Editor’s Note: We hope you enjoy the video above. If you’d rather just listen to the podcast, click the button below to Apple Podcasts: The Common Bridge. It is also available on all other podcast platforms. We have included the transcript to this program below. We offer this program in it’s entirety to our paid subscribers, and welcome all to subscribe below.
Brian Kruger
Welcome back to The Common Bridge. This is the second of a two part interview with ranked-choice advocate Rob Richie. We're going to start with Rich's last comment from last week's episode to put the final part of this conversation into context. So let's join Richard Helppie and Rob Richie in conversation.
Richard Helppie
Look, the Republicans, if they had any brains, would find a way to show Trump the door. I've been saying that for years. The last two presidential cycles have been a lesser of evils; we haven't gotten any really good choices, okay, in my humble opinion, in the last two cycles. I was just curious as to why that tilt would go there because the object of the game is not only the election, but it's what people do after they get there. So when I hear that a Democrat or a Republican won, and by gosh, they sure appealed to the other side and then they go to Washington and you know who's in Washington; it's Kevin McCarthy and it's Nancy Pelosi, it's Charles Schumer and it's Mitch McConnell and they're controlling committee assignments, they're controlling campaign funds, and they're making sure they get that vote out. That tension for Mary Peltola, when she gets to Washington, that pressure on her to vote with the party - although it may be against her more conservative or libertarian electorate - that, to me, is where we begin to get real democracy back, where we're not so concerned about the outcome of the election based on what badge; the election's over, now go represent us. When I think about presidential politics, if you go back to the 1960 election, we had two people, either which was qualified to be president of the United States, then it was a very close election. They both had respect for each other and there's a great deal written about how they handled that. Now, neither one of them, neither Nixon nor John Kennedy, could be nominated by their own party today. Nixon was far too liberal with the Environmental Protection Agency, with health care reform and such. And of course, Kennedy was also a defense hawk and a tax czar. So we've gone from that time to this really extreme polarization and it's filtered down. My concern is what forms of voting reform can help us get to the point where we can hold those that we elect accountable to us again.
Rob Richie
Well, I think that's a great question and core to why we think ranked-choice voting and will ultimately grow to be used in all of our elections. Just to speak to that point about being a rubber stamp Democrat or Republican after being elected, if Peltola acts that way in Alaska, she won't last very long, it is a Republican leaning state, or at least a conservative state; a better way to think of it. Similarly, Jared Golden, the Democrat who won in northern Maine, it's somewhat similar. He has now served...he's finishing his fourth year, he's in another close election with the same two people from 2018, interestingly, that Bruce Poliquin is running again. But he has been among the most conservative Democrats in his voting record, but not on everything, he picks his battles, picks his issues, I think. But because you're breaking down the binary, because there's this openness of choice, it allows politics to breathe more. It just allows more candidates to be part of the mix, voters to think outside of single choices. I think, getting to your point, it creates the space for different kinds of candidates and for voters to think about them and not to be so dug in for one versus the other and you just get to vote for one. So I think that's the promise of ranked-choice voting; it can break us out of a duopoly or this two person situation and create these incentives for candidates to do something different which speaks to why Peltola, it was so interesting that she can get that many Republicans to rank her second, why Jared Golden got such a big percentage of Independents to rank him second. Republicans can do that too, it's not like Democrats are the only people that can find ways to connect with people and that's what we've seen in primaries. So when Glenn Younkin - just to make a point about Republicans - Glenn Younkin is now a pretty clear star of the party. He's pretty conservative, but at the same point, he wasn't the most conservative candidate running in that primary. He was a relatively new figure in Virginia politics; people felt if it had been just a single choice election, he might have fallen to expectation games like, well, he's not likely to win, so I won't even vote for him. So ranked-choice voting is kind of very liberating, just to vote for whom you want. When that contest happened and five candidates got eliminated one by one, everyone could see that actually he was positioning himself well to be a second or third choice or fourth choice of backers of every other candidate. He showed that he was like this big tent candidate so that he came out of the primary with a clear majority and a clear ability where no candidate got more than about 30% in the first round. But he was able to build a majority and make this connection. A lot of Virginia Republicans feel that was really key to them winning for the first time in a decade in any statewide election. So then they decided to use it for three congressional primaries this year by their own choice.
