What Oregon Could Learn From New York City’s Ranked Choice Voting
Tribal polarization affects Oregon’s policies, leaders, and our own personal relationships, and RCV is a much-needed step towards a deescalation of politics.
Jared is a Politics, Policy, Law and Ethics Major at Willamette University, aspiring to bring Oregon together to achieve more representative elections and a sustainable energy program to brag about.
With the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary at a close, it’s starting to look like the winner would have been Eric Adams whether the city used Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) or not. But while the outcome may have been the same, the campaigning process under RCV played out very differently, and Oregon would be wise to take note.
To learn from NYC, it’s important to first understand the unique incentives RCV creates for candidates. Because RCV allows voters to choose multiple candidates in order of preference, candidates are encouraged to appeal to more voters than in a traditional election. In the RCV setting, a smart candidate would try to appeal to voters who may not regard them as their top pick, but could still rank them second. That way, if a voter’s first choice candidate were eliminated (by receiving the fewest first place votes in that round of voting), then the smart candidate would benefit from being ranked second on the voter’s ballot, becoming their “first” choice in the subsequent round.
This new incentive to appeal to more voters gave candidates in New York the freedom to form alliances and bolster other competing candidates in order to be ranked higher overall. Candidate B could tell their strongest supporters to list them first and to put Candidate A second, and vice versa. Theoretically, both candidates benefit. Just a couple days before election night, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia did exactly that: they teamed up. It was rather peculiar seeing two competing candidates working together like this, but it’s something I could get used to.
Especially in our hyper-polarized political landscape, it’s nice to see candidates supporting each other in a symbiotic way. Yang encouraged his base to rank Garcia second on the ballot, and in return, he might be ranked second by Garcia’s base. If one of these two candidates had won the Democratic Primary, it’s possible that they would have appointed the other candidate at a lower position where they could continue to work together even after the race had finished.
This kind of cooperation usually happens only after a candidate drops out from the race, in which case they’d throw their endorsement behind whoever they support. But RCV encourages candidates to play nice during the election so they don’t burn the bridges of voters that could potentially rank them second. That being said, candidates will still take every chance they get to paint the front-runners in a bad light. At the end of the day, if the front-runner gets over 50% of the votes in the first round of voting then it doesn’t matter whether Yang’s base ranked Garcia second.
New York City’s use of RCV encourages more civil and cooperative elections, and is a step in the right direction towards curbing the negative effects of polarization on our leaders and us, the voters. If Oregon implemented RCV in our elections, the political campaigns we see might not be as hostile, and Oregonians might become less partisan. Voters would likely be more content if their second or third choice won than if the only candidate they voted for lost. In a way, RCV would allow voters to give more input in Oregon’s elections and encourage our future leaders to campaign civilly and cooperatively.
Here’s a final “plus” for RCV: under this system, voters in Oregon wouldn’t have to worry about wasting their votes on candidates that are unlikely to win. For too long, Oregonians have been pressured into voting for candidates that are the most likely to win, instead of their preferred candidate. With RCV, voters could select the candidate they believe in and default to their second choice in the event that the candidate drops out after the ballots are counted.
New York City had its share of snafus in operating its RCV election. Although, those errors say more about New York City election officials, then the merits of RCV. If Oregon adopted New York City’s RCV system, Oregonians would have an expanded say in elections, our leaders would be held to a more civil and respectful standard, and we could finally ease up on the partisanship in our communities. Tribal polarization affects Oregon’s policies, leaders, and our own personal relationships, and RCV is a much-needed step towards a deescalation of politics. Now that New York’s shown it can be done, it’s Oregon’s turn to forge a path with Ranked Choice Voting.
Oregon already has RCV in Benton County. It's first election was anti-climatic: a winner in the first round, which is pretty common with RCV. I haven't seen much evidence that RCV helps alternative parties win, at least not in its single-winner form. Look at the history of Australia's elections. A few independent candidates have won, but hardly any alternative party candidates.
That said, RCV is definitely an improvement over single-winner plurality in giving voters more real choice and so allowing them to express their views of candidates more fully. In most cases it avoids the split-vote problem.
I am with the others here in preferring STAR Voting. The idea that voters will bullet-vote, giving 5 stars to their favorite candidate and nothing to any others, is not credible to me. Yes, in general voters are becoming more partisan. But there is a huge number of voters who don't vote or switch between parties based on the candidate. And a huge number who vote for major party candidates while actually preferring some alternative party or independent candidate. These folks would swamp the bullet-voting hard partisan voters, in my opinion. Hardly anyone likes the two major parties! We all just feel stuck with them as the only choices with a chance of winning.
While it was great seeing Yang endorse Garcia as a second-choice vote, I mark that up to Yang’s positive attitude as it was similar to his behavior on the presidential trail. Unfortunately, Garcia did not return the favor, and there were candidates telling their voters specifically to only rank them and no one else. That seems almost expected in our current politics, and we can expect it to continue with RCV because RCV suffers under the same spoiler effect and vote splitting problems our current Choose-one Voting method does, trending toward duopoly rule over time.
Oregon is particularly lucky as the state election code is quite flexible for allowing alternative voting methods. Fortunately, there are dozens to pick from. One of the blessings of modern voting science is the whittling down to two primary recommendations for the US right now: STAR Voting and Approval Voting.
While I’m currently fighting for Approval Voting down in Texas, I believe STAR Voting is the right move for Oregon. STAR stands for Score Then Automatic Runoff, and that’s exactly how it works. You as the voter score all candidates independently from 0 to 5 stars. After adding up the scores for each candidate, the two candidates with the highest scores move onto the automatic runoff as finalists. The finalist you scored higher on your ballot gets your one full vote and the finalist with the most votes wins!
STAR Voting is simpler than RCV while allowing voters to better express themselves on the ballot. While the NYC Board of Elections certainly has its problems, RCV is one of the few voting methods that requires tabulation to be centralized to a single point of failure, presenting major security concerns and maximizing the chances that an under-resourced (or incompetent) election board can screw everything up. STAR Voting allows each precinct to independently report results to the public for anyone to tally. And maybe best of all, STAR Voting is far cheaper to implement than RCV, making it far more palatable for legislators and less burdensome on taxpayers!
I highly encourage that everyone take the time to study up on various voting methods. Voting science is a highly unintuitive field and really requires time to be put in to fully understand the various voting methods out there. Please reach out to me or anyone at the Equal Vote Coalition or the Center for Election Science or the STAR Voting Project or Beyond 2 Parties or the r/EndFPTP subreddit or the electowiki user base if you have any questions!