Our Two-Party System

Our Two-Party system – which is nowhere enshrined in the U.S. Constitution – is an artifact of individual states choosing to decide elections by what is called “Winner-Take-All” voting rules.  Here is an illustrative example of what Winner-Take-All looks like.  Say, five candidates compete for an elective office.  The one who wins the most votes wins the job.  This sounds alright, doesn’t it?  Even if the best vote getter only won 24% of the vote?  Let’s suppose that one of the candidates was a liberal and all the others were of conservative stripe.  The liberal won 24% of the vote and the four conservatives divided up the remaining 76% of the vote, 19% each.  Doesn’t sound alright anymore, does it?  76% of the voters (conservative voters) will be represented by a legally elected liberal.

Faced with the reality of Winner-Take-All voting, the two strongest factions (old word for “party”) will do what they can to make sure that third party candidates are marginalized.  “He (a third-party candidate) can’t win, so you’re throwing your vote away if you vote for him.  And you’re giving your vote to my opponent if you vote for him.”   Indeed, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the major parties have so locked things up that you will never see a legitimate third party in the state.  Neither the Green party nor the Libertarian party are legitimate political parties in the Commonwealth of Virginia.   It’s the ugly reality of Winner-Take-All elections that created two dominant political parties. 

“So, is there an alternative to Winner-Take-All voting?” 

Yes.  Call it what you will – Ranked Choice Voting or Instant Runoff Voting – a single candidate must clear 50% (a majority) of the total vote to win his office.  Doesn’t this sound alright, too?  Even more alright than receiving the most (only a plurality, e.g., 24%) votes?  How would we do this?  Take our example.  We’d have a runoff election dropping the candidate with the least votes from competing again.  So, four candidates.  That probably would not produce a candidate with 50% of the vote, so we would have another runoff election, once again dropping from the race the fellow with the fewest votes.  Three candidates this time.  Eventually, we’d have a winner with 50% of the vote!  But this is pretty clumsy, and fewer and fewer citizens would show up to vote each time; these are some of the reasons we have always had Winner-Take-All rules despite their tendency to elect only candidates with the backing of one of the two major party machines. 

The problem, of course, is that runoff elections are a logistical nightmare, and no one wants to have more than one election, especially election officials and election day volunteers. 

“So, what can be done?” 

Winner-Take-All rules were written hundreds of years ago.  Before computers.  With the aid of computers, we can have runoff elections without having to actually have a runoff election (where folks have to physically show up and vote twice or more).  Call them “Instant Runoff” elections (Instant Runoff elections may be called Ranked Choice voting or Preference voting but they are all the same thing). 

IRV Ballot

“OK.  So, what would an Instant Runoff election look like?”

It’s all about how you mark your ballot.  If more than two candidates compete for an office, the voter will be asked to “rank” his choices (first choice, second choice, third choice, etc.).  At the end of the day, the computer will simulate runoff elections until a single candidate wins 50% or more of the votes tabulated.  A runoff election with no need for a second day of voting! 

In addition to having every representative of ours be a majority vote getter, Instant Runoffs will also have the effect of breaking the power of the two major parties (when people understand how it works, that you can vote for the candidate you really want and still prefer your major party candidate to the other).  Indeed, parties would not be necessary under this way of choosing who we want to represent us (ALL our Founding Fathers feared parties).  The power of parties will be replaced by the power of each candidate, and the power of each citizen to vote for whom he really wants, not just a candidate that one of the parties chose for him. 

“If this is such a great idea, why haven’t I heard about it before now?” 

First, the major parties want to keep it quiet as it destroys their monopoly power.  Second, major cities across the country have adapted instant runoff voting for decades now.

“In the abstract, this looks great.  But can you show me a real-world example of what it would do?” 

Sure.  Are you old enough to remember the Supreme Court case Bush v Gore?  On the morning after Election Day in 2000AD, it looked like Al Gore had beaten George W Bush for the presidency.  Except that Florida, a delegate rich state, was too close to call, and it had the potential to throw the Electoral College vote to Bush.  So, recounts were ordered.  But lawsuits interfered.  To make a long story shorter, it ended up in the Supreme Court, where 5 Republican nominated justices elected George W Bush president.  As it stands now, Bush won 537 more popular votes than Gore in Florida, out of 6 million votes, with no recount.  Nationwide, Gore tallied more than 500,000 votes more than Bush. 

“So, what does this have to do with Instant Runoff voting?” 

Be patient.  It seems that neither Bush nor Gore won anywhere near 50% of Florida’s votes.  An old-timer named Ralph Nader won some 97,000 votes!  A recount was called for due to fewer than 1,000 votes in the entire state separating Bush from Gore.  The recount never happened; SCOTUS ruled.  These 97,000 Nader votes counted for nothing.  Under Instant Runoff rules, voters would have ranked the three candidates; and Nader’s 97,000 first place votes would have been redistributed to Bush and Gore according to whom those Nader voters had picked as their second choice.  Clear?  The Common Wisdom of the time was that Nader was more liberal than Gore, and that most of his votes would likely end up as Gore votes.  Gore would have won Florida and the election, based on the requirement of needing 50% of the vote to win.  And just eight years before, Bill Clinton beat George H W Bush in the same way, by NOT counting 20 million votes that were cast for Ross Perot (19% of the total popular vote.  Perot was a Republican, so the election probably would have gone to Bush under Instant Runoff rules). 

But there’s more.  ALL of Nader’s votes were cases of “I am willing to ‘throw away my vote’ in order to cast my vote for the candidate of my choice.”  Imagine all the Gore voters who actually preferred Nader to Gore, but were not willing to “throw away my vote” on a third-party candidate who can’t win?  Ralph Nader had been an American icon for decades longer than anyone had ever heard of George W Bush or Al Gore.  Had Democratic voters truly understood that they would NOT be throwing away their vote by voting Nader first and Gore second (!), one can only imagine how many would have done just that!  In other words, Nader might have won Florida!  He might have won the presidency!  In other words, Instant Runoff voting allows third-party candidates – or candidates with no party at all – to win elections!  In other words, Instant Runoff voting breaks the two-party system.  In other words, Instant Runoff voting brings us that much closer to becoming a democracy. 

How about THEM apples! 

“OK, I’m ready to help replace Winner-Take-All rules with Instant Runoff rules.  Where do I begin?’ 

Well, all you have to do is beat down the power of the local Democratic and Republican machines and you have a good beginning.  Good luck. 

Addendum: today
And then there's STAR voting, a variation on Instant Runoff Voting (that is slightly easier to understand) (in case you like several candidates equally).