Richard Helppie
Absent that kind of ranked-choice voting, the incentive is to run to the extreme. The outsized influence of Donald Trump - which still boggles my mind - makes that encouragement to run to that extreme because that's where the biggest pile of voters are, versus being who you are, and saying you're effectively applying for a job. Kind of what I'm inferring in here, Rob, is that the opportunity for more parties get stronger, because if someone is voting for someone other than a Republican or Democrat - if you are voting for an Independent or one of the other parties - they're not really letting their vote act as a spoiler, they're expressing their real view. As you were talking about in Maine, Independent may be the first choice, second choice may be a Democrat, may be a Republican, and throughout history, we had spoilers that are affected. So here's the thing I'm trying to work out, is if the object of the game is to avoid the extremism and to get people with broad appeal - and I'll go back to the 1992 presidential election - Bill Clinton won that election with 43% of the vote and when you break down the votes, in California, Ross Perot got 20% of the vote. He got almost 16% in New York. And I think, well, what would have...it's speculation where Perot's voters would have gone for choice two, but it's such a significant part. And I can tell you this on a personal level, I was standing in line to vote for president 1992. I would have said I thought Perot would probably do a better job, he understands a lot of the things we're dealing with the deficit and things today, he was central to his platform. But I ended up not doing it because I just thought, well, my vote is not going to count.
Rob Richie
Didn't want to throw your vote away, right. And that's the expectation game that really makes it hard for independents and third parties. They're really in a bind, because either that happens, and they don't get many votes, or they get a relatively substantial number of votes like Perot ultimately did and then people say you're a spoiler and you're terrible. So we keep having that debate and conversation. In fact, that was the first year for FairVote, and if you go back further in time, John Anderson had run for president in 1980. And he had been an Independent, he actually had been polling in the 20s as an Independent. He was a Republican who had served 20 years in Congress, but he was of a more moderate liberal wing of the party. When Ronald Reagan was becoming the nominee, he wanted to put his name forward to hold on to his vision of what the party should be. He had a lot of support, but then ultimately, he was in that position where people didn't think he was going to be viable, and he only got like 7%. Anyway, John was actually our founding advisory chair, National Advisory chair, and he had an op-ed in the New York Times in the first month of FairVote, making the case for ranked-choice voting in the context of that election. So it has always made sense, by the way. It's not the only thing that we've worked on, but it's something that we've consistently worked on and it's been exciting to see such progress. But we have to get out of that cycle because we're already talking about for 2024, oh, it might be Biden versus Trump. (Richard Helppie: No.) If it is, then we have to have somebody else. But then it's going to be a third party and that's going to be a split vote and it's like wringing our hands. It's like, you know what, guys? There is a solution. Don't just wring your hands do something about it.
Richard Helppie
I remember John Anderson in the debates in 1980 and he was really good. They had a question about nuclear weapons and I forget what Reagan said and Jimmy Carter talked about Amy. Anderson steps in and he says, Well, I don't know about this and I don't can't speak for little Amy. But then he came out with something very smart, so he was a good man, service. You mentioned the liberal wing of the Republican Party, which, it doesn't exist anymore. The conservative Democrat is all but an extinct species. I'm trying to say, in '92, I don't think anybody would think Bill Clinton is an extremist. I mean, he ran as a centrist, as a third party but in all likelihood, under ranked-choice voting, would have lost given what likely would have happened with Perot's voters. But there's another case in history, where we elected a president with 39.8% of the vote and you know who that President is. (Rob Richie: That was Abraham Lincoln.) Who was seen, by the way, as an extremist of his time.
Rob Richie
Before we leave Lincoln, make your point, but I do want to make sure that we talk about his nomination as well.
Richard Helppie
Exactly right. So my point is this that in my view, and...
Rob Richie
I'll just make that point. In the nomination, he was down by 20 points at the convention in the first round, he was in second. Seward, who ultimately became, I guess, head of...well one of his Cabinet secretaries. But Lincoln was the one that built a consensus within the party. He was the second choice candidate of backers of others, so ultimately became the nominee. So he was actually a beneficiary of ranked-choice voting in the nomination. It was a round by round, like ranked-choice voting, they just voted repeatedly, which you can do in an in person convention. And I'll say, parenthetically, ranked-choice voting is widely used in private, non-government elections, like party primaries and then organizational contests because of that feature. It's like round by round voting, it's just a more efficient way of doing it. Anyway, in the general, it was a very complicated election for 1860. But I will say he actually won more than 50% of the vote in states that would have allowed him to become president under Electoral College System. He just didn't even run in the south. To show how polarized things were, he didn't even try to get any votes down there.
Richard Helppie
Think about our last presidential elections. The last two, there were states that just basically conceded to the other party. It's like, why bother?
