November 9, 2021 • 24 mins
Shanny talks with Andy Felt, mathematics professor at UWSP, about ranked-choice voting. What is it? How does it work? Where is it already being used? And how would it change the culture of extreme partisanship in the United States?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Oscar Nominees Clip (00:00):
And finally, I'm pleased to announce
that the 10 films selected asBest Picture nominees for 2009
are Avatar, The Blind Side,District 9, An Education, The
Hurt Locker, IngloriousBasterds, Up, Precious, A
Serious Man, and Up in the Air.
Shanny Luft (00:26):
In 2009, the Academy Awards decided to change
their system for identifying thebest picture. For many decades,
the system worked like this, theAcademy picked five nominees,
and then the voters selected theone picture that they thought
was the best. But in 2009, theAcademy Award voters had 10
options to choose from and itwas clear to the academy, this
(00:48):
could cause a problem in thevote, because the votes were
being spread across 10possibilities. That's the
difference between majority andplurality. We are all familiar
with a system of voting wherethe majority wins. If you have
two presidential candidates tochoose from, then the candidate
who receives the majority of thevotes is the winner, as my son
used to say you need 50% plusone person with only two
(01:11):
candidates, one of them is boundto get the majority. But when
you have 30 candidates or 10candidates, the votes are going
to be spread across such a widefield, that there is much less
likelihood that one winner isgoing to get the majority of
votes, they may only get theplurality plurality means that
the winner receives more votesthan any other but does not
(01:31):
receive an absolute majority. Sowhat does this have to do with
the Academy Awards? Well, in ayear, like 2009, when there are
10 Pictures vying for bestpicture, you can win with only
15% of the vote if the othernine films all get less than
15%. How do we feel about that?
Well, you might say, hey, if thefilm got more votes than any
other film, it got the pluralityand it should be the winner. But
(01:53):
think about that math for asecond. If a film wins best
picture with 15% of the vote,that means 85% of voters
actually preferred somethingelse. So is it really the best
picture of the year when 85% ofvoters prefer something else?
That's the problem withplurality wins voting. And
that's why the same year thatthe Academy Awards announced
(02:14):
they were increasing the list ofbest pictures to 10 nominees,
they also decided to completelychange the way they counted
their system of voting, theystopped identifying the best
picture by a plurality vote, andinstituted a completely
different method. It's got acouple of different names, but
we're gonna call it rank choicevoting. The new system of voting
required that the Academy votersnot simply identified the one
(02:37):
film they thought was the best.
Instead, each voter had to lookat the list of 10 pictures and
rank them from the one theythought was number one, to the
one they thought was number 10.
So that's what this episode ofno cure for curiosity is all
about. I am Shanny luft, theAssociate Dean of general
education at the University ofWisconsin at Stevens Point, my
guest today is my friend, AndyFelt a professor of Mathematical
(03:00):
Sciences at UWSP, I invited Andyto come on the podcast during
this election season to explainwhat rank choice voting is, and
why he argues, it would be asuperior system over our current
majority rules method forpolitical office.
(03:25):
So let's just start with that.
What? What is rank choicevoting? Basically? How would you
describe it? And how does it Howdoes it work?
Andy Felt (03:31):
So the entire discussion really is only valid
if we're talking about three ormore candidates, there are many
different ways of voting. Peopledon't realize this in America,
or didn't until very recently,because, as you say, rank choice
is starting to become morepopular.
Shanny Luft (03:53):
Every different method of voting basically is
equivalent if it's just yourchoosing between a and b.
Andy Felt (03:58):
Yes.
Shanny Luft (03:58):
Okay.
Andy Felt (03:59):
All the ones we're going to talk about at least. So
we always say majority rule, butthat's not true. It's called
plurality is the base case, wayof vote holding any election.
And that is every voter gets tovote for one person for one
candidate. And the candidatewith the most votes wins. Now,
(04:21):
that doesn't always mean thatthey have a majority the winning
candidate, right? Sometimes thewinning candidate only has 30%
of the vote or 40% of the vote,something like that,
Shanny Luft (04:32):
right? If you have three candidates and one person
gets 40, and the other to get30, the one with 41. So he
doesn't have a majority, or shedoesn't have the majority of the
population, but but he or shedid get the majority of the
votes. Exactly. It is thatmathematical system, what led to
why we only have two politicalparties?
Andy Felt (04:52):
I believe so yes.
Shanny Luft (04:52):
Okay.
Andy Felt (04:53):
And you want to talk about that. I can sort of try to
explain that a little bit.
Shanny Luft (04:57):
Okay.
Andy Felt (04:58):
Um, so let's Start with plotting everybody, all the
voters, let's say on a, a twodimensional canvas, on a piece
of paper, you could say, oneaxis is how progressive you are
financially, fiscally. The otheraxis is how progressive you are
(05:19):
socially, I'm probably prettyclose to the upper right hand
corner, you're probably prettyclose to me, but not right on
top. And my brother is way down,you know, in the lower left hand
corner, everybody is a.on thiscanvas. So let's also put two
(05:41):
candidates then on that canvas,and they're running for the same
office. And then you say, well,presumably, the people close to
Candidate A, and on one side ofcandidate A, will vote for
candidate A, and then theopposite. The other people on
(06:02):
the other side will mostly votefor candidate B. But now let's
add a third candidate in theremay be close closer to Candidate
B, okay, ah, who does that hurt?
