it more difficult. In a hypothetical ranking of primary candidates, 12% of respondents under-voted (did not rank all options). Despite their perceived increased difficulty, older individuals were less likely to under-vote their ballot. No other demographic groups consistently experienced systematic differences in ranking difficulty or under-voting across a series of model specifications. These findings support previous evidence of older voters having increased difficulty, but challenge research assuming difficulty leads to under-voting, and that racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged by RCV.

This chapter focuses on applications of preferential voting in partisan and state-level electoral contests. Primary elections for the selection of party nominees can be a useful environment for ranked choice voting (RCV) as there may be more than two viable candidates or factions. Several states adopted versions of RCV for primary elections during the Progressive Era. These early practices were repealed, sometimes due to fundamental assumptions about RCV and sometimes due to misinterpretation. Over time, many states served as laboratories of electoral democracy, adopting and testing a variety of electoral systems, including preferential voting. State judicial elections may also serve as an appropriate environment for RCV. Canada has extensive experience with RCV in past partisan provincial elections as well as in contemporary party leadership elections. RCV may have applications for party and state elections where polarization among voters is low and the number of alternatives competing exceeds two.

Ranked-Choice Voting, Runoff, and Democracy: Insights from Maine and Other U.S. States

Ranked choice voting (RCV) has become increasing popular in the United States as more cities and states begin allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. This change in election system has been linked to increased campaign civility and mobilization, but with little evidence suggesting these benefits lead to increased voter turnout in the general population. This study argues that RCV elections may not increase overall voting but will increase youth voting. Considering young Americans, who have become increasingly pessimistic towards politics and are also heavily reliant on mobilization for participation, this study argues that increased campaign civility and mobilization may work to offset the negative feelings and lack of political engagement that plague young Americans. Using a matched study of individual level voter turnout for seven RCV and fourteen non-RCV local elections from 2013 and 2014, we find that there is no statistical difference in voting rates between RCV and plurality cities for the general public. Yet, in line with our hypotheses, younger voters are more likely to vote in RCV cities. Further, we find that increased contact in RCV elections accounts for a larger portion of the increased voter turnout compared to perceptions of campaign civility. Findings suggest RCV acts as a positive mobilizing force for youth voting through increasing campaign contact.

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is experiencing a surge of interest in the United States, highlighted by its 2018 use for Congressional elections in Maine, the first application of a ranked ballot for national-level elections in American history. A century ago, the same system was introduced in another federal, two-party continental-sized democracy: Australia. RCV’s utility as a solution to inter-party coordination problems helps to explain its appeal in both countries, underscoring the potential benefits of a comparative analytical approach. This article examines this history of adoption and then turns to a comparison of recent RCV elections in Maine with state elections in New South Wales and Queensland, the two Australian states which share the same form of RCV as that used in the United States. This comparison shows how candidate and party endorsements influence voters’ rankings and can, over time, promote reciprocal exchanges between parties and broader systemic support for RCV. Such cross-partisan support helps explain the stability of RCV in Australia, with implications for the system’s prospects in the United States.

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is a class of reforms increasingly used in the United States to replace plurality and runoff elections. We ask whether support for RCV taps a larger generational divide in politics. We consult five surveys, two of these from recent adoption campaigns, and all with different ways of asking about RCV support. Generation is a significant predictor in four of these samples, accounting for standard demographic factors and partisanship. This relationship also holds within black and Republican subgroups, two groups often thought to be less likely to support RCV. Finally, we find that dissatisfaction with “the way that democracy works in America” is a plausible link between generation and reform support. For better or worse, RCV has potential to divide two important voting blocs in America. Our results suggest that, rather than turn away from electoral politics, a disaffected young generation may turn to reform.Related ArticlesCormack, Lindsey. 2019. “Leveraging Peer‐to‐Peer Connections to Increase Voter Participation in Local Elections.” Politics & Policy 47 (2): 248‐266. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12297Fisher, Patrick. 2020. “Generational Replacement and the Impending Transformation of the American Electorate.” Politics & Policy 48 (1): 38‐68. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12340Shaykhutdinov, Renat. 2019. “Socialization, Rationality, and Age: Generational Gaps and the Attitudes toward the Chechen War in Russia.” Politics & Policy 47 (5): 931‐955. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12323

