"Spoilers"

Sandy Levinson

I note that both Virginia and Montana have third party candidates for the Senate who have won enough votes possibly to affect the election. A so-called "Green" candidate in Virginia (not actually affiliated with the national Green Party) has won about 25,000 votes, more than the margin between Webb and Allen. There's no particularly way of knowing how her votes would break were she not in the race: she's a former Pentagon analyst who apparently ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility and a high-speed transportation network for northern Virginia. In Montana, the Libertarian candidate got 2.1% of the vote, far more than the margin between Treaster and Burns. I assume that most of those votes would have gone to Burns had it been a forced choice. And, of course, everyone remembers the fiasco of 2000. Might this not be a propitious moment for a bipartisan coalition to propose the Alternative Transferrable Vote as a way of 1) eliminating the role of "spoilers" and b) at the very same time, encouraging third party critics of the ossified two party system to run their races and make their pitches. The ATV allows voters to rank order their favorites. If their #1 choice comes in last (in a three-person race, for ease of analysis), then the #2 choice is counted. This results in a winner who has the most plausible claim to being the genuine choice of the majority, unlike the First Past the Post System, which guarantees the frustration of majority will with some regularity

The point is well illustrated in the Texas gubernatorial race, where the distribution of votes was

RICK PERRY (R) 39 percent

CHRIS BELL (D) 30 percent

CAROLE KEETON STRAYHORN (I) 18 percent

KINKY FRIEDMAN (I) 12 percent

JAMES WERNER (L) 1 percent

In a system where the loser drops out, one has to assume that almost all of Friedman's votes would have gone to Bell. Then, with Strayhorn now the lowest person, one might assume a relatively even split, since her insurgency candidacy (she had been elected to state-wide office as a Republican) was built on opposition to Perry. This could well have given Bell a majority. In a more complicated voting system, where each voter rank orders and one assigns initial votes on the basis, say, of 5 votes for #1 preference, 4 for #2 and so on through the five candidates on the ballot, Straynorn could easily have won, since most of the Bell voters would probably have had her as their second preference. What's interesting is that Perry would quite likely have lost in any system other than First Past the Post. In any event, this is ample proof that the system of voting matters with regard to producing winners, who may or may not plausibly be said to represent majority sentiment. Is there any good reason to prefer a system that results in some predictable incidence of disdain for majority sentiment over one that guarantees a more majoritarian result? I can't think of one (save for arguments made by ethnic minorities that they can occasionally win elections if the "majority" coalition is split between two whites).

I presume that none of my "republican" critics, who believe that I am too pro-democratic in my view of the Constitution, can plausibly criticize this proposal as the end of the Republican Form of Government.
Posted 11:22 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]