Shanny Luft (06:15):
It will is going to hurt Candidate B, right? It's
going to split because somepeople are going to depending on
how close they are to CandidateB, they know the second
candidate, when you add a newperson, they're going to pull
away votes from the personthey're closest to.
Andy Felt (06:29):
Exactly, exactly. So a great example, is Bush, Gore,
Nader, right? And Nader famouslyhurt Gore, more than Bush,
right, because Nader was closerto Gore in on this canvas on the
political views. Or you could goPerot, Clinton, Bush, many
(06:52):
people feel that Perot hurt Bushand helped get Clinton elected.
Anyway, so the presence of thatthird candidate hurts the
candidate that they're closestto. Now, think of a system where
there aren't parties, okay?
There are 10, basically,Democratic candidates can
(07:14):
basically Republican leaningcandidates, there may be in a
cloud, but the more candidatesthere are in a single area, the
more all of those candidates inthat area are hurt.
Shanny Luft (07:31):
Right? Right, because they're splitting up the
pie into smaller and smallerpieces,
Andy Felt (07:35):
right. And I think immediately in America, people
realize this, and said, Holysmokes, we better get together,
I hit a time and decide which ofthese 10 people that basically
agree with each other. We'regonna try it out there as our
(07:57):
candidate, because if we try 10people out there, we're going to
lose period.
Shanny Luft (08:02):
And so that's where primaries come in. Right? The
parties, then will, will havethese kind of run offs between
four or five 610 20 people topick the one person who's going
to represent the party.
Andy Felt (08:15):
Exactly. So if there's two parties, and you add
the third party there, who doesthey hurt, they hurt the party
that they're closest to? So thegreens are a great example of
hurting the Democrats, right.
And the Libertarians currentlyhurt the Republicans. So having
sharing your political space onthe canvas with another
(08:36):
candidate or another party is,is really, really bad.
Mathematically, really bad,right? bad for the person trying
to win. Exactly. And so effectis predictable on candidates,
you run away from the group,right? And most of the time,
that means you run away from thecenter. Okay? So candidates,
(08:59):
either explicitly or implicitlyunderstand all of that, and, and
they try to find space forthemselves. Right. And so go
back and look at the 2016Republican primaries, the early
states. Trump was winning thosewith 30% of the vote, 31% of the
(09:22):
vote, and the next closestcandidate was something like 20%
of the vote. And so theheadlines were, it's a huge win
for Trump, right? But he blowsaway the rest of the field. But
really, it's my memory that itwas basically Trump and not
Trump, you know, is not Trumpwas split 14 ways. And not Trump
(09:45):
got 70% of the vote, but yet itwas viewed as a huge, yes, huge
victories for Trump and thenmomentum built and people
started falling out.
Shanny Luft (10:00):
And so when you say Trump, not Trump, the point is
that the not Trump was a groupof people who if you were to
graph them would have all beencloser together. Right? And so
you're saying Trump's by, for anumber of reasons he stood out,
because the other folks were tooclosely. If you if you map them,
they were too close to oneanother.
Andy Felt (10:21):
Exactly.
Shanny Luft (10:22):
Okay.
Andy Felt (10:22):
I like to say, say that it pays to be a pirate
candidate, a pirate candidate,you know, sets themselves apart
from the rest of the group. Andsome people hate the pirate
candidate. In fact, probably alot of people hate the pirate
candidate, but you're the numberone choice of enough that that
(10:45):
you can wind up sneaking throughand winning the election.
Shanny Luft (10:48):
That's interesting way to think about it. And
that's also that process of theRepublican primary five years
ago, benefitted Trump in a lotof ways, right. I mean, if he
only had one other competitorthat was running against, it
might have been a reallydifferent story. Absolutely. But
him having a dozen people whowas running against, they were
all cannibalizing one another.
Andy Felt (11:07):
Cruz would have buried Trump if it was one on
one.
Shanny Luft (11:10):
Yeah, possibly.
Okay. So that's, that helps meunderstand why our system of
voting
Andy Felt (11:16):
plurality
Shanny Luft (11:17):
yeah the plurality model leads to essentially two
candidates every single time.
Right, the other there are otherparties, but those parties tend
not to win, they can have aneffect on the election, although
it's always Democrats versusRepublicans.
Andy Felt (11:31):
Yeah, it leads to a two party system, and then are
the say two major party system.
And then also, those thirdparties when they make noise,
tend to hurt their own side.
Shanny Luft (11:45):
Okay. So rank choice voting, then is a
potential solution to theproblem.
Andy Felt (11:51):
Yeah. Right. So I mean, when you think about it,
we're throwing away a lot ofinformation by only asking you,
who's your favorite? It has tobe better to ask at least gather
the information and use theinformation. Okay, who is your
second favorite candidate? Who'syour third favorite gun? So rank
(12:11):
choice voting, you rank eitherall of the candidates or a
certain number of candidates.
