Preference Voting is the Better System for Local Government
Rob Richie
In recent years, proportional
representation voting systems have moved from being an interesting political theory to
viable political options for American elections. Thus, it becomes more important to make
sure that one implements the best system for a certain level of elections.
For local elections, the main choice
likely will be between two candidate-based systems: cumulative voting and preference
voting (e.g., single transferable vote). Cumulative voting is easy to explain briefly, and
thus a good choice to illustrate a PR system. But preference voting is the system
local activists should seek to implement. Here is why.
Voters' Perspective: Preference Voting is Easier
Some people believe preference voting
is too complicated, but the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. As one example, Northern
Ireland used preference voting for a few elections in the 1920s; in the first election,
there was an 89% voter turnout and a less than 1% invalid ballot rate -- lower than many
elections here today. This history helps explain why the February 1995 peace accord
proposes to restore preference voting for new legislative elections; it already is used in
Northern Ireland for local and European parliamentary elections and has helped diffuse
tension between Catholics and Protestants.
If voting "1, 2, 3" is as easy
as it would seem, what does it mean in comparison to cumulative voting? In a five-seat
race, the voter's calculation with preference voting is a simple one: which candidate do I
like best, which do I like next best and so on, knowing that a lower choice will never
help defeat a higher choice and also knowing that ranking a lower choice might help that
candidate defeat a candidate you dislike.
With cumulative voting, it's not so easy.
You like one candidate best and yes, you could put all your votes on that candidate. But
what if you also like some other candidates? How do you divvy up your votes? What if you
think your favorite candidate might not win? What if two strong candidates are appealing
to the same community of voters that only has enough votes to win one seat?
Preference Voting Makes Votes Count
The last question of the possibility
of "too many" candidates points to a serious problem with cumulative voting:
wasted votes. If voters make the "wrong" calculation -- and how can they avoid
it if not part of a disciplined political organization that is rare in U.S. politics --
then one candidate could end up with far too many votes and others with too few. We have
already seen this happen in some cumulative voting elections, like the 1991 city council
election in Peoria, Illinois, where two black liberals split the black vote.
One way to think of it is to compare
cumulative voting to a traditional party list proportional system. With party list, if a
party gets more votes, then it can earn more seats -- there is a direct correlation. But
when voting for individual candidates, more votes can do no more than just elect that one
candidate.
Preference voting avoids this problem by
creating a dynamic similar to party list PR. Votes beyond what is necessary to win will
simply be transferred onto philosophically similar candidates (as determined by individual
voters) and still count.
Preference Voting Encourages Competitiveness
The natural result of the wasted vote
dynamic is to have political forces try to run only as many candidates as they think can
win, or perhaps one extra. When Illinois had cumulative voting in three-member districts
for state legislative elections, there were usually only four candidates in the general
election (until they made a rule change requiring parties to nominate two people, there
often had been only three for three seats!).
However, as much of a problem that such
candidate limitation is in partisan elections, it is more of one in non-partisan
elections. First, it is harder for loosely organized groups to do than for parties.
Second, if only some political forces are doing it, then they get an unfair boost. Third,
if everyone does it, then voters will not be too thrilled, even if the results are
"fair": ratifying pre-election choices of party-like leaders is not much fun.
Finally, cumulative voting has a
pro-incumbent bias in both partisan and non-partisan elections. Supporters of a party or
interest group are likely to discourage challenges to incumbents favoring their position
and not to risk giving votes to the challengers who do run.
Preference Voting Helps Women Candidates
When there is no party discipline that
leads to a party running a certain number of candidates and asking supporters to vote for
all of them, cumulative voting naturally leads to many voters putting all their votes on
one candidate -- just as many only vote for one ("bullet vote") in at-large
elections, voters often will only vote for one or two candidates because they do not want
a lesser choice to help defeat their top choices.
Bullet voting, just like single-member
districts, historically hurts women candidates. When voters have only one vote, men have
gotten more of those votes. That might be changing, but it still could be a problem for
women candidates.
Preference Voting Builds Coalitions
Bullet voting is more likely to have
other negative effects. No matter how diverse a city is, its voters will tend to be
multi-dimensional and tend to have shared interests with others who in other ways are
different from them. With preference voting, coalition building is an obvious result.
After voters cast their first and/or second choices on those candidates most like them,
they probably will calculate which of the remaining candidates is the one they like next
best. The result is that candidates will reach beyond their base, voters will look beyond
candidates most like them and groups of voters too small to elect someone on their own
will find at least some candidates responsive to them.
Cumulative voting has no such incentives.
In the racially polarized southern county of Chilton County (AL), for example, almost all
black voters put their seven votes on the black candidates. It was an obvious choice, and
both black candidates and white candidates knew it would likely happen. The winning black
candidate did reach out to white voters, but received votes from only 1.5% of them.
Preference voting would create a clear
incentive for at least some white candidates to actively court black voters in order to
pick up transfer votes in Chilton County, while white voters would take a closer look at
black candidates. Such outreach would simply be smart campaigning.
Preference Voting Discourages Negative Campaigns
If many voters are likely to put all
their votes on one candidate, then two candidates seeking the support of those voters have
an unfortunate incentive to trash their opponent -- it is an all-or-nothing game, just
like single-member districts.
With preference voting, candidates will
still need to differentiate themselves from the other candidate to gain support, but they
cannot be too negative if they want to gain the second preferences of these voters. And
they might very well run with other candidates on a slate, telling supporters to make sure
to put one or the other of them first and others next; in the non-partisan preference
voting elections in Cambridge, slates are very important.
Popularity Among Voters
The limited record of cumulative
voting in the U.S. is a decent one -- not remarkable, but good. But there is one important
test: it was defeated 80%-20% when put before voters in Cincinnati in 1993. There were
many reasons for the lopsided vote, but it is instructive that preference voting only was
defeated 55%-45% the two times it faced those same voters in Cincinnati in 1988 and 1991.
Preference voting was adopted by
referendum in two dozen U.S. cities earlier this century. Of the first 25 attempts to
repeal it in these cities -- by political forces that often had majority support among
voters -- only two were successful. But eventually the anti-reform forces outlasted the
reformers, helped by running negative campaigns against unpopular minorities and by the
long ballot-count. Now we can computerize the count, and I believe there is more tolerance
of diversity.
Those focusing on the comparable winning
thresholds with cumulative voting and preference voting might overlook some of these more
subtle campaign dynamics that point in preference voting's favor. But elections do
more than establish who wins representation: the campaigns themselves are times for
building community, sharing information and identifying and solving problems.
Yet even from the simple standard of
winning seats, preference voting is better. Cumulative voting is not a semi-proportional
system because of a higher winning threshold. Rather, cumulative voting inevitably wastes
more votes. "Semi-proportional" really means "semi-fair." We can do
better.
Rob Richie is national director of The
Center for Voting and Democracy.