Rob Richie
Oh, the great majority of congressional races are conceded and at this point, about 40, maybe 38 states, are just conceded from the get go.
Exactly right. I think we all know that that means that we have an unresponsive government. Look, we have solvable problems. I wrote a column this past week about healthcare, and the solutions are right in front of us. I've written about firearms, and written about immigration policy and such. These are all solvable problems, but not if we can't even agree on what the issue is and people are going to have, quote, their own set of facts. Rob, this is a great topic. And it's really an honor to be talking to you about this. Some of the advocates...here's what I'm kind of taking away from this, that pro ranked-choice voting, you can vote for your favorite candidate, even if you don't think that person is going to win; that dilemma of hmm, I really like Candidate A, but I don't think they have a chance and I'm, in effect, voting for my second choice because strategically, I think they'll win, instead of saying, this is my choice, and if I can't have them, this is choice two, choice three, choice four. I see where - perhaps I'm an optimist - a measure of civility can come back into play, that I can't be so extreme.
I mean, it's not like everyone will love everyone else but here's the thing, that what we see - and even the examples that we talked about in some detail, like the Alaska race and the Maine race - is that candidates who did a better job at connecting with the backers of another candidate were rewarded for that.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, again, that's civility versus people being rewarded for partisanship. I obviously spend a lot of time reading about policy and about politics and accessing as much media as I can get my hands on, and some of them, I'm wondering like, who are the people that elected this [person] and put them in office and continue to return them, because people can get in. Other things that I heard are positive are that the run-off requirements are eliminated because there's, in effect, a pre-cooked run-off with voter turnout already set. I don't know this, how prevalent are run-offs? Eliminating run-offs, is that a big thing or is that just a little icing on the cake for the people that are in favor of it?
Rob Richie
A very big thing for local elections, it's actually pretty common to have either a traditional run-off or like a nonpartisan primary, where only two people advance. So a whole lot of the uses of ranked-choice voting are taking these two round systems and folding it to one. Probably, of the cities that use ranked-choice voting - and we're up to more than 50 - I would say some version of 40 of them folded two elections into one. In our federal elections we used to use run-offs more often but run-offs are complex for us, they cost money, they add burdens to voters and candidates, they of course, make it a lot more expensive to run, you've got to run again. That Georgia run-off back in 2020 for Senate, the estimates are about a billion dollars was spent in that run-off alone, just on the candidates. So that's a lot of money. If you just get it done in one round, that doesn't happen. So we see a handful of states using it, not many, like Georgia. Several more use it their primaries. There's a really clear efficiency argument, we actually looked at the last 250 congressional run-offs for primaries, and that's used in about eight states that do that these days, and the average drop in turnout was about 40%. That's a big decline in turnout and it costs money and everything, so ranked-choice voting is a faster, cheaper way to handle that.
Richard Helppie
Indeed. I'm curious of what the outcome would have been in Georgia, had they not had the run-off and had ranked-choice voting, because, to your point, there's a billion dollars spent and a lot more people saying things and who knows what voters did; I'm sure some just rejected some of the candidates. Here's what some of the critics of ranked-choice voting say, that it splits the coalitions that political parties work to organize. They're using examples like Sanders and Biden and how the president has to appeal to that far left wing. I thought about, coming up, Mike Pence versus Mitt Romney. I mean, Mitt Romney is a bit of a centrist his entire life, Pence has been more of a strong conservative, particularly on social values. Is there any validity to that, that the party's organizing coalitions are somehow weakened? I didn't quite get the link, but I'm just telling you what I'm looking up.
Rob Richie
It's very contextually made. I mean, I think that, say, that system we've been talking about in Alaska, we can have two people of the same party running at the same time that, theoretically, can kind of split a party into two. It does mean they have to work to really...they have someone who articulates the case and then the other side has to make sure they try to hold them to second choices and look for common ground. I think, if we think about independents and third parties, they already exist, it's just a way of recognizing their existence and having that be built into our politics. So I think, actually, rather than saying it's somehow fracturing us, it's kind of creating an opportunity for those voices to be heard, their voters to be expressive and the major parties have an incentive to incorporate that perspective in. The longest standing place that's used ranked-choice voting is Australia and generally the major two parties there win the great majority of seats, but they really have to work hard to be the second and third choice of any third party independent. They need to keep bringing that energy in and adapting it to themselves, it's kind of incorporating perspectives. I think that's the classic good coalition building.