Shanny Luft (12:18):
So the voter would do this, the voter would see the
list of candidates and then rankthem one through five or one
through 10. However manycandidates that are,
Andy Felt (12:25):
yep, and, and then what you do, it is different
depending on the voting method.
So all of these voting methodswere developed. In the 1800s, I
think, soon after, the worlddiscovered that plurality sucks.
Instant Runoff is basically thefirst round is like plurality,
(12:46):
you just write down everybody'sfirst choices. Now, if nobody
gets over 50%. In other words,if nobody gets a majority, then
someone is eliminated from thegroup. One person is eliminated
normally, as the person who getsthe fewest first place votes,
the person in last, okay, andthose votes then would go to the
(13:10):
second person on that voterslist.
Shanny Luft (13:16):
So in the first round, you're only looking at
everyone's first choice, right?
And then if if somebody gets 50%plus one person, it's over? Yep.
Is that right? Okay. Yep. But ifnobody gets a majority, then
these other processes kick in.
So then what happens then ifnobody gets, then
Andy Felt (13:35):
that just continues until someone has a majority. So
after the first person iseliminated, that person's votes
are scattered to the othercandidates, depending on the
rank list. And then you recountessentially, and everyone's
votes have gone up, maybesomeone's vote says, now put
(13:58):
them over the threshold of themajority.
Shanny Luft (14:01):
So what's changed between round one and round two?
In round one, you're looking ateveryone's first choice. And
then if nobody got a majority,you think go into round two. So
in round two, what are youcounting differently?
Andy Felt (14:14):
So let's just say is Bush, Gore, Nader? Right? Those
are the only three candidates.
Nader would have been in last,we think, and Nader's votes then
would go to the second candidateon the list. So if you voted for
Nader and put Gore as secondthen your vote would go for to
Gore. If I voted for Nader andput Bush as second then my vote
(14:37):
would go to Bush.
Shanny Luft (14:40):
Okay, so the people who voted for Nader first that
first is thrown out because hedidn't because nobody got a
majority. And then those Nadervoters basically get another
shot. Right? They you just lookat their votes and say okay,
well, they're number two, what acertain percent went to Bush a
certain percent went to Clinton,
Andy Felt (14:57):
right,
Shanny Luft (14:57):
and so you didn't move their votes.
Andy Felt (14:59):
Yeah. They're not wasting their votes. I mean,
that was what you heard over andover again, if you vote for
Nader, you're wasting your voteor or worse, you're voting for
Bush, right? But here you get tosay, All right, I know he may
not win, but I'm gonna put himfirst. And then if nobody gets a
majority, I'm then I'm going tovote for you know, Gore is my
(15:21):
second and that'll, and my votewill count.
Shanny Luft (15:24):
So that's, that is advantageous, let's say to Nader
voters, and so that it does givethose the people who are voting
for the third party who comes inthird place, right, it gives it
gives their votes more meaning.
Andy Felt (15:37):
Yeah, and I think more importantly, it helps the
other major candidate that'sclose by right. Gore was I see.
I mean, without Nader in therace, Gore would have won.
Right, I think it's prettyclear. And those votes would
have gone to Gore then and Gorewould have won under that
(15:57):
system.
Shanny Luft (15:58):
Okay, so people who rank Nader number one, they're,
they're unlikely that to maketheir number two, the opposite
of nature. Right there. Numbertwo is going to be someone on
that X Y axis, who you wouldpresume, is somewhat close to
Nader
Andy Felt (16:12):
exactly, rather than we talked about
plurality, encouraging piratecandidates, encouraging
candidates to run away from theothers, and mostly usually away
from the center. Rather thanthat, this encourages people to
run toward the center. Becauseif let's just suppose Nader is
to the left of Gore, right. Andat bushes to the right of Gore,
(16:36):
then Gore benefits fromvirtually all of the Nader
voters, because being in thecenter, let's say, puts you in
place to harvest all of thosesecond place votes.
Shanny Luft (16:51):
Okay. So, so that pushes candidates to be more
centrist then. Yeah, right. Soin our current system, Gore
might be motivated to try toemphasize the gap between him
and Nader. Right, because hewants fewer people to vote for
Nader more people vote for him.
In a rank choice system, Goremight actually try to appeal to
Nader voters. I've seen ads likethis in some recent elections,
(17:15):
where candidates say, Make meyour second choice. It's so
because it's still new. Itsounds so fun to hear candidates
say that. But essentially, youknow, I may not be exactly what
you want, but I might be Icertainly am closer than these
other guys.
Andy Felt (17:34):
Right? Now. There's another there's another system
that's very popular with thesame input. So the voter still
ranks there, their candidates,either all of them, or some of
them depending on on the system.
But then there's what's thesystem called? Oh, so this
system is called Borda Count.
The Borda Count,
Shanny Luft (17:54):
board B-O, A-R-D?
Andy Felt (17:57):
B-O-R-D-A.
Shanny Luft (17:58):
Okay, so how does Borda Count work?
