I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
…
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
...
the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
...
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
...
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.
- George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)
Voting Methods for Single-Winner Elections
Partisan extremism is unhealthy for democracy, but is fueled in the United States by a two-party system in which single-party primary elections are usually more important than the subsequent inclusive general elections. What is worse is that these single-party primary elections are funded by taxpayers, many of whom are not members of a major political party and in some state are not allowed to vote at all in the partisan primary elections.
The manner of electing public officials should not be controlled by political parties. Instead, all public elections should be neutral with respect to political parties. All voters should be entitled to vote and to have their votes counted equally regardless of the party affiliation of the voter or the candidates they vote for. All candidates should be treated equally and face the entire electorate in any public election.
Several states have reformed elections so that candidates for public office must face all voters in both primary and general elections, but most of these reforms are flawed due to antiquated election methods. In particular, Top-2 primary elections with plurality voting can end up nominating two relatively unpopular candidates due to vote-splitting among a large number of more popular candidates. California, Washington, and Louisiana use Top-2 elections followed by a runoff. Alaska recently established a Top-4 primary system with successive elimination (called “instant runoff voting”) in the general election. This is an improvement over plurality voting, but not by much. In the August 2022 special election for Alaska's vacant house seat, the third place candidate, Nick Begich, was preferred by 52.5% of voters to the “winner” Mary Peltola. This is clearly an undesirable result. The successive elimination method is so complicated that a programming error in California's Alameda County was not discovered until 50 days after the election, by which time the winning candidates had already been certified (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php).
This document presents a comparison of commonly proposed election methods: Comparison of Election Methods
Here is a comparison of election methods applied to Alaska's August 2022 Special House Election: Election Methods re 2022 AK Special Election
The supposed purpose of “ranked-choice voting” is to obtain majority support for the winning candidate. But the commonly-used successive elimination method is not a reliable way to achieve that result. The only way to ensure majority support for the winning candidate is simply to elect the candidate who has majority support against each of the other candidates. And if by chance no candidate has majority support against each of the others, elect the one who comes closest. In other words, use ballot rankings to perform a round robin of instant runoffs between each pair of candidates, and elect the one who defeats, or comes closest to defeating, every other candidate. This Round Robin Instant Runoff is called “Condorcet Minimax” or “Simpson-Kramer” in academic literature or “Consensus Voting” at https://betterchoices.vote/ .
The Round Robin Instant Runoff method is simple, transparent, and yields objectively better electoral results that other currently used or proposed methods. The basic idea is that a candidate (called a Condorcet winner) who is preferred by voters to each of the other individual candidates should be elected. Voters may rank candidates in order of preference, or give each candidate a favorability “score”. In an election with four candidates, each precinct could report results for all six two-way runoffs, or make a concise 4x4 table showing all of the named candidates in each row and column (the report could be expanded to show top write-in candidates or add “other” to denote all other vote recipients combined). A number in each table cell shows how many voters preferred the row “candidate” to the column “opponent”. Summing the results from each precinct yields all the information needed for anyone to determine the winner. Just find the worst runoff result (strongest opponent) for each candidate. The winner is the candidate with the best runoff result against their strongest opponent.
If one candidate would defeat all the others in head-to-head runoffs (as is usually the case), this method picks that candidate as the winner (called a “Condorcet” winner). In rare cases when every candidate would lose a runoff to at least one of the other candidates, this method chooses the candidate who is “closest” to being a Condorcet winner: the one who would defeat all other opponents with the fewest additional first-choice rankings. Round Robin Instant Runoff (Minimax) guarantees that any losing candidate has the weakest possible claim that they should have won instead. It comes as close as possible to guaranteeing majority support for the winning candidate. This paper by Richard Darlington of Cornell University summarizes the current status: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.01366. Academics at Princeton University also make a strong case for Condorcet methods: https://www.princeton.edu/~cuff/voting/theory.html. Various Condorcet methods differ only in how they deal with the rare instances when there is no Condorcet winner.
Interested parties can try out different election methods at the Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS). You can also explore different voting methods at the Smart Voting Simulator.
For Top-4 or Top-5 open primary elections, I recommend simple plurality voting. It is unlikely that vote splitting would eliminate a highly competitive candidate, and primary voters should not be expected to carefully evaluate a large field of candidates.
Some have advocated for eliminating primary elections altogether, but voters cannot be expected to rank more than a handful of candidates. In a large field with voters ranking their choices, one could expect that Democratic voters will rank three Democrats, and Republican voters will rank three Republicans. As with plurality “vote for one”, the winning candidate will not be supported by a majority of voters.
Additional Links:
Created: April 22, 2021; Last updated: November 13, 2023.
Copyright © 2021-2023 Robert A. Close