Does the implementation of a ranked choice voting (RCV) system increase the number, diversity, and quality of candidates competing in local elections? Using original data from 273 cities across three decades and employing a preregistered difference‐in‐differences design with matching, I find that the size of the candidate pool increases following implementation. However, this effect dissipates in later election cycles, indicating that RCV has no long‐term effect on candidate entry. Indeed, the short‐term increase in the candidate pool mostly reflects increased entry by low‐quality candidates with little chance of winning. Additionally, I find that RCV has no effect on the proportion of female and non‐white candidates running for office. These results call into question several purported benefits of RCV and suggest that RCV, by itself, might not be sufficient to influence candidate entry at the local level.

Electoral rules can affect who wins and who loses elections. Most cities select office holders through plurality rule, but an alternative, ranked-choice voting (RCV), has become increasingly popular. RCV requires voters to rank candidates, instead of simply selecting their most preferred candidate. Observers debate whether RCV will cure a variety of electoral ills or undermine representation. We test the effect of RCV on voter’s choices and perceptions of representation using survey experiments with large, representative samples of respondents. We find that candidates of color are significantly penalized in both plurality and RCV elections, with no significant difference between the rule types. However, providing respondents with candidates’ partisan affiliation significantly increases support for candidates of color.

In 2018, Maine became the first American state to use ranked choice voting in statewide and congressional elections. In a decentralized system of election administration local officials play an important role implementing new voting rules. We examine the implementation of ranked choice voting based on a survey of municipal clerks and interviews with several election officials in Maine. We test hypotheses derived from policy implementation theory in assessing election officials' evaluations of ranked choice voting. We find that most municipal clerks in our sample are not enthusiastic about implementing ranked choice voting and do not want to continue its use in Maine. In addition, there are strong partisan divisions, with Democratic clerks offering much more positive assessments of ranked choice voting than Republican clerks. We also find differences in voter education efforts across jurisdictions. The findings raise concerns about the implementation of ranked choice voting in Maine.

Several election districts in the US have recently moved to ranked-choice voting (RCV) to decide the results of local elections. RCV allows voters to rank their choices, and the results are computed in rounds, eliminating one candidate at a time. RCV ensures fairer elections and has been shown to increase elected representation of women and people of color. A main drawback of RCV is that the round-by-round process requires all the ballots to be tallied before the results of an election can be calculated. With increasingly large portions of ballots coming from absentee voters, RCV election outcomes are not always apparent on election night, and can take several weeks to be published, leading to a loss of trust in the electoral process from the public. In this paper, we present an algorithm for efficiently computing possible winners of RCV elections from partially known ballots and evaluate it on data from the recent New York City Primary elections. We show that our techniques allow to significantly narrow down the field of possible election winners, and in some case identify the winner as soon as election night despite a number of yet-unaccounted absentee ballots, providing more transparency in the electoral process.

Proportionality in multi-winner RCV elections: A simulation study with ballot truncation

The academic debate on how voters decide which candidates to support often centers on whether they prioritize their personal preferences or consider who can beat the opposing candidate. American research on voting behavior has largely focused on first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. However, considering jurisdictions are adopting new electoral systems such as ranked-choice voting (RCV) this leads to several questions about the impact of system adoption on voter decision-making. Particularly, does the voter decision-making process differ depending on the system used? To investigate the impact of RCV on voter decision-making across electoral systems we conducted a survey experiment in a federal senate election. Our findings indicate that in comparison to FPTP elections, RCV elections may lead to decreases in both sincere and strategic voting. Instead, RCV appears to increase voter uncertainty around how to decide which candidates to support and leads to voters who appear to be neither sincere nor strategic.

