Maine ranked-choice voting as a case of electoral-system change

Abstract

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) manufactures an electoral majority in a fragmented candidate field. For RCV to pass at referendum, part of a reform coalition must be willing to lose election to the other part of that coalition, typically an out-of-power major party. A common enemy enables this sort of coalition by assuring (a) the out-of-power party of sufficient transfer votes to win and (b) a winner that junior reform partners prefer to the incumbent. I test this logic against the November 2016 adoption of RCV in Maine. First, I show that the most recent, runner-up party overwhelmingly supplied votes to the ‘yes’ side. I also show elite endorsements tending to come from this party, albeit not exclusively. Then I show a drift in the mass of public opinion, such that reform partners could coordinate. RCV is likely to find favour where voter preferences are polarised and lopsided, and where multiple candidates split the larger ideological bloc.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jack Santucci http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2156-6180

Notes

1 The author thanks Brian Hamel, Todd Makse, Ben Reilly, Colin Woodard, and two anonymous reviewers for comments. Earlier versions were presented at the 2017 State Politics and Policy Conference and 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

2 Other names for RCV are ‘instant runoff voting’ and the ‘alternative vote.’ RCV also may refer to the single transferable vote, a candidate-based form of PR. This article uses ‘RCV’ to refer to the single-winner, majoritarian form.

3 An advisory decision by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in May 2017 held that RCV could not be used to elect the Governor. This decision was based on interpretation of state-constitutional language mandating that the Governor win with ‘a plurality of votes.’

4 Technically, the winner has a majority of ballots that remain in the final round of counting. If many voters have not used all available rankings, that majority may not be a majority of all ballots cast (Burnett and Kogan 2015).

5 RCV is used in some states for military and overseas voters. In 2010, it was used to fill a North Carolina judicial vacancy, then summarily repealed.

6 One background condition in San Francisco was the rise of to-be Mayor Gavin Newsom, heir to Democrat Willie Brown, and widely opposed by self-styled left-wing groups. In 2003, those groups coalesced around Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez in that city’s final election under two-round-runoff rules. The first RCV election was in 2007.

7 But see Neely and McDaniel (2015).

8 But see Nagel (2007).

9 Personal communication, Diane Russell, 4 December 2017.

10 See Andrews and Jackman (2005) for a rejoinder. Blais et al. (2005) and Weaver (2003) furthermore note the importance of awareness of and consensus on electoral reform. The LWV, among other groups, both spread awareness and built consensus in Maine.

11 I use ‘party’ interchangeably with ‘faction.’ RCV has had success in some large-population cities. Politics in these are factional, with widespread knowledge of who is in what faction. Even in Maine, one could say that prominent, independent politicians are or once were Democrats. These include Senator Angus King since 1993, and Elliot Cutler, once a member of Jimmy Carter’s Presidential administration.

12 To bridge the estimates, we need to constrain estimates for two parties or politicians. I use the generic Republican and Democratic Parties, each of which receives more stable ratings than the only other entity included in all waves, the US Supreme Court. On a 1–7 scale, with 7 being most conservative, respondents’ mean ratings of the Democratic Party were 2.5 (with a standard deviation of 1.4), 2.4 (1.5), and 2.4 (1.4) in 2016, 2014, and 2012, respectively. Republican Party ratings were 5.7 (1.3), 5.8 (1.3), and 5.4 (1.6). For the estimation procedure, I supply the following constraints: the Democrats at one random value between −1.1 and −0.9, then the Republicans at a random value between 0.9 and 1.1. See Hare et al. (2015) for details. Trace plots of parameters show that estimation has converged on stable, posterior distributions.

13 I observed a Democratic gubernatorial debate in Machias (ME) on 19 April 2018. Not one of the five candidates spoke negatively of RCV. Several claimed to have supported it through the referendum process at least.

14 http://www.rcvmaine.com/endorsements

15 As of this writing, the public cannot access the raw data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack Santucci

Jack Santucci is an independent contractor and, as of Fall 2018, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at James Madison University. His research covers voting systems and American politics. E-mail: [email protected]