Politics & Other Mistakes: Your vote doesn’t count

6 mins read
Al Diamon

Let’s suppose you’re one of those voter-suppression fanatics, looking for creative ways to stop people you don’t like from casting ballots in Maine.

You could try requiring photo identification, but anybody can buy a decent fake ID on the internet, so that might not work. Fingerprint checks or retinal scans? That would require expensive equipment at every polling place, and might slow down the process so much that people you want to vote would grow discouraged and go home. DNA tests? I don’t see how that would help, except maybe settling the question of whether Elizabeth Warren is Native American.

Fortunately, there’s a simpler way to dispose of fringy types, who show up on election day intent on voting for points of view that differ radically from your own. It’s called ranked-choice voting.

Here’s how it works. Five people are running for a particular municipal office. You support Candidate A, an upstanding citizen who agrees with you on every issue. You’ve got your doubts about Candidate B, who has shown flashes of independent thought, but is generally reliable on the stuff you care about most. Candidates C, D and E are extremists, which is to say they hold views contrary to your own.

There are 100 people eligible to vote in your town. You could waste a lot of time trying to make it difficult for supporters of C, D and E to register or cast ballots. But why bother? With ranked-choice, there’s a good chance their votes won’t count at all.

How is that possible in a democracy where everyone’s ballot is supposed to be equal? Here’s how:

Once the polls close, the vote counters add up the number of first-choice selections for each candidate. Candidate A got 39 votes. Candidate B picked up 26. Candidate C received 15. Candidate D managed 11. And Candidate E won just 9. Nobody got a majority of the 100 ballots cast, which would be 51 votes. So, ranked-choice kicks in.

In the second round, Candidate E’s support is redistributed to the second choices on those ballots. Candidate A gets one additional vote, for a total of 40. Candidate B receives two votes to rise to 28. Candidate C gets one and is now at 16. Candidate D also earns one to reach 12. But the remaining four voters, obvious weirdos, didn’t make a second selection. Under the law, their ballots are discarded. It’s as if they never existed.

That means the total number of votes is now 96, and the majority required for victory is reduced from 51 to 49.

Next round. Candidate D’s votes are reallocated. Two go to Candidate A (now at 42), two to Candidate B (up to 30) and three to Candidate C (totaling 19). Five others either didn’t list a second choice or put Candidate E (who’s no longer in contention) in that slot. More ballots get dumped.

Ninety-one ballots are still in play. All it takes to win is 46.

Candidate C now gets the ax. One more for Candidate A (43) and 12 for Candidate B (42). Another six are tossed in the trash. With just 85 votes still in play, Candidate A has a majority.

Well, not a majority of all the ballots cast. Candidate A is still eight votes shy of that. But under ranked-choice, “all the ballots cast” is an antiquated concept. What counts is “all the ballots that weren’t thrown out for having the unmitigated gall to lend their support to oddballs and freaks who finished out of the running.”

What’s even better is that, without having to resort to any of the usual attempts at suppressing turnout, 15 deviant voters have been disenfranchised. No purging of the lists. No closing polling places in areas thought to shelter opposing views. No poll watchers challenging the ballots of anyone who looks a little off-color. Everyone believes they voted, even if they really didn’t.

If you think this scenario is unlikely, think again. In 2011, Michael Brennan was elected mayor of Portland under the ranked-choice system with an official tally of 56 percent of the vote. In reality, Brennan got less than 46 percent of the total vote, because about 3,500 ballots were tossed out for their failure to be marked in support of either of the top two finishers.

Ranked-choice will be used in the June primary. If you’re planning to participate, better back the frontrunner or the closest challenger with at least one of your choices. Otherwise, you might not really be voting.

Endorsements for poor Candidate E can be emailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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20 Comments

  1. Precisely why it is unconstitutional and should not be done. They may have “voted” it in, but my question is how do you change the constitution of our state except through amendment? So if the Constitution hasn’t been amended yet by both houses of our legislature and then voted upon by the citizens of this state, how can the system be implemented and be a valid form of voting in any ballot election in this state? Yes, the initiative passed which means It directs the legislative houses to work on an amendment that will allow such a form of voting to happen. It does not mean implementation happens. To me that is highly illegal and in violation of our constitution as currently written. And as you said Al, it definitely does take away from every vote counts until you no longer have a candidate in t the running… a little like March madness and what team you have left in your brackets. And how is this count done.. are the voting machines all set up and programed to do this wonderful mathematical counting for us?