Welcome to the August 2017 issue of Politics & Policy! When I have compiled single issues of the journal in the past, it is not always the case that the articles spanning a wide variety of subjects and subfields hang together, speak to, or complement each other in a significant way. This is not always a problem, of course. The way we use journals has changed considerably over the last decade and since individual online article consumption is now the norm, the contents of a single general interest issue are often highly divergent. This fourth issue in Volume 45 of P&P is a notable exception; several of its articles do indeed cover similar areas, speak to each other, and can be read in tandem and mined together for future research purposes. Three articles in this issue examine variables affecting voting behavior from different perspectives. In their excellent “Beauty Contest Revisited: The Effects of Perceived Attractiveness, Competence, and Likability on the Electoral Success of German MPs” (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12209/full), Sebastian Jäckle and Thomas Metz provide a thorough and insightful empirical study of the effects of physical appearance and perceived competence on electoral outcomes in Germany. Their analysis of perceived attractiveness, competence, and likability of candidates find that gender, age, and incumbency status are all quite clearly conditioned by these variables. Moving from Europe to “across the Pond,” Lindsay Nielson's contribution, “Ranked Choice Voting and Attitudes toward Democracy in the United States” (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12212/full), likewise focuses on voter preferences and election outcomes with an emphasis on electoral systems and perceived election fairness. This in-depth comparison of election outcomes and U.S. voter attitudes in plurality elections with those following an ranked choice voting (RCV) system has uncovered some interesting behavioral patterns among voters. It nevertheless shows that most participants did not, in fact, think RCV elections result in outcomes that are as fair as plurality or majority elections. In “Policy Salience and Election Outcomes in Contemporary American Presidential Elections (1972-2000)” (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12210/full), Patrick O. Asingo presents solid evidence that policy indeed determines politics qua Schattschneider and Lowi in the most important elections in the United States. Alongside plugging several gaps in voting behavior theory, his findings include that the time order causal sequence is from policy salience to election outcomes and not vice versa, and that policy salience determines an incumbent's reelection or departure. Leaving the realms of voting behavior, the next article uses the theory of dualization to explore diverse labor market segmentation, social welfare policies, and patterns of institutional change in Asia. SungIk Cho and Yool Choi take on a complex comparative task in “Convergent or Divergent? The Hidden Dynamics of Institutional Changes in the Labor Markets and Social Welfare Systems in South Korea and Japan” (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12208/full). The authors argue that subcontracting relations between big businesses and small- and medium-sized enterprises, historical contingency, and the politics of economic restructuring since the 2008 global economic crisis have played significant roles in shaping the divergent paths of dualization in both countries. The last two articles complement each other particularly well. Narrowing down to specific policy areas in the United States, both focus on hazard and risk management. Deserai A. Crow and coauthors apply, for the first time, the narrative policy framework (NPF) to hazards and disasters—specifically wildfire policy debates in the United States (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12207/full). The study's findings speak to important issues in wildfire risk management and the way it is covered in the media as well as suggest important modifications for NPF theory. Finally, Michael James Brogan applies elements of Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory—an approach that is rightly gaining weight in the policy and political sciences—in his detailed discussion of how the public perceives natural gas pipeline safety measures in the United States (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/polp.12211/full). The major finding here is that the majority of all respondents favored safety over material benefits associated with pipeline expansion. This confirms prospect theory's hypothesis that individuals tend to be highly risk-averse when presented with decisions framed in terms of losses—which is generally the case in natural gas expansion discussions. The study also finds that partisanship has no bearing on respondents’ choices when calculating the benefits and risks of pipeline expansion. A thoroughly good read with important implications! Just a reminder to all our readers that the upcoming issue of Politics & Policy features a comprehensive special issue entitled Recasting Soft Power for the Indo-Pacific. Guest edited by Caitlin Byrne of Griffith University, Australia, this special issue widens the analytical reach of Joseph Nye's concept of “soft power” alongside discussions of public diplomacy as they apply to the complex and dynamic context of the Indo-Pacific. The articles question the Western-dominated frameworks that have shaped discourse on soft power and public diplomacy. They also highlight new innovations in theory and practice that apply to new contexts and experiences beyond the Western milieu. Accompanying the rigorous scholarly contributions on theory, comparative analysis and case studies across the region are two superlative practitioner articles focusing on actual and potential applications of the findings. The full table of contents of this weighty special issue can be viewed now on P&P's home page http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1747-1346, and the articles will be available to read and download online in October 2017. I hope you enjoy our lineup of August articles and, as always, I look forward to receive your future article submissions to P&P at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/polpol