Reviewing the Ranked Choice Voting Responses

The State of Utah is allowing cities to choose to use a different voting method, called Ranked Choice Voting, in elections this fall. This was an option two years ago and two cities opted in and had a positive experience.

Provo is considering whether we will participate in the program this fall. We put this item on Open City Hall to solicit feedback from the community. (We are well aware that this is not a scientifically valid or statistically representative survey. This is just one tool that we use to gather feedback. And the results are just part of the information which we will consider when making our decision.)

I'll briefly share some overall results below (you can see all of the results here). But I am mainly writing this blog post to respond to some of the comments shared by the public in the free-response sections of the survey.

After a brief explanation of the mechanics of Ranked Choice Voting, respondents were asked "How supportive would you be if Provo changed to Ranked Choice Voting (1 is not supportive at all, and 10 is very supportive)". Then four arguments made by people who support RCV were presented and the respondents were again asked to indicate their support. Finally, four arguments made by people who oppose RCV were presented and respondent support was gauged one last time. Here are the results of the registered respondents (unregistered respondents could vote multiple times. I look at all of the results, but I put the most weight behind the registered responses):

The Arguments For moderated the opposition slightly and moved a few neutral people toward support. The Arguments Against moderated the support somewhat and moved a few supportive people to be more neutral. But all-in-all, the post-explanation arguments didn't change support much.

Here is a simpler way to look at it. I combined the bottom three numbers, the middle four options, and the top three:

The takeaway is that, of the people who were aware of the survey and who decided to submit a registered response, there is overwhelming support for Provo using RCV in this fall's election.

But, again, the main purpose of this post is to respond to some of the comments in the free-response sections. The sections followed these two questions: "Are there any thoughts you would like to share about Provo City Elections?" and "Are there any thoughts you would like to share about Ranked Choice Voting?"

Some of the responses are similar to another comment or two. Some of these responses are similar to dozens of other responses.

Candidates for Office

"I am grateful we have people who are willing to run."

I am too. It's not easy to put yourself out there, but we need people to step up!

"The municipal elections are really the only set of elections I look forward to and trust to have direct impacts on my everyday life. As population pressures within Utah Valley continue to push the city to look forward and evolve to meet ongoing and future needs, I have great respect for all of those willing to dedicate time and effort to run for office and make real differences in how our wonderfully imperfect, but optimistic and energetic city develops."

"Our wonderfully imperfect, but optimistic and energetic city" what a colorful description of Provo!

"Not enough good, experienced people run for office."

I totally agree. What are you...what am I...what are we doing about it?

"I dream of a day when I have a candidate to vote for in local elections who actually shares any of my values."

Any values? That seems a bit dramatic. If you feel that passionately, I hope you are encouraging people who share your values to run, or are considering a run yourself. Perhaps other people feel the way you do. It is easy to complain. What are you willing to do about it?

Publicizing the Election and Gathering Candidate Information

"Making people aware of election regulations/dates as well as elected positions open to run for early (even just on social media) would hopefully help people be more engaged in our electoral process."

I agree. Regular readers of my blog know I'm constantly trying to get the word out and encourage people to run. Here are a couple of other examples. This is the most recent post on the Council's Facebook page. Here is election information on the City website. I'm not saying this is enough, but these are resources that you and others in the public can share to help get the word out.

"It would be great if Provo city could facilitate getting more information out about the candidates in a central location, and publicize that availability.. That is, not to evaluate the info, just to have a central location where voters could look for position papers, etc."

The City has had a slightly different approach to assembling information on candidates in each municipal election I've participated in (either as a voter or a candidate). There is definitely a balance between helping to inform and becoming involved. Should the City sponsor a debate? What if a candidate feels the debate questions favored their opponent? You get the picture.

Pushback against the Arguments Against

"It doesn’t ‘allow extreme voters to decide the election’. It gives more of a voice to everyone. And saying the least supported candidate can be elected is literally the opposite of what it’s about. Did they watch that video? It might not be the ‘front runner’ elected, but it would almost always be the candidate with the most support."

"Ranked-choice voting is the superior method of aggregating the preferences of constituents! This way, we can ensure that public officials and decisions always reflect the view of the majority of the voters. I would also push back against the bullet point on the arguments against ranked-choice voting that says ranked-choice could end up with the candidate with the least amount of support winning. That point is very far from the case. If anything, ranked-choice voting ensures that the candidate with the least amount of support does not win."

