Something amiss behind ranked choice voting, opponents say

Published by admin on Wed, 10/30/2024 - 7:00pm

Software expert Michael Zimmerman, left, explains algorithms in ranked choice voting at a forum held in September at the Bee Tree Folk School.
By: 
Philip A. Janquart
Idaho voters on Nov. 5 will decide the fate of a ballot initiative that, if successful, would radically change the face of politics in the state.
 On its website, Reclaim Idaho, dubbed by Idaho Republicans as a “progressive activist organization,” describes Prop. 1 as the “Idaho Open Primaries Initiative,” which would “create a non-partisan primary system, open to all voters regardless of party affiliation.”
 Though it was allegedly petitioned into existence in an effort to make voting “available to all” and to reign in “extremist” conservative leaders, the essence of Prop. 1, according to opponents, is not so innocuous in nature.
 They say there are calculated factors at work behind a veil of misinformation that was intended to deceive the voting public into signing a petition to have the initiative included on the November ballot and ultimately vote in favor of it during the general election.
 The real purpose behind Prop. 1, opponents claim, is to exterminate political parties in Idaho by introducing ranked choice voting, a complicated system said to ultimately be decided by a mathematical algorithm and is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to audit.
 “Think about primaries as your favorite football team,” Dist. 9 House, Seat B, Rep., Judy Boyle (R-Midvale) explained during a public forum hosted by the Washington County Federation of Republican Women in September. Dist. 9 Sen. Brandon Shippy and Dist. 9, Seat A, House candidate John Shirts were also in attendance.
 “Let’s say, this is the Republican primary, and your favorite team is the (Los Angeles) Chargers and then there are the (San Francisco) 49ers. You don’t want the 49ers coming over and choosing your quarterback. So, that’s why we have closed primaries, why we are trying to have closed primaries.”
 If successful, the initiative would cost taxpayers some $40 million Boyle said, referrencing information from Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane. She added that things like new voting machines in every Idaho county may need to be purchased as part of the expense.
 She noted that if the government, “says something is going to cost ‘X’ amount, you can double that.”
 Republicans say Idaho’s Democrats are pushing hard for the initiative because it has the potential to underhandedly allow them to flip a traditionally conservative state, blue.
 “Alaska, as you probably know, did this two years ago, I believe, by voter initