Ranked-Choice Voting: Avoiding Demagogues
Rachel MacNair
A while back, we dropped packets by your olffice with details on our Exit Survey done at many KC polls on March 10. It showed that of the 944 voters who tried out Ranked Choice Voting for the same ballot they had just voted on, about 80% liked or strongly liked it, and about 94% found it easy or very easy. I attach the same information in the event you’d like to have an electronic version.
Meanwhile, a similar survey was done in the Blue Springs mayor’s race June 2, which had four candidates. Missouri State Representative Dan Stacy coordinated, and they got 222 responses. And what they found brings up another important point, one to emphasize these days with the intense focus on racial justice.
The man who won the four-way race got 34.3% of the vote. In the exit survey, he got 35% of the first choice votes. But once the process of ranked-choice was finished, he had 51% support. So if the whole electorate had voted as the sample did, the same man would have won - but with a better mandate.
But here’s the crucial point: only ranked-choice allows us to distinguish between these two cases:
A candidate getting a third of the vote, with a large hunk of voters saying “This candidate isn’t my first choice, but is ok.”
or
A demagogue getting an enthusiastic third of the vote, with two-thirds of the voters hating him or her.
Making a change in voting to be able to distinguish the two is crucial to keeping demagogues out of office -- which is crucial to racial justice. This is true all around Missouri, and other locales are more likely to make the change if Kansas City serves as a model.
Therefore, in the event that you’re considering various reforms to address racial justice issues, we think RCV could be included as one of those reforms.
We know that how we vote seems to be a remote concern to you when you’re rightly focused on the pandemic and racial accountability. Our previous argument about KC saving money by having one election instead of two, for instance, is a strong argument in normal times, but seems a bit back-burner now; the next city election isn’t until 2023, after all
.
But how we do our democracy really does have a major impact on getting a good-quality, responsive government. So we’re hoping you’ll agree that Ranked-Choice Voting can go in with other important reforms to be considered.
We also point out that those people who want to vote safely during the pandemic, and therefore vote early, have more confidence when they can rank their choices, so they don’t need to fear that their vote is wasted if a candidate drops out before election day. That’s most relevant in primaries, but also applies to other elections.
Sincerely,
Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D.
for Better Ballot KC