  2. Hi Al, according to that logic in a traditional election all but 39 voters are disenfranchised since their ballots are thrown out for having the unmitigated gmail…

    Your argument is not logicaly coherent or consistent.

  3. I figured out my vote didn’t count when I was about 8 years old. * Kind of like trying to get a comment printed in TDB.

  4. There’s a question about Sen. Warren’s Cherokee ancestry?

    Fraudulent voting either doesn’t exist or can’t be suppressed anyway. How can it exist when there are so few convictions. Consider Chicago, about a third of its 60 Board of Aldermen have gone to jail for extortion, bribery, fraud, etc. in the last 30 years but NONE for fraudulent voting practices. See, whatever other Crimes Democratic politicians may commit they are too honorable to cheat at the polling place.

    Anyone who finds Al’s description confusing should be advised that his account is as lucid as any you are ever likely to hear.

  5. Thank you, Al, for demonstrating so clearly that rank choice voting is a terrible idea. Any thoughts on how we get to put the genie back in the bottle?

  6. Al, it’s not too hard to come up with scenarios where ranked-choice gives a result that doesn’t look right, but your own example here happens to contain a mistake in the details. It’s in this paragraph:

    “Next round. Candidate D’s votes are reallocated. Two go to Candidate A (now at 42), two to Candidate B (up to 30) and three to Candidate C (totaling 19). Five others either didn’t list a second choice or put Candidate E (who’s no longer in contention) in that slot. More ballots get dumped.”

    You’re saying here that people who voted for Candidate D as first choice and Candidate E as second choice get their ballots dumped once D and E are out of the running. But this is true only of those who didn’t list a third choice. No doubt there will be some who did that. But those who listed a third choice (A, B, or C) will still get their ballots counted for that third-choice candidate. And so forth, because ranked choice means voters are supposed to be able to score ALL the candidates in order of preference.

    Here’s a different scenario. Suppose candidates A, B, C, and D each appeal to 25% of the people as their first choice because they all have extremist ideologies that the public is divided about. Each is hated by the 75% who don’t love him. Candidate E, a moderate who tries to find compromises most people can live with, is everybody’s second choice but nobody’s first choice.

    Nearly everybody would be more or less satisfied if E were elected (they all listed him as second choice), but because he got no first-choice votes he’s thrown out in the first round. Now everything depends on how people arranged their third-choice and fourth-choice votes. Whoever wins, it will be someone that 75% of the voters think is really terrible.

    The only way to get candidate E elected on a ranked choice system is for a lot of people (it might take more than 20% if they came equally from the four camps) to list him as their first choice even though they really like one of the others better.

    There’s a mathematical proof called Arrow’s Theorem, published I think in 1950, which shows that it’s impossible to devise a voting system (ranked choice, plurality, you name it) that won’t eventually run into screwy problems like this. Somehow this never gets mentioned in the political debates about voting systems.

  7. Al your description of rank choice voting seems like it would take about three days to get a proper count. What happens if candidate E calls for a recount ? With all the ballots “thrown out” it would be hard to accomplish. This type of voting will never work (imo) because of the complications that you have so clearly muddled in you column.

  8. From a political science perspective, complex systems like ranked choice voting are very dubious. That’s why I couldn’t support it. If one wants to avoid someone winning a plurality when a majority opposes him or her, it’s better to have an actual run off between the top two vote getters. In general, complexity tends to turn off voters and create more confusion than benefit.

