Today’s political climate has proved that there is little bipartisanship within our political system. This lack of collaboration between political parties in our capitol has led to an overwhelming amount of polarization plaguing our elections and political atmosphere. Polarization is defined in this paper as when an individual’s stance on a given issue or person is likely to be strictly defined by their identification with a particular party. In an effort to better democracy, lobbyists have commonly proposed changing our voting system by instituting ranked choice voting within our elections. Ranked choice voting is rooted in the idea that to reduce polarization, the majority of us should elect our representatives. However, I argue that adopting ranked choice voting will not be a helpful policy for reducing polarization.
This past June, Maine became the first state to implement ranked choice voting in their primary elections. Before making claims about ranked choice voting, it is important to first understand how it operates. Most notably, ranked choice voting focuses on majority voting. That is to say that ranked-choice voting only comes into play if no candidate reaches 50 percent of votes on the first ballot. Voters are required to vote for their first-choice candidate and have the option to rank the remaining candidates in order of preference. If no candidate reaches 50% of the votes, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. Then, a second round of votes is tabulated using the second choice of the voters that voted for the eliminated candidate. This cycle of rounds where the lowest ranked candidate is eliminated and the votes are re-tabulated repeats until the final round where there are two candidates remaining and one receives the majority of votes.
Maine’s new system of ranked choice voting differs from the first-past-the-post electoral system currently used by Pennsylvania by imposing that the elected candidate receives a majority of votes. The first-past-the-post system operates using plurality voting, where whoever gets the most votes wins, even if that candidate does not win a majority. This system can be thought of as using a simple majority, or winner take all structure. Under this current system, candidates are separated by party and voters only get one vote for one candidate. Significantly, this means that the winning candidate does not have to get a majority of the votes, but rather more votes than the other candidates. Maine’s system of ranked choice voting considerably alters the process of voting from choosing your most preferred candidate to ranking several preferences from a long list of options. The ranked preferences are then used to elect a candidate that eventually receives a majority of votes from the electorate.
Although the idea of ranked choice voting may sound convincing at first, it will not help reduce polarization because it will make a third-party candidate more viable, and in the current state of our politics, that third-party will most likely include an ideologically extreme candidate. According to recent polls, two thirds of American’s claim to be in favor of having a third party, which is a 20-year high. Nonetheless, conflict arises when examining where a third party would emerge on the political spectrum. Doing so, we find that “one-fifth want a party to the left of the Democrats, one-fifth want a party to the right of the Republicans,” and the remainder want something else. Evidently, although ranked choice voting paves the way for a multiparty system where a third party could gain more support, there is an underlying problem with what a third party would represent. Moreover, by studying the degree of polarization that exists within our current elected representatives, we find an overwhelming lack of moderate or centrist views. By the current ideal point estimations of Congress, every Republican member in the Senate is more conservative than the Democrats, and every Democrat is consistently voting more liberally than any Republican member of Congress. This illustrates the current party rigidity just within our elected officials; tying this with the views of Americans in favor of a more liberal or conservative third party, ranked choice voting would most likely allow a politically extreme candidate to emerge, which would consequently not solve the issue of polarization within our political system.
Further, ranked choice voting will not necessarily increase voter turnout, and therefore, will not be helpful in reducing voter polarization. Proponents of ranked choice voting argue that a benefit of this system will be increased voter turnout. Increasing voter turnout would mean that more independent voters are mobilized, which would subsequently show an increased moderate voter choice in the results instead of the typical strong divide between the Democratic and Republican parties. However, changing the electoral system towards a more complicated one will not increase voter turnout. In fact, ranked choice voting “makes voting more complex, which might disadvantage poorer, less educated voters and reduce participation.” Voting works best and appeals to the most people in its simplest forms. One needs to consider that voters are traditionally and consistently unknowledgeable about politics. This makes it unreasonable to believe that by offering voters more choices they will become more politically informed or less likely to vote within their party lines. Making the ballots more involved will not attract more voters, and therefore, will be ineffective in reducing voter polarization.
Despite these arguments, advocates of ranked choice voting claim that it gives voters more choices by not constricting them to the typical two party system. Thus, even if a third-party candidate does not win, by having ranked choices, one can observe where the public is leaning. While I concede that ranked choice voting does give voters more options, considering the issue of collective ignorance within the electorate, I am skeptical of how much we can trust the second, third, fourth, or fifth choice of voters. By the rational choice theory, people resort to their party identification when faced with problems or choices that they do not have a lot of information about. Therefore, one can speculate that the same voters that are typically uninformed when making their single selection on the ballot in its current form will also be uninformed when asked to make several selections under ranked choice voting, and hence, may resort to voting in favor of their party anyways. The current political outcry focuses on problems associated with polarization branching from our representatives to our voters, not with parties not providing sufficient choice. Ranked choice voting aims to remedy this by allowing voters to rank their choices, yet, this is ultimately inept in targeting the grander problem of polarization within even a voter’s first choice.
Our entire political world is currently divided. Every issue and opinion seems to somehow become politicized. Changing the manner in which we elect representatives, and then placing them on a platform that is currently rooted in a cycle and culture of polarization will not solve the problem. Ranked choice voting will not decrease the partisan rigidity in the voting patterns of Americans. Not only will ranked choice voting not increase voter turnout, but it will also make an extreme third party candidate more viable. Despite giving voters more choices, it is hard to believe that these options will make voters less inclined to vote in their favored parties way. Ultimately, despite the complexity of voter polarization, complicating our voting method will not achieve our targeted results. Nonetheless, ideas like ranked choice voting are crucial for bringing the conversation of how we can better democracy to the national spotlight.