Andy Felt (18:00):
So you're let's just say that we're ranking five
candidates, then your firstchoice gets four points, your
second choice gets 3/3 Choicegets to fourth choice gets one
and fifth choice gives zero. Youcan do it a lot of different
ways. You can bump up the numberone if you want, by a couple
(18:24):
points just sort of reward that.
But that's a very popular thingthat's used by a lot of a lot of
systems, for example, theAcademy Awards, when they vote
for Best Picture, they realizethat fly and so now they they
use the Borda Count. Same thingwith all the MVP for sports, the
(18:44):
Heisman Trophy, all of theseelections where there are many
candidates, whoever is runningthe election has realized that
plurality is terrible, and haschanged most of them to the
Borda Count, one of my studentswas active in the SGA. And this
(19:06):
was when they were running thevote on a smoking ban. So the
Shanny Luft (19:16):
A vote to ban smoking anywhere on campus.
Andy Felt (19:18):
Right.
And here was the ballot. I'lltell you the candidates it was
there were three pseudo smokingbans, okay, like a different
kind of variation, right. Andthe fourth candidate was status
quo. In other words, no ban atall. So you tell me, Shanny,
you've got three flavors ofsmoking ban. And one, no ban at
(19:42):
all? Who is that an advantage ifthey run a plurality vote.
Shanny Luft (19:48):
So based on what you have taught me today, I
would say the the status quo hasa serious advantage. huge
advantage. The three versions ofa smoking ban are all kind of
bunched together. And so 75% ofthe campus or 70%, might want
one of those three, but aplurality might vote for that
(20:09):
fourth one.
Andy Felt (20:09):
Exactly.
Shanny Luft (20:10):
Is that what happened?
Andy Felt (20:11):
No. Because my, my student was in SGA, he raised
this issue and said, This iswhat we're heading for. So they
did that using the Borda Count.
Shanny Luft (20:22):
So when you're asking people to rank, which I,
as you put it earlier, you'regetting more information, which
is not just what is that peoplewant the most, but also, what
hemisphere? Are they in? Whatare they in those options? What
a second place matters?
Andy Felt (20:37):
Yes, math, and then they get points?
Exactly. Right.
Shanny Luft (20:42):
What strikes me is the first part of rank choice
voting is very easy tounderstand, right? You can
explain to a young child, you'vegot three ice cream flavors,
vanilla, chocolate, andstrawberry rank, your first
favorite, your second favoritethird favorite, that part?
literally anybody can. Theharder part to explain then is
why that concept, why that'smore consequential why that's
(21:04):
more useful, why that methodwould be preferred than just
vote for the one flavor you likethe best, right? It's like how
the math is done, he comes upwith a different result. But
it's, you do have to it takes alittle bit longer to explain the
value of that process.
Andy Felt (21:21):
Yes, if we were to wave our wand and change every
state to a rank choice vote, Ithink what would eventually
happen as the lesser partieswould become greater, would grow
in popularity, because votingfor them wouldn't hurt. And
you'd probably see more than twomajor parties, you'd probably
(21:44):
see three or four major parties,and and a bunch of lesser ones.
Shanny Luft (21:49):
What I really have enjoyed about this conversation
is you've helped me get a bettersense of how rank choice voting
is not just a different way tocount or do a math problem. But
it actually gathers informationthat it gives us more
information that our currentpick one or the other candidate
vote for one out of four orfive, and then that information
(22:14):
can have an impact on howcandidates run on what
legislation is proposed. Right,it can make candidates, it
would, as you've explained it,push candidates to be more
centrist, which would affectpolicies. And so that's the part
of this is fascinating to me isthat it's not just a clever math
problem, but it actually has athere's a there's a clear line
(22:37):
between how the math is done,and what the consequence is for
the country. When it comes topolitics.
Andy Felt (22:44):
You know, one of the things is I think, so many other
advanced countries, use theparliamentary system where lots
of parties get in to theparliament. And that sort of is
it works around. The weakness ofplurality just doesn't really
have a problem.
Shanny Luft (23:04):
Because in a parliamentary system, you have
1015 different parties, no partywill often get 51% of the vote.
And so they're forced to createcoalition's, and that then has
the same effect of moving peoplethrough the center and forcing
people to cooperate exactly toget anything done. Our system of
(23:25):
politics seems to encourage lackof cooperation. Yeah. So thank
you so much for thisconversation. I've really
enjoyed it. It's been great totalk to you about this.
Andy Felt (23:33):
You're welcome.
Happy to happy to talk with youand thanks for inviting
Shanny Luft (23:41):
I hope you found the conversation as interesting
as I did and that you learned alittle more about how rank
choice voting works. If you'reenjoying the podcast, please
subscribe and share it withother people. The more listeners
we get, the more I'll be able todo in the future.
Oscar Winner Clip (23:58):
And the winner is The Hurt Locker.
Kathryn Bigelow, NicholasSharkey --
Gretel Stock (24:05):
This podcast is brought to you by University
College at University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. Our
mission is to providecoordinated, intentional, and
inclusive services andopportunities through our core
values of connecting,supporting, collaborating, and
engaging. discover your purposeand visit UW-Stevens Point at
(24:25):
www.uwsp.edu.