  9. RCV/IRV redefines the majority with every round of counting. The ballots of the “loser/s” decide who the Winner will be.
    Unconstitutional. Unfair. Unnecessarily complicated.
    I will Vote NO on the People’s Veto on June 12th.
    The people behind RCV have Deep Pockets and a BIG Agenda.
    Money raised: $2,944,419.44
    Money spent: $ 2,461,000.84. Are they sitting on $500,000?
    Opposition: $0.00
    https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)

  10. Here is how it should be. Voter A goes in and votes for Candidate A, then they turn in their ballot. Simple, and effective. I really don’t care, I’m going to vote for anybody whose last name isn’t Eves or has a D after it. He truly hates Maine. If that bag of fertilizer had his way, Maine would be California East.

  11. So, what would happen if someone decided to vote for Candidate A 5 times–in other words, listed A in the second, third, fourth and fifth places? Is this allowed under the (daft) rules of Ranked Choice voting? If not, why not–aren’t they my votes to be cast in the fashion I desire?

  12. Let’s move this discussion from the opinion section into the realm of investigative journalism. No real news pieces have covered the issue completely and, as unfortunate as it seems, the voters have very little information about what to expect. Perhaps our secretary of state could weigh in? Come on journalists this story is just laying out there, what do you say?

  13. Vike — Under the rules, you can only vote for each candidate once. If Candidate A is your first choice, and you don’t want to support anyone else, you vote for A and leave the rest of your ballot blank. The danger in doing that is that if Candidate A is eliminated before the last round, your ballot will be discarded and won’t count in the final tally.

    Larry — I should have clearer in explaining that ballots are only discarded when all the choices are exhausted. For purposes of my example, the voters for Candidate D didn’t mark a third choice.

    Cheers,
    Al Diamon

  14. I offered up a similar bill back in 1993. No deep pockets or hidden agenda here. I thought that this would be a more efficient way of getting a majority vote to get the winner without the costs of runoff elections. Perhaps runoff elections two weeks later would be a better choice

  15. Without ranked choice voting candidate A with a plurality would have won A’s 39 to B’s 26 to C’s 16 to D’s 15 to E’s 9. The outcome would not be different either way using your example.

    When it comes to Michael Brennan’s election, if I recall an earlier column by you, he came in first in number one votes, so the result was a victory for him either way.

    Do you support requiring a run-off between the top two vote getters?

  16. Michael — The troubles with runoffs are:

    1. They cost a lot.
    2. Turnout is usually lower.
    3. It’s not uncommon for two ideologically similar candidates to end up in the top two spots. Lots of voters have no good choice.

    For that reason, I’d keep the current system.

    Cheers,
    Al Diamon

  17. Whatever happens does not matter and your vote does not count. I don’t know if you noticed but elected officials are not listening to the voters. It seems to me that the popular voices of the people should be heard. The 2 parties are collectively killing us. For years I have been watching the fight between the 2 and compromise is never the correct choice for the citizens. Don’t you wonder what would happen if there was no R or D after our name. I think we would have to resort basing our decisions on issues. The (constitutional) RCV problem stems from the opposition to our elected governor not wanting to accept a loss. Now we have a huge mess.

    Abolish the 2 parties. Until we have no parties nothing will change.

  18. In a First Past the Post without Ranked Choice Instant Runoff your original supposition gives along with the tradition of Plurality instead of Majority win would mean most of the votes don’t count in the first place
    A – 39 – Winner with 39% of the vote
    B – 26 C – 15 D – 11 E – 9

    By your own admission that under Ranked Choice, a greater plurality is given
    A – 43 – Winner with 43% of the original vote
    B – 42

    Even if there wasn’t an increase of plurality, it assumes that all 100 people would’ve gone to the polls without ranked choice, or that their vote actually counted, making the final tally closer to a 2 candidate race that didn’t inspire someone to vote.
    Someone casting a ballot with a blank vote isn’t counted towards that vote already, and doing the same within the process of ranked choice if the ideal candidates don’t win

    In the end what you have describe is how things work now when someone just leaves the ballot blank for that election, an Undervote.
    The participants in ranked choice who do not select enough candidates to go through every round if their 1st and beyond choices are undervoting as they do not see any alternative worth voting for.

    The statistics given by the complex array of ballots cast vs ranked choice results gives more data than the current 1 round of voting the system gives on the direction the people want to go.

    There is nothing new being introduced into this system to make your vote not count as Undervoting has existed for decades

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