Beyond instant runoff: A better way to conduct multi-candidate elections
Source: https://theconversation.com/beyond-instant-runoff-a-better-way-to-conduct-multi-candidate-elections-74973
This news article discusses the various ways that one can conduct elections where there are more than two alternatives, which in political situations consists of candidates. In this news article, the state of Maine adopted a voting system called “instant runoff” a deviation from the original voting system that the U.S has in place known as “plurality voting”. Plurality voting is where each voter votes for his or her favorite candidate and the candidate with the most votes would win. The news article states this voting system is only optimal for two alternatives or candidates because in a situation where there exists more than two candidates you have to get more than every other candidate’s votes. Plurality voting results in the popularity of two distinct parties a phenomenon that the U.S. has had for years, which is a problem.
The first voting system, mentioned previously, is the “instant runoff” which basically consists of every voter ranking the candidates and the candidates with the not enough voters ranking him or her first fails to move on to the next round. This cycle is iterated until one candidate is left. The problem as the news article suggests is “instant runoff” is just like our traditional plurality voting because voters with a significant amount of votes will still not win even if the percentage of voters is close to the same. At the last round, the voting system is left with two candidates, which is basically what plurality is.
Two other voting systems introduced by Condorcet and Borda when merged together as suggested by the article, produce a voting system that proves to be superior to “instant runoff”. Condorcet’s idea was if there was an absolute majority of voters, which is basically more than half of the voting population that prefers one candidate over the other, then that candidate should win. In my opinion, this is an extremist view of providing a model for voting efficiently as it would fail to take into account many individuals preferences and simply ruling out a significant portion of the voter population isn’t efficient. Borda’s system, however, allots point to each ranking. As discussed in class, the Borda count will assign the highest number of point to the highest ranking and so one and so forth. In my opinion, Borda’s count is extremely efficient for this reason as it quantifies the voter’s preferences making it easy to pick a winner regardless of candidate popularity configurations.
The article suggests there should be a voting system where “instant runoff” is used and the outcome is evaluated by Condorcet’s method of picking out the strongest candidates. After that, the candidates’ rankings are quantified by the Borda count and a winner is picked. I agree for the most part of this voting system, but in my opinion the Condorcet’s method isn’t necessary due to the extreme method in picking the candidates.