IRV Discourages Strategic Voting
The second in a series of posts highlighting a benefit of IRV for Somerville in greater detail. Each of these posts will become a permanent page on the left-hand side under “Why IRV?”
IRV encourages voters to honestly rank candidates on the ballot instead of gambling on strategic “bullet votes”.
Upon entering the voting booth in an election for Alderman At-Large, every voter must unwillingly play a game. The name of the game is “How many candidates should I vote for?”. The rules allow every voter to vote for up to four candidates — the same as the number to be elected — but figuring out whether to use one, two, three, or all four votes can be a complicated and error-prone task.
Consider my dilemma if my four favorite candidates are A, B, C, and D, in that order. If I vote for all four I might cause B, C, or D to win a seat at the expense of my top choice A. Or I could put all my eggs in one basket by voting only for A — also known as “bullet voting” — leaving my three other votes unused. Or I might be best served by voting for only A and B or only for A, B, and C. In sum, I have four separate strategies and determining which is my best option requires an accurate prediction of how everyone else is likely to vote.
As a result, our voting system benefits political “insiders”, who are best positioned to predict the likely winners in advance, and puts average voters, who don’t have the time to research the optimal strategy, at a disadvantage. Regardless of the election outcome, we are left with the impression that some are gaming to the system to the detriment of others. Perhaps this helps explain why municipal elections see such low voter turnout.
But under Choice Voting (IRV for electing multiple candidates), I can honestly rank candidates on the ballot in order of preference — A, B, C — without worrying that a later rank could hurt the chances of an earlier rank. If candidate A needs my full vote to get elected, my vote will count towards A. If A lacks enough votes to win, my vote will instead count towards B; and if B lacks enough votes, then it will count towards C. Also, if A only needs half my vote to win, then the other half will count towards my remaining choices.
With Choice Voting, we can wave goodbye to rampant bullet voting and put everyone on a more level playing field in the voting booth. We can make the act of voting less like a casino game and more like an expression of our true democratic preferences.
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August 27th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
One of the signers of the pro-IRV petition in NC is or was a candidate for local office who admits that he wants to use IRV to encourage a particular type of strategic voting – to prevent “racial siphoning” of African American voters in his community who want to vote for an African American candidate – usually one who is recruited by the more Conservative business interests to prevent the more progressive Dems from winning in the first election. This forces a runoff and the more progressive voters and the African American voting block tends not to show up for those second elections – so the conservative business interests win.
This candidate thinks that he can educate the African-American voters to vote for him second, and since he feels he will be in the top-two IRV runoff, he will win.
But wait – what makes him think that the conservative business interests who recruited the African American candidate to siphon votes from the progressive candidate won’t work hard to educate voters who vote for the African American candidate to vote for the conservative business candidate second? The answer – nothing will prevent it, and strategic voting will still take place in IRV – it will just be harder to do, take more money and resources to accomplish, thus driving up the cost of campaigning and favor candidates with deep pockets.
Furthermore, the fact that IRV elections can’t be audited with any of the ease of traditioal single column elections will make it harder to detect voting fraud or even human errors. That is what happened in the Cary IRV election – many errors were made, and some were detected by observers (like me) but many were only found behind closed doors and the public was told it won’t happen again – not what we want to encourage for election integrity.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Wake, nothing “prevents” strategic voting under any voting system, as you know. But of all systems, IRV is the most resistant to strategy.
Your particular example does not suggest anything about strategic voting. If the business interests prop up an African American candidate, such a candidate would very likely receive little first-choice support. So even if African American voters ranked him or her second, they would eventually rank that candidate you spoke to third, presuming he is correct in his assessment that he can convince them of his qualifications. So the candidate you spoke to is right: he will be the ultimate beneficiary.
Lastly, it is false that IRV elections can’t be audited and make it harder to detect electoral fraud and errors. (You used the incorrect phrase “voter fraud,” fraud by a voter at the voting booth, when what you meant is “electoral fraud,” which is fraud embedded in the electoral system itself, such as the machines.) San Francisco audits all of its IRV elections, and it does so in a manner that is more likely to detect errors and fraud than traditional audits. For more information on how these audits are run, please this document about IRV and Election Integrity.