Ranked-choice voting is sort of like a website for cheating spouses. It makes lurid promises it can’t deliver.
According to news reports, Ashley Madison, a recently hacked site promoting extramarital affairs, faked many of its postings of females seeking illicit hook-ups. Apparently, wayward wedded women are too smart to fall for this scam. As the hackers discovered, approximately 90 percent of those signed up in search of allegedly secret affairs were men. In spite of a smattering of university professors, government bureaucrats, journalists and the occasional political operative, it seems safe to assume this assortment of horn dogs has IQs lower than their testosterone levels.
Supporters of ranked-choice make similarly alluring promises about its value, even though their claims are unsupported by the facts. But unlike Ashley Madison, their come-on is attractive to gullible members of both sexes.
The most obvious falsehood promoted by those backing a referendum to change the way the state handles gubernatorial elections is the promise that ranked-choice produces a majority winner. But in the only election using that method ever held in Maine, the victor only got about 48 percent of the vote.
Four years ago, Portland chose its newly created elected mayor from a field of 15 candidates. Voters ranked the contenders from best to worst, and when no one achieved over 50 percent on first count, the last place finisher’s ballots were redistributed to the second choice. This process continued for several rounds until Michael Brennan edged Ethan Strimling to claim the largely ceremonial post.
Brennan was said to have received just over half the votes cast. But what the mayor-elect really got was more than half the votes on those ballots that included at least one vote for him or Strimling. Those voters who didn’t want either of them had their ballots discarded. If you voted for only one candidate, but it wasn’t one of the top two finishers, you were a non-factor in this race.
Like those caught registering with Ashley Madison, ranked-choice backers offer only the lamest excuses for their false-hearted ways. They claim that since only a tiny percentage of voters didn’t check off one of the top two finishers somewhere on their ballots, hardly anybody of consequence is harmed by this glitch in the counting process. Those few left out are mostly kooks and fringe dwellers.
Besides not really producing a majority winner and disenfranchising weirdos, here’s another bit of false advertising associated with ranked-choice voting. It’s promoted as making campaigns more civil and positive, because candidates are inclined to avoid attacks on their opponents lest that cost them the chance to earn second-place votes.
So even though the person running against you is registered on Ashley Madison seeking deviant sexual practices so extreme they’d make a porn star blush, it’s best to pretend that as mayor, he won’t be a threat to the safety of city workers and their pets.
But fear not. After only one election decided by ranked-choice, politicians have discovered how to reinstate negative campaigning. Instead of the candidate directly criticizing his opponent, he gets his surrogates to do the dirty work.
Take, for example, the current Portland mayoral race. When Strimling announced his second run for the office, he never once mentioned Brennan, instead blathering on about being collaborative and realizing a vision of Portland as some sort of urban utopia. He left the mudslinging for the next day, at a news conference held by his supporters.
“Over the past few years, I have seen first hand as a city councilor the impact of failed leadership under Mike Brennan,” said Nick Mavodones. “The frustration I’ve felt has been profound.”
“I’ve not known Michael to be much of a listener,” said school committee member John Eder. “Michael gets an idea in his head, and he doesn’t receive input very well in my experience, and he generally sort of digs in.”
“Under Michael Brennan’s leadership, the city has languished,” said City Councilor Ed Suslovic in an op-ed he co-authored with Mavodones.
(Nobody accused Brennan of being a philandering Ashley Madison subscriber. Must have been an oversight.)
While all this was going on, Strimling was conveniently unavailable for comment, because he needs to maintain the fiction that the attacks on Brennan are in no way connected to him, so Brennan supporters can feel comfortable checking him off on the ballot as their second choice.
If that seems a little cynical – dishonest, even – that’s just one more way ranked-choice voting is like signing up for a cheaters’ website.
I promise not to tell your spouse about your comments sent to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
