What happened?
- Alaska has used a system called final four voting since 2020. What that entails is
- first, a nonpartisan primary run using single-non-transferable vote, a semiproportional multiwinner method
- second, a general election with the top four primary winners competing under instant runoff voting (IRV, a single-winner non-Condorcet ranked choice voting method)
- intuitively, the intent is for the primary to find the top four candidates across any combination of parties (this could mean 2 Reps, 2 Dem; 1 Rep, 1 Libertarian, 2 Dems; 1 Rep, 1 Libertarian, 1 Dem, 1 Independent; etc.). Then those candidates will be ranked in the general election and the most representative candidate will be chosen as the representative of the district, in this case Alaska's lone House district (they only have one House Rep)
- it is technically non-partisan so independents can run
- this was the brainchild of a well meaning corporate activist named Katherine Gehl who wanted more competition in American politics
- This system spectacularly failed in the Alaska 2022 House special election
- specifically, Nick Begich (the moderate Republican candidate and Condorcet winner) was eliminated in the first round and then Mary Peltola beat Sarah Palin, to the understandable dismay of both Begich and Palin voters
- the Condorcet ("beats-all") winner is the closest you can get to a "true" winner in a ranked choice election
- the fourth and final candidate to advance from the nonpartisan primary, Democrat Al Gross, wisely dropped out before the general election, presumably realizing that his presence in the RCV general risked hurting Peltola, his co-partisan
- specifically, Nick Begich (the moderate Republican candidate and Condorcet winner) was eliminated in the first round and then Mary Peltola beat Sarah Palin, to the understandable dismay of both Begich and Palin voters
- Alaska Republicans have now realized their mistake so for the upcoming (2024) Alaska House election have made the correct strategic decision of pressuring the weaker of their primary candidates (Lt. Gov Nancy Dahlstrom) into withdrawing from the race, setting up a two-person general election between Peltola and Begich
- the fourth candidate advancing from the primary only got 0.6% of the vote so everyone's just ignoring them
this completely defeats the purpose of using ranked choice voting for the general election
- the fourth candidate advancing from the primary only got 0.6% of the vote so everyone's just ignoring them
- There is now a ballot proposal for the fall to return Alaska's electoral system to its previous form (simple FPTP)
What problems caused this failure?
- Single-winner RCV is not immune to the spoiler effect. Palin spoiled the election for Begich in 2022 and Dahlstrom is withdrawing to avoid spoiling the election for Begich in 2024
- If people lose faith in your system and parties think they will do better by not fully participating, they will (see the premature, strategic withdrawals of Gross in 2022 and Dahlstrom this year)
- In a mass democracy, people collaborate via parties even if you're running a party-agnostic voting method. You can't stop that process
- The center squeeze effect of non-Condorcet single-winner RCV is very real
- This year had Peltola getting almost all the Democratic votes in the nonpartisan primary. that's not competitive
What problems has this failure caused?
- Eliminating Begich in the last election destroyed faith in the single-winner RCV stage of final four voting
- Most people just see "election reformers" as a big blob and aren't aware of the extremely heated debates going on about the best way to reform US elections, so all reformers lose popular credibility when single-winner RCV fails (which it will)
- this is why other reformers push back against the adoption of single-winner RCV. It is not necessarily an improvement and in the big picture it can even be a setback if it discredits the electoral reform movement overall
- It is genuinely a serious issue that single-winner RCV (even Condorcet single-winner RCV) fails the partication and sincere favorite criteria
- this can't be swept under the rug by talking about "no later harm" or whatever
brainwormed copetalking points FairVote puts out - a method being non-monotonic is not acceptable
- this can't be swept under the rug by talking about "no later harm" or whatever
What can we learn from this?
- If you are fixated on single-winner RCV for whatever reason, make sure to use a Condorcet-IRV method like Tideman's Alternative or Woodall's Smith-IRV
- these still fail the participation and sincere favorite criteria, and I suspect that parties will still respond the way Alaska's parties have (by pressuring non-top candidates to withdraw, turning the general election into a two-way runoff), and they're miserably complicated to calculate, but at least they avoid glaring, boneheaded Condorcet failures
- Parties are how politics is organized in a mass democracy
- Electoral competition most naturally occurs between political parties
- Single-winner methods don't lead to multiple parties
- Realistically, if we have to use single-winner methods, approval is better, HOWEVER…
- …ALL SINGLE-WINNER ELECTORAL METHODS ARE
GODDAMN CHEEKSPROFOUNDLY UNREPRESENTATIVE and it is imperative that as quickly as possible we transition to proportional multi-winner methods like STV, party list, or MMPR at the local, state, and federal level
Posted by Independent-Low-2398
2 Comments
here’s the article that sparked my commentary: [“Alaska’s Ranked-Choice Voting Games | The GOP’s candidate in third quits the ballot to help beat Rep. Peltola”](https://www.wsj.com/opinion/alaska-ranked-choice-voting-mary-peltola-nancy-dahlstrom-nick-begich-elections-cd90a827)
> Alaska was supposed to be a model for ranked-choice voting (RCV), but it looks more like a deceased canary in a proverbial coal mine. It’s a Republican state that in 2022 elected Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won the first RCV race. Now more fun and games: Last week’s primary was intended to advance the top four candidates to November, yet the third-place finisher has quit. Alaskans will have a chance to repeal RCV this fall. No surprise if they say yes.
> Ms. Peltola was the top vote-getter, with 50.7%, in last Tuesday’s open primary. The GOP was split: Nick Begich, scion of an Alaska political family, took 26.6% of the vote. Lt. Gov.Nancy Dahlstrom had 20%. No other candidate came close, with the fourth-place finisher earning 0.6%. The way Alaska’s system is meant to work, those four would appear on November’s RCV ballot, and voters would rank them in order of preference.
> Yet Ms. Dahlstrom dropped out Friday rather than continue dividing the GOP. “I entered this race because Alaskans deserve better representation than what we have received from Mary Peltola,” she said. “At this time, the best thing I can do to see that goal realized is to withdraw my name from the general election ballot and end my campaign.”
> As a result, the November ballot will feature Ms. Peltola versus Mr. Begich, plus two minor unknowns, in what is close to a typical partisan matchup.
> Republicans have learned from what happened last time, when they remained split. Looking only at first-choice votes in the 2022 special election that Ms. Peltola won, she had 40.2%. The GOP’s contenders, Sarah Palin and Mr. Begich, had 31.3% and 28.5%, respectively. Under the RCV rules, Mr. Begich was eliminated, and his supporters were reshuffled to their subsequent preferences. Enough of them didn’t like Ms. Palin that the victory went to Ms. Peltola, with 51.5%.
> Strangely, though, this result was sensitive to the order of elimination, meaning that the final No. 1 depended on who was the initial No. 3. If Ms. Palin had been dropped instead, a strong majority of her ballots would have gone to Mr. Begich, who would have beaten Ms. Peltola.
> Not only that, he’d have won about 52.5%, a bigger victory than Ms. Peltola’s ranked-choice majority. Doesn’t that seem . . . odd? What if some Democrats ranked Ms. Palin first on their ballots to ensure that the most polarizing GOP opponent made the final round?
> That kind of gamesmanship is tricky. Ms. Dahlstrom’s style of coordination, however, undermines Alaska’s RCV system while being easier to pull off. Whatever the formal rules say about a top-four competition, Republicans and Democrats could set a party expectation that only one major contender from their side will stick around for the general election. Before last week’s primary, Mr. Begich had pledged to quit if he came in third.
Maybe the real problem isn’t “the method of electing people” and just “the fact that we aren’t electing more liberals”