"Marking the ballot could be confusing. That is a fair point. But a strong education campaign and the ability for people to exchange a spoiled ballot for a clean ballot--as is currently the case--would alleviate many of those problems. But the other arguments against Ranked Choice Voting are hard to agree with. For instance, the least supported candidate would be eliminated in the first round of voting, so it is hard to see that candidate receiving a majority of the votes. It would be helpful to see mock elections using ranked choice voting to show some of the project outcomes and how likely those various outcomes would be: more extreme candidates winning, more moderate candidates winning, the least supported candidate winning."

"After looking on the web at the arguments against...I can't find anyone to explain to me how it could allow an extreme voter to decide the election, or how a fringe candidate could win. From the information I have read, I like it. I am all for it."

"At least half of the arguments against RCV are false, in my opinion. I understand RCV and the biggest reason to implement it is to put a halt to negative campaigning. Candidates who want to woo supporters of other candidates to win their second choice vote wouldn't want to alienate them with attack ads."

I support using RCV in the municipal elections this fall. Most of the respondents and commenters were in favor as well. So understand my bias. With that said, I too was underwhelmed by the Arguments Against. To be fair, the survey presented them as the arguments made by opponents of RCV and didn't provide any analysis or opinion on the validity of the arguments. I found myself, though, heartily agreeing with many of these comments about the absurdity of the Cons as I went through them. Most of the arguments are based on hypothetical scenarios which are SO unlikely compared to the shortcomings of our current system, where we regularly see concerns over vote splitting in almost every election cycle in Provo. Here is one example: imagine an election with three candidates, two are well supported by the public and one is a fringe candidate that only appeals to a few voters. Now imagine if the electorate was so evenly split between the "mainstream" candidates that the difference in votes is less than the support garnered by the fringe candidate. In RCV, the fringe candidate is eliminated, but instead of those votes being removed from consideration, the fringe voters' second choice is now counted and if they are uniform enough to bridge the gap between the two mainstream candidates, it could be argued that the fringe voters decided the election. This ignores the fact the winner would have to attract sufficient support from the rest of the electorate to be in the position that the "fringe" votes make the difference. And it also ignores the fact that the winner is preferred by the majority of all voters over the runner-up. Even in this extremely unlikely scenario, I would argue that RCV still performs as advertised.

Thoughts on RCV

"Ranked choice voting may not be perfect but it is far superior to our current system. When a better voting system than our current one comes along, it's best to make the switch."

I agree.

"One shortcoming of RCV that you haven't mentioned is that you cannot begin counting without all the ballots being available to count. This will delay reporting of election outcomes."

This is a challenge, for sure. Already vote-by-mail has delayed election results reporting. It is possible to report interim results. Most of the time they won't change as more ballots trickle in, but there is definitely more potential for major shifts in the results as less supported candidates are eliminated in a different order. Probably the best way to handle this would be to only announce the number of first-choice votes each candidate has received and wait until all ballots are scanned before running the run-off calculations.

"I oppose ranked voting. After I find the candidate I prefer the most I don't want to take more time to rank the candidates that I do not prefer."

The ballots will allow you to rank as many or as few candidates as you would like. You are totally fine to mark just your most preferred candidate.

"Ranked choice voting is one of the few available methods to help us move to a more nuanced election. I’m tired of the duopoly. I’d like to adopt ranks choice voting. The biggest challenges that are unique to an ranked system in my opinion is not voter education (that’s a problem in every election) but transparency. We would need to clearly communicate the percentages of the vote and how whomever won was able to win."

Take a look at these results, published after the County Republican Party used RCV to select a replacement for Tanner Ainge, who stepped down from the County Commission in the middle of his term. This is the level of transparency that we can expect.

Miscellaneous

"I was completely against mail-in voting and now I'm sold. As a result, I'm open-minded about ranked choice voting."

What an honest and thoughtful comment. I personally was never completely against mail-in voting, but I mourn the loss of one of the last communal civic rites. I loved standing in line, waiting to cast my ballot, talking with my neighbors, and waving at people from all walks of the community as they came and went from Dixon Middle School (where my precinct voted). It was a moment of civic duty and a shared experience.

"If I remember correctly, municipal elections are non-partisan. I strongly support any effort to keep them that way."

You are correct. And this is a point that several commenters seemed unaware of. I, too, strongly support keeping our municipal elections non-partisan.

"Ranked choice would be much more reflective and representative of the diversity in our population."

I definitely support Provo using RCV in our elections this fall. I believe it is superior to our current system for allowing the electorate to express their will. But the version of ranked choice voting that is available to us by the State, called Instantaneous Runoff Voting (IRV), isn't designed to be proportionally representative. Other RCV systems, like Single Transferable Voting (STV), are designed to be proportionally representative, but (1) aren't available to use right now, and (2) would require changes to our districting.