And finally, I'm pleased to announce
that the 10 films selected asBest Picture nominees for 2009
are Avatar, The Blind Side,District 9, An Education, The
Hurt Locker, IngloriousBasterds, Up, Precious, A
Serious Man, and Up in the Air.
Shanny Luft (00:26):
In 2009, the Academy Awards decided to change
their system for identifying thebest picture. For many decades,
the system worked like this, theAcademy picked five nominees,
and then the voters selected theone picture that they thought
was the best. But in 2009, theAcademy Award voters had 10
options to choose from and itwas clear to the academy, this
(00:48):
could cause a problem in thevote, because the votes were
being spread across 10possibilities. That's the
difference between majority andplurality. We are all familiar
with a system of voting wherethe majority wins. If you have
two presidential candidates tochoose from, then the candidate
who receives the majority of thevotes is the winner, as my son
used to say you need 50% plusone person with only two
(01:11):
candidates, one of them is boundto get the majority. But when
you have 30 candidates or 10candidates, the votes are going
to be spread across such a widefield, that there is much less
likelihood that one winner isgoing to get the majority of
votes, they may only get theplurality plurality means that
the winner receives more votesthan any other but does not
(01:31):
receive an absolute majority. Sowhat does this have to do with
the Academy Awards? Well, in ayear, like 2009, when there are
10 Pictures vying for bestpicture, you can win with only
15% of the vote if the othernine films all get less than
15%. How do we feel about that?
Well, you might say, hey, if thefilm got more votes than any
other film, it got the pluralityand it should be the winner. But
(01:53):
think about that math for asecond. If a film wins best
picture with 15% of the vote,that means 85% of voters
actually preferred somethingelse. So is it really the best
picture of the year when 85% ofvoters prefer something else?
That's the problem withplurality wins voting. And
that's why the same year thatthe Academy Awards announced
(02:14):
they were increasing the list ofbest pictures to 10 nominees,
they also decided to completelychange the way they counted
their system of voting, theystopped identifying the best
picture by a plurality vote, andinstituted a completely
different method. It's got acouple of different names, but
we're gonna call it rank choicevoting. The new system of voting
required that the Academy votersnot simply identified the one
(02:37):
film they thought was the best.
Instead, each voter had to lookat the list of 10 pictures and
rank them from the one theythought was number one, to the
one they thought was number 10.
So that's what this episode ofno cure for curiosity is all
about. I am Shanny luft, theAssociate Dean of general
education at the University ofWisconsin at Stevens Point, my
guest today is my friend, AndyFelt a professor of Mathematical
(03:00):
Sciences at UWSP, I invited Andyto come on the podcast during
this election season to explainwhat rank choice voting is, and
why he argues, it would be asuperior system over our current
majority rules method forpolitical office.
(03:25):
So let's just start with that.
What? What is rank choicevoting? Basically? How would you
describe it? And how does it Howdoes it work?
Andy Felt (03:31):
So the entire discussion really is only valid
if we're talking about three ormore candidates, there are many
different ways of voting. Peopledon't realize this in America,
or didn't until very recently,because, as you say, rank choice
is starting to become morepopular.
Shanny Luft (03:53):
Every different method of voting basically is
equivalent if it's just yourchoosing between a and b.
Andy Felt (03:58):
Yes.
Shanny Luft (03:58):
Okay.
Andy Felt (03:59):
All the ones we're going to talk about at least. So
we always say majority rule, butthat's not true. It's called
plurality is the base case, wayof vote holding any election.
And that is every voter gets tovote for one person for one
candidate. And the candidatewith the most votes wins. Now,
(04:21):
that doesn't always mean thatthey have a majority the winning
candidate, right? Sometimes thewinning candidate only has 30%
of the vote or 40% of the vote,something like that,
Shanny Luft (04:32):
right? If you have three candidates and one person
gets 40, and the other to get30, the one with 41. So he
doesn't have a majority, or shedoesn't have the majority of the
population, but but he or shedid get the majority of the
votes. Exactly. It is thatmathematical system, what led to
why we only have two politicalparties?
Andy Felt (04:52):
I believe so yes.
Shanny Luft (04:52):
Okay.
Andy Felt (04:53):
And you want to talk about that. I can sort of try to
explain that a little bit.
Shanny Luft (04:57):
Okay.
Andy Felt (04:58):
Um, so let's Start with plotting everybody, all the
voters, let's say on a, a twodimensional canvas, on a piece
of paper, you could say, oneaxis is how progressive you are
financially, fiscally. The otheraxis is how progressive you are
(05:19):
socially, I'm probably prettyclose to the upper right hand
corner, you're probably prettyclose to me, but not right on
top. And my brother is way down,you know, in the lower left hand
corner, everybody is a.on thiscanvas. So let's also put two
(05:41):
candidates then on that canvas,and they're running for the same
office. And then you say, well,presumably, the people close to
Candidate A, and on one side ofcandidate A, will vote for
candidate A, and then theopposite. The other people on
(06:02):
the other side will mostly votefor candidate B. But now let's
add a third candidate in theremay be close closer to Candidate
B, okay, ah, who does that hurt?
