Instant-runoff Voting and Presidential Election
The Vox article examines five alternatives to the current voting system in presidential elections in the United States, namely instant-runoff voting, Condorcet voting, Borda count, approval rating and range voting. It especially discusses instant-runoff voting, which is used in presidential elections in Ireland and India, and which Maine just voted this November to adopt for all its elections. Instant runoff voting works by eliminating the worst-performing candidate and distributing their votes to the others, using the rankings their voters provided. In the research done by data scientist David Shor, a ranking option is added to a Civis online poll of voters who voted in 2016. In the instant run-off system, the first candidate eliminated was Darrell Castle, the nominee of the far-right Constitution Party. So each respondent who put Castle first saw their votes go to their second-place candidate. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority, and Hillary Clinton won at last.
Instant-runoff voting has the effect of avoiding split votes when multiple candidates earn support from like-minded voters, and it can encourage third-party candidates. In the current plurality voting system, third-party candidates have no chance of winning, and they may split votes from major-party candidates, like Ralph Nader helped George W. Bush win in 2000. As a result, voters may not vote for third-party candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein even if their political views are closer to these candidates. Instant-runoff voting can help solve this problem since ranking third-party candidates high will not split the major-party vote. For example, ranking Jill Stein on top and Hillary as second might still ultimately push Hillary Clinton over the top. Donald Trump might fare worse the primaries if instant-runoff voting was used, as he was highly unfavorable and votes wouldn’t have split between establishment candidates like John Kasich and Marco Rubio.
However, instant-runoff voting is not a perfect solution. The winner of such election might be everyone’s second or third choice candidate but few people’s first. Especially in this election, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have extremely high unfavorable ratings, so many people vote are not voting for a candidate but voting against one. This instant-runoff voting system might give a third-party candidate like Gary Johnson a better chance, though he is hardly anyone’s first choice. And more importantly, Hillary Clinton won by popular vote through plurality voting system. So if people want to reform the voting system in the United States, changing the Electoral College might be a more direct solution than adopting the instant-runoff voting system.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/25/13733322/instant-runoff-ranked-voting-2016