Richard Helppie
Great. Another term that I've read, and it's a criticism, is something called an "exhausted vote." Is there a common definition for this?
Rob Richie
There's some weird terminology in our field, I must say that's a weird one. We actually just call those "inactive votes," but it's out there as an exhausted vote. That's a person who just didn't rank any of the active candidates. So when we talked about Alaska and about 20% of the Begich voters, when he was eliminated, didn't rank either Peltola or Palin, their ballots became "exhausted," we would call [them] inactive. But it's not a mandatory rank system, so you don't have to rank, but that in turn means certain people don't rank and then their ballots become inactive. I mean, some would call it a [inaudible] so our critics on that one, if we were requiring people to rank, I'm sure we would get a lot of criticism. By not requiring to rank we're now getting some criticism that some people don't rank, but it's up to the voter.
Richard Helppie
That was the other criticism that people might leave the voting place without understanding how to do that. That's why I asked the question about what your group, FairVote, is doing in terms of educating and processes and things. I do understand your point about if a person is very pro a particular candidate or party, and they've made that as their primary choice for whatever reason they choose to make it, but they might want to learn what those alternatives are. And because of that inactive or exhausted ballot status, they do want to make a second, a third, and a fourth choice. It would be foolish to not do that in case your first choice didn't go in; I can see the benefits from there. Rob, are there any actions that you recommend that people take today? I mean, you've been at this for a really long time, since the end of the first Bush administration, beginning of the Clinton administration. You have seen a lot, you've obviously been on a lot of big name networks and now of course, being on the Common Bridge is pretty much the pinnacle. (Rob Richie: I've reached the peak.) Indeed. So if you were to talk to our listeners, our viewers, and our readers, and said, look, here's something you can do today, what would you advise them to do?
Rob Richie
Well, it's something that we have seen over and over again. I've worked on this for 30 years and almost all the progress that has happened and a lot of progress has happened. Just this year alone bills in 30 state legislatures - more than 30 states - six states legislatures passed some pro ranked-choice bill. We have nine city and county ballot measures this November, all of which were put on the ballot by a charter commission or by the city council itself. Almost all those efforts started with some person in that community, some person in that state, getting interested, and talking to people or getting onto a charter commission, and making it happen. It's something that we have seen...our system is sprawling and we have a huge number of elections and things but it's actually kind of porous, as far as an opportunity to make a difference if you decide to. And the thing that I find with ranked-choice voting, there's a whole gamut of ways that it can speak to issues that some community may be having with their elections, like the run-off election or some controversial race where six people ran for mayor and someone won with 23%, you see these kinds of things and people say, gosh, I wish there was something better. If you're an activist in that community, or you can connect with the local group, we now have state groups in more than 40 states. So if you go to fairvote.org and get involved - actually FairVote Action is a branch of FairVote. There are other allies, there's a group called Rank The Vote, which is specifically focused on helping state groups be effective. They can often get something going and that's exciting. You can actually use it on college campuses, for instance, we're up to about 100 colleges and universities where student leaders have adopted it for their student elections. Young people, by the way, overwhelmingly like ranked-choice voting. It's won on the ballot almost everywhere it's been on the ballot. One place it didn't win the last few years was Massachusetts, but 80% of people under 30 voted yes. I think we're going to get to ranked-choice voting, it's a matter of how quickly. But I think that you can use it in your organization elections and so on. There are tools to do that now, there are a lot of online tools. And speaking of online tools, we have a thing called rankit.vote, there are other tools like that, where people can just set up a contest for their friends and say, hey, let's vote on something and here's a rank-it tool. So fundamentally, we like the idea of reimagining voting as ranking, that that's actually a better way to vote. And we've seen that happen in other countries like Australia and Ireland, for instance. Everyone ranks instead of votes, essentially, for everything. I think that's actually a healthy direction for us and something that people can really do. They can do it, or they can get involved in trying to get it done.
Richard Helppie
Rob, this has really been a great education. Before we wrap up here, I want to ask one thing about the number of political parties. I know there's a lot of frustration with the two major parties and I know that they've embedded themselves into our current process in ways it's very difficult to get out. But it just seems to me that with a ranked-choice system, there might be opportunities for other parties to come to the fore. Am I wrong about that?