Shanny Luft (06:15):
It will is going to hurt Candidate B, right? It's
going to split because somepeople are going to depending on
how close they are to CandidateB, they know the second
candidate, when you add a newperson, they're going to pull
away votes from the personthey're closest to.
Andy Felt (06:29):
Exactly, exactly. So a great example, is Bush, Gore,
Nader, right? And Nader famouslyhurt Gore, more than Bush,
right, because Nader was closerto Gore in on this canvas on the
political views. Or you could goPerot, Clinton, Bush, many
(06:52):
people feel that Perot hurt Bushand helped get Clinton elected.
Anyway, so the presence of thatthird candidate hurts the
candidate that they're closestto. Now, think of a system where
there aren't parties, okay?
There are 10, basically,Democratic candidates can
(07:14):
basically Republican leaningcandidates, there may be in a
cloud, but the more candidatesthere are in a single area, the
more all of those candidates inthat area are hurt.
Shanny Luft (07:31):
Right? Right, because they're splitting up the
pie into smaller and smallerpieces,
Andy Felt (07:35):
right. And I think immediately in America, people
realize this, and said, Holysmokes, we better get together,
I hit a time and decide which ofthese 10 people that basically
agree with each other. We'regonna try it out there as our
(07:57):
candidate, because if we try 10people out there, we're going to
lose period.
Shanny Luft (08:02):
And so that's where primaries come in. Right? The
parties, then will, will havethese kind of run offs between
four or five 610 20 people topick the one person who's going
to represent the party.
Andy Felt (08:15):
Exactly. So if there's two parties, and you add
the third party there, who doesthey hurt, they hurt the party
that they're closest to? So thegreens are a great example of
hurting the Democrats, right.
And the Libertarians currentlyhurt the Republicans. So having
sharing your political space onthe canvas with another
(08:36):
candidate or another party is,is really, really bad.
Mathematically, really bad,right? bad for the person trying
to win. Exactly. And so effectis predictable on candidates,
you run away from the group,right? And most of the time,
that means you run away from thecenter. Okay? So candidates,
(08:59):
either explicitly or implicitlyunderstand all of that, and, and
they try to find space forthemselves. Right. And so go
back and look at the 2016Republican primaries, the early
states. Trump was winning thosewith 30% of the vote, 31% of the
(09:22):
vote, and the next closestcandidate was something like 20%
of the vote. And so theheadlines were, it's a huge win
for Trump, right? But he blowsaway the rest of the field. But
really, it's my memory that itwas basically Trump and not
Trump, you know, is not Trumpwas split 14 ways. And not Trump
(09:45):
got 70% of the vote, but yet itwas viewed as a huge, yes, huge
victories for Trump and thenmomentum built and people
started falling out.
Shanny Luft (10:00):
And so when you say Trump, not Trump, the point is
that the not Trump was a groupof people who if you were to
graph them would have all beencloser together. Right? And so
you're saying Trump's by, for anumber of reasons he stood out,
because the other folks were tooclosely. If you if you map them,
they were too close to oneanother.
Andy Felt (10:21):
Exactly.
Shanny Luft (10:22):
Okay.
Andy Felt (10:22):
I like to say, say that it pays to be a pirate
candidate, a pirate candidate,you know, sets themselves apart
from the rest of the group. Andsome people hate the pirate
candidate. In fact, probably alot of people hate the pirate
candidate, but you're the numberone choice of enough that that
(10:45):
you can wind up sneaking throughand winning the election.
Shanny Luft (10:48):
That's interesting way to think about it. And
that's also that process of theRepublican primary five years
ago, benefitted Trump in a lotof ways, right. I mean, if he
only had one other competitorthat was running against, it
might have been a reallydifferent story. Absolutely. But
him having a dozen people whowas running against, they were
all cannibalizing one another.
Andy Felt (11:07):
Cruz would have buried Trump if it was one on
one.
Shanny Luft (11:10):
Yeah, possibly.
Okay. So that's, that helps meunderstand why our system of
voting
Andy Felt (11:16):
plurality
Shanny Luft (11:17):
yeah the plurality model leads to essentially two
candidates every single time.
Right, the other there are otherparties, but those parties tend
not to win, they can have aneffect on the election, although
it's always Democrats versusRepublicans.
Andy Felt (11:31):
Yeah, it leads to a two party system, and then are
the say two major party system.
And then also, those thirdparties when they make noise,
tend to hurt their own side.
Shanny Luft (11:45):
Okay. So rank choice voting, then is a
potential solution to theproblem.
Andy Felt (11:51):
Yeah. Right. So I mean, when you think about it,
we're throwing away a lot ofinformation by only asking you,
who's your favorite? It has tobe better to ask at least gather
the information and use theinformation. Okay, who is your
second favorite candidate? Who'syour third favorite gun? So rank
(12:11):
choice voting, you rank eitherall of the candidates or a
certain number of candidates.
