Ranked Choice Voting and the Tyranny of the Minority

A guest post from a friend of the blog today.

For anyone who cares amongst SF voters (and, statistically, it's only 33.81% of you...or even less if you let Ed Lee's campaign workers "help" you with your ballot...), a succinct explanation of what (THE HELL) just happened in the Mayor's race, minus my personal opinions (except the one I've already pretty clearly stated). Even for those of you who don't live here, if you live in a jurisdiction with ranked-choice voting ("RCV"), I advise you to reed and heed so the same disaster doesn't befall you and your loved ones.

But first, some facts:

13% of people who voted for Herrera first or second listed Ed Lee as second or third. How is that possible? (for non-SF-ers: This is like saying "Ok, if Hillary Clinton doesn't get elected, I'd support Sarah Palin, because she's a woman, too.")

A bunch of Chiu supporters also apparently didn't mind Lee. WHAT?!? (foreigners: reference Clinton/Palin example above)

27% of the total ballots cast were "exhausted" (all three choices eliminated). "Sorry, one third of SF voters! You don't count this year!"

So what to make of these facts? What's the key here? The key is this: Mr. Exhausted Ballot.

I used to support RCV because it allows (theoretically) for the "anyone but X" strategy on the part of the individual voter. This is a good option to have, no matter what your political persuasion, and one that just doesn't exist if you only have one vote (and one that was sorely needed during the '92 and '96 US Presidential elections thanks to the “Little Big Man”.... SORRY! No opinions! Last one! Promise!). But I've just withdrawn my support for RCV. It's gotta go in its current guise. Not because people "don't understand it" vs. regular voting, but because it amplifies the typical know-nothing vote ("I'm voting for all the Asians", "I'm voting for the hot guy") via the "exhaustion" mechanism. Kinda like black ice on asphalt suddenly, without warning, increasing your breaking distance by 250% at 7am on a road you've driven for years (or possibly even causing you to skid off the road and into the abyss, as happened in this election....OK REALLY!!!! LAST OPINION!!!).

So how can we realize this amazing potential of RCV? What's the solution, aside from totally repealing it?

Mathematically, the only way to hold true to the theoretical utility of the "anyone but X" option is if there are at least as many rank choices as there are candidates. That way, no one's ballot is ever exhausted. Otherwise, a bunch of people who really, really don't want candidate X to win can have their votes tossed out completely if all of their choices are eliminated. While we don't know how many of the voters whose ballots were exhausted by the 10th round would have voted for Lee as 4th, 5th, etc, I think it's pretty safe to assume most of them wouldn't have voted for him at all, even given 16 choices. Of course, I wouldn't think anyone who put Chiu or Herrera on his ballot would also put Lee, either, so who knows. All we know for sure is that 27,000 (exhausted ballots) plus 43,000 (people who voted for Avalos, the only other remaing candidate after round 10) = 86,000 = 55% of people out of the 154,000 who voted did NOT want Lee (or, at best, would've made him their 4th choice). I'm starting to feel like a Gore supporter in the 2000 election. (DAMMIT!!! Another one Patrick??? ok ok...but cut me some slack...if it's ok for Pelosi and Feinstein to comment on a local pension reform issue by bringing in Michael Moritz's support of a Tea Party candidate in Wisconsin, I can hate on Al Gore from 11 years ago....and even though he voted for Michela Alioto-Pier in this election, for whom I also voted).

For a more visceral (at least for math geeks like me) impression of just how crazy RCV without enough choices can get, ponder these numbers: all 10 rounds of RCV only accounted for 30% of Lee's total votes, yet his "overall" percentage went from 31% to 61% of the (remaining, un-exhausted) vote. The last round itself only added 4700 votes to his total of 68,721 (about 6%), but his percentage went from 49% to 61% of the total remaining. All thanks to Mr. Exhausted Ballot, who got 42,492 votes overall (almost a third of the total votes cast), 18,000+ (almost 12 percent of total) in the last (10th) round alone. If Mr. Exhausted Ballot had been a candidate, he would've nearly beaten the runner-up in this election. This is a common problem in San Francisco.

The catch-phrase takeaway here is this: ranked choice voting = tyranny of the minority. Ironically, RCV supporters have noted that the lack of RCV can create the same situation. Math professors have suggested that RCV leads to minority candidate victories, too, although they’ve failed to emphasize the exhausted ballot issue. I’d love to see a multivariate regression using the difference in the number of candidates vs. number of ranked choices as independent variable 1, and spread in first choice percentage as variable 2, across a bunch of elections in jurisdictions that have RCV. I’m willing to bet that this tyranny of the minority business happens a lot when the number of candidates exceeds the number of possible choices on the ballot, and when each candidate gets a roughly similar amount of first choice votes.

Without the huge number of eliminated ballots, especially in the last 2 rounds, there's no way in hell Lee would've won. But now we're stuck with his sorry ass for five corruption-mongering, city-bankrupting, and (hopefully) federal elections law-investigating years. (SORRY!!! No more opinions!!! I promise!!! I'm all about OBJECTIVITY here!!!)

Ok I lied. This is the last one, although it encompasses far more than this election, and it's not really an "opinion" per se, but more of a general thought about liberty: the Nazi party's peak support occurred in July 1932, with ~37% of the vote, dropping to about 33% in November 1932 (until Hitler got rid of elections in the spring of ‘33). These are Wikipedia quick reference figures, but I'm pretty confident they're accurate.

While I am in NO WAY comparing Ed Lee to Hitler, Hitler to Ed Lee, Ed Lee to other candidates, Ed Lee to your mom, your mom to my mom, etc (Although have you seen that 'stache? Does he think that's cool?), my point here is that the tyranny of the minority can have pretty severe negative consequences.

If only I'd paid more attention to Chicken John's advice...

The raw numbers, for those so inclined:

http://www.sfelections.org/results/20111108/data/mayor.html