Rob Richie
I mean, here's the way they clearly can from the get go, which is that the spoiler argument against a third party goes away. So they can participate on an equal basis and be considered for their merits, rather than for the calculations of whether they're a spoiler or not. It allows them at least, to get into debates - the whole calculation to keep them out of debates is really like, oh, they're going to spoil the election and so on. So it opens up politics that way. I think there's a lot of hunger for third parties. I will say, we didn't get into this much, but there's an application of ranked-choice voting that speaks to this even more than what we've talked about, which is that congressional elections by statute - and actually local and state elections can do this often too - can go from a winner take all system, where 50% of the vote is necessary to win or the most votes, to a kind of American form of proportional voting where almost everyone ultimately gets to help elect someone. So it goes from as many as 49% of people not being able to help elect someone to maybe that number dropping to only 15 or 20. And 80% of people get to help elect someone and they can be different candidates. So it's where people are electing more than one candidate at a time. Then you can have 25% elect this person, 25% that one, and 25% the third person, and you ultimately have three representatives; that's called the Fair Representation Act in Congress, it's a bill that a number of members have put forward. It will really create space for third parties to actually have a better chance to win, and certainly to be impactful and for the major parties to have more of their big tent represented together and the major parties to actually represent the same area together. So you'd have like New York City Republicans, panhandle Democrats of Texas, and so on, actually represented, and then working together, because they're all representing the same people. That is a system that can be done by statute, it's not in the Constitution that we can't do that. That would, I think, even go further than where we talked today, to create a politics which really promotes unity out of difference. E Pluribus Unum concept of "out of many one;" that we allow the many to be heard, to have more of them represented and then ultimately, they have some incentives to get things done together. That's something that we think will actually go furthest in getting to the root of our polarization. It's the next step. It's the next conversation to have. Right now, ranked-choice voting is ready to win and we're excited by that. But the conversation we ultimately want to see is about how we might change winner take all itself.
Richard Helppie
That's a topic that we've covered and we'll be getting other guests on this show with other views as well. But universally, people want to get off the extremes, the rancor, the partisanship, and I think the term you used is unity; our current president ran hard on that as a theme. I do think there's a great desire [for that] because, in my travels throughout the country - which are extensive and at all socio-economic levels for a very long period of time - the United States of America is filled with very compassionate and very generous people, and very capable people. Then when you look at what's happening in our political system, it's just not as good as the people are. We need to get out of this system where the winner is the one that can tear down the other one, get a plurality, and then runs amok until they're tossed out in two years or four years. Potentially, if we get reasonable people that are willing to enter the fray, because there's an opportunity, they're not going to go into a process that just doesn't pick the best people.
Rob Richie
There's a reward that comes from this beyond what we've talked about, that direct reward for candidates for reaching out. I think it's the reward for all of us, that it creates a way in for different kinds of candidates. Then if they see a lot of more people like that it makes service that much more exciting, that you can work with other people that are trying to actually speak their mind but get things done at the same time. And I think that that's something that - we can't oversell our changes - I think it is actually a very promising by-product of going through these changes.
Richard Helppie
Rob, before we wrap up here is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you'd like to cover?
Rob Richie
Well, I think we ended up talking a little bit about the ultimate way that ranked-choice voting can be used in the multi-member districts on the ballot. I will say short term, I expect the quickest growth in our use of it in statewide elections will actually be in presidential primaries, which we talked about, but that's something we see; we expect several state legislatures will take that up next session. As they look to 2024, they still have time to get ranked-choice voting into the 2024 presidential primaries. So that's exciting for us. And I just think that general ability to reimagine voting as ranking is a fun thing to go through. Even as you just look at politics, as it is, kind of imagine like, hmm, what would it be like if I had a chance to actually rank these candidates and how might I vote differently? Then you start realizing that, gosh, I really wish I could do that. So anyway, we do look forward to engaging with your listeners, super appreciative, you're doing this whole series of conversations with people, and glad to be part of it.
Richard Helppie
Thank you for being here. Any closing thoughts?
Rob Richie
I think we've covered it.
Richard Helppie
Great. We've been talking today with Rob Richie of FairVote.org. Please look this up. This is of course, a controversial topic but that's what we do on The Common Bridge. We have good polite discussions with experts, with people that are advocates from certain areas and it's our opportunity to hear each other out and talk as Americans and as you know, people around the world in our audience. So with my guest, Rob Richie, this is Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
Announcer
Thanks for joining us on The Common Bridge. Subscribe to The Common Bridge on substack.com or use their Substack app where you can find more interviews, columns, videos and nonpartisan discussions of the day. Just search for The Common Bridge. You can also find The Common Bridge on Mission Control radio on your Radio Garden app.
Transcribed by Cynthia Silveri
Ranked-Choice Voting- A Closer Look PART 2