Shanny Luft (12:18):
So the voter would do this, the voter would see the
list of candidates and then rankthem one through five or one
through 10. However manycandidates that are,
Andy Felt (12:25):
yep, and, and then what you do, it is different
depending on the voting method.
So all of these voting methodswere developed. In the 1800s, I
think, soon after, the worlddiscovered that plurality sucks.
Instant Runoff is basically thefirst round is like plurality,
(12:46):
you just write down everybody'sfirst choices. Now, if nobody
gets over 50%. In other words,if nobody gets a majority, then
someone is eliminated from thegroup. One person is eliminated
normally, as the person who getsthe fewest first place votes,
the person in last, okay, andthose votes then would go to the
(13:10):
second person on that voterslist.
Shanny Luft (13:16):
So in the first round, you're only looking at
everyone's first choice, right?
And then if if somebody gets 50%plus one person, it's over? Yep.
Is that right? Okay. Yep. But ifnobody gets a majority, then
these other processes kick in.
So then what happens then ifnobody gets, then
Andy Felt (13:35):
that just continues until someone has a majority. So
after the first person iseliminated, that person's votes
are scattered to the othercandidates, depending on the
rank list. And then you recountessentially, and everyone's
votes have gone up, maybesomeone's vote says, now put
(13:58):
them over the threshold of themajority.
Shanny Luft (14:01):
So what's changed between round one and round two?
In round one, you're looking ateveryone's first choice. And
then if nobody got a majority,you think go into round two. So
in round two, what are youcounting differently?
Andy Felt (14:14):
So let's just say is Bush, Gore, Nader? Right? Those
are the only three candidates.
Nader would have been in last,we think, and Nader's votes then
would go to the second candidateon the list. So if you voted for
Nader and put Gore as secondthen your vote would go for to
Gore. If I voted for Nader andput Bush as second then my vote
(14:37):
would go to Bush.
Shanny Luft (14:40):
Okay, so the people who voted for Nader first that
first is thrown out because hedidn't because nobody got a
majority. And then those Nadervoters basically get another
shot. Right? They you just lookat their votes and say okay,
well, they're number two, what acertain percent went to Bush a
certain percent went to Clinton,
Andy Felt (14:57):
right,
Shanny Luft (14:57):
and so you didn't move their votes.
Andy Felt (14:59):
Yeah. They're not wasting their votes. I mean,
that was what you heard over andover again, if you vote for
Nader, you're wasting your voteor or worse, you're voting for
Bush, right? But here you get tosay, All right, I know he may
not win, but I'm gonna put himfirst. And then if nobody gets a
majority, I'm then I'm going tovote for you know, Gore is my
(15:21):
second and that'll, and my votewill count.
Shanny Luft (15:24):
So that's, that is advantageous, let's say to Nader
voters, and so that it does givethose the people who are voting
for the third party who comes inthird place, right, it gives it
gives their votes more meaning.
Andy Felt (15:37):
Yeah, and I think more importantly, it helps the
other major candidate that'sclose by right. Gore was I see.
I mean, without Nader in therace, Gore would have won.
Right, I think it's prettyclear. And those votes would
have gone to Gore then and Gorewould have won under that
(15:57):
system.
Shanny Luft (15:58):
Okay, so people who rank Nader number one, they're,
they're unlikely that to maketheir number two, the opposite
of nature. Right there. Numbertwo is going to be someone on
that X Y axis, who you wouldpresume, is somewhat close to
Nader
Andy Felt (16:12):
exactly, rather than we talked about
plurality, encouraging piratecandidates, encouraging
candidates to run away from theothers, and mostly usually away
from the center. Rather thanthat, this encourages people to
run toward the center. Becauseif let's just suppose Nader is
to the left of Gore, right. Andat bushes to the right of Gore,
(16:36):
then Gore benefits fromvirtually all of the Nader
voters, because being in thecenter, let's say, puts you in
place to harvest all of thosesecond place votes.
Shanny Luft (16:51):
Okay. So, so that pushes candidates to be more
centrist then. Yeah, right. Soin our current system, Gore
might be motivated to try toemphasize the gap between him
and Nader. Right, because hewants fewer people to vote for
Nader more people vote for him.
In a rank choice system, Goremight actually try to appeal to
Nader voters. I've seen ads likethis in some recent elections,
(17:15):
where candidates say, Make meyour second choice. It's so
because it's still new. Itsounds so fun to hear candidates
say that. But essentially, youknow, I may not be exactly what
you want, but I might be Icertainly am closer than these
other guys.
Andy Felt (17:34):
Right? Now. There's another there's another system
that's very popular with thesame input. So the voter still
ranks there, their candidates,either all of them, or some of
them depending on on the system.
But then there's what's thesystem called? Oh, so this
system is called Borda Count.
The Borda Count,
Shanny Luft (17:54):
board B-O, A-R-D?
Andy Felt (17:57):
B-O-R-D-A.
Shanny Luft (17:58):
Okay, so how does Borda Count work?
Andy Felt (18:00):
So you're let's just say that we're ranking five
candidates, then your firstchoice gets four points, your
second choice gets 3/3 Choicegets to fourth choice gets one
and fifth choice gives zero. Youcan do it a lot of different
ways. You can bump up the numberone if you want, by a couple
(18:24):
points just sort of reward that.
But that's a very popular thingthat's used by a lot of a lot of
systems, for example, theAcademy Awards, when they vote
for Best Picture, they realizethat fly and so now they they
use the Borda Count. Same thingwith all the MVP for sports, the
(18:44):
Heisman Trophy, all of theseelections where there are many
candidates, whoever is runningthe election has realized that
plurality is terrible, and haschanged most of them to the
Borda Count, one of my studentswas active in the SGA. And this
(19:06):
was when they were running thevote on a smoking ban. So the
Shanny Luft (19:16):
A vote to ban smoking anywhere on campus.
Andy Felt (19:18):
Right.
And here was the ballot. I'lltell you the candidates it was
there were three pseudo smokingbans, okay, like a different
kind of variation, right. Andthe fourth candidate was status
quo. In other words, no ban atall. So you tell me, Shanny,
you've got three flavors ofsmoking ban. And one, no ban at
(19:42):
all? Who is that an advantage ifthey run a plurality vote.
Shanny Luft (19:48):
So based on what you have taught me today, I
would say the the status quo hasa serious advantage. huge
advantage. The three versions ofa smoking ban are all kind of
bunched together. And so 75% ofthe campus or 70%, might want
one of those three, but aplurality might vote for that
(20:09):
fourth one.
Andy Felt (20:09):
Exactly.
Shanny Luft (20:10):
Is that what happened?
Andy Felt (20:11):
No. Because my, my student was in SGA, he raised
this issue and said, This iswhat we're heading for. So they
did that using the Borda Count.
Shanny Luft (20:22):
So when you're asking people to rank, which I,
as you put it earlier, you'regetting more information, which
is not just what is that peoplewant the most, but also, what
hemisphere? Are they in? Whatare they in those options? What
a second place matters?
Andy Felt (20:37):
Yes, math, and then they get points?
Exactly. Right.
Shanny Luft (20:42):
What strikes me is the first part of rank choice
voting is very easy tounderstand, right? You can
explain to a young child, you'vegot three ice cream flavors,
vanilla, chocolate, andstrawberry rank, your first
favorite, your second favoritethird favorite, that part?
literally anybody can. Theharder part to explain then is
why that concept, why that'smore consequential why that's
(21:04):
more useful, why that methodwould be preferred than just
vote for the one flavor you likethe best, right? It's like how
the math is done, he comes upwith a different result. But
it's, you do have to it takes alittle bit longer to explain the
value of that process.
Andy Felt (21:21):
Yes, if we were to wave our wand and change every
state to a rank choice vote, Ithink what would eventually
happen as the lesser partieswould become greater, would grow
in popularity, because votingfor them wouldn't hurt. And
you'd probably see more than twomajor parties, you'd probably
(21:44):
see three or four major parties,and and a bunch of lesser ones.
Shanny Luft (21:49):
What I really have enjoyed about this conversation
is you've helped me get a bettersense of how rank choice voting
is not just a different way tocount or do a math problem. But
it actually gathers informationthat it gives us more
information that our currentpick one or the other candidate
vote for one out of four orfive, and then that information
(22:14):
can have an impact on howcandidates run on what
legislation is proposed. Right,it can make candidates, it
would, as you've explained it,push candidates to be more
centrist, which would affectpolicies. And so that's the part
of this is fascinating to me isthat it's not just a clever math
problem, but it actually has athere's a there's a clear line
(22:37):
between how the math is done,and what the consequence is for
the country. When it comes topolitics.
Andy Felt (22:44):
You know, one of the things is I think, so many other
advanced countries, use theparliamentary system where lots
of parties get in to theparliament. And that sort of is
it works around. The weakness ofplurality just doesn't really
have a problem.
Shanny Luft (23:04):
Because in a parliamentary system, you have
1015 different parties, no partywill often get 51% of the vote.
And so they're forced to createcoalition's, and that then has
the same effect of moving peoplethrough the center and forcing
people to cooperate exactly toget anything done. Our system of
(23:25):
politics seems to encourage lackof cooperation. Yeah. So thank
you so much for thisconversation. I've really
enjoyed it. It's been great totalk to you about this.
Andy Felt (23:33):
You're welcome.
Happy to happy to talk with youand thanks for inviting
Shanny Luft (23:41):
I hope you found the conversation as interesting
as I did and that you learned alittle more about how rank
choice voting works. If you'reenjoying the podcast, please
subscribe and share it withother people. The more listeners
we get, the more I'll be able todo in the future.
Oscar Winner Clip (23:58):
And the winner is The Hurt Locker.
Kathryn Bigelow, NicholasSharkey --
Gretel Stock (24:05):
This podcast is brought to you by University
College at University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. Our
mission is to providecoordinated, intentional, and
inclusive services andopportunities through our core
values of connecting,supporting, collaborating, and
engaging. discover your purposeand visit UW-Stevens Point at
(24:25):
www.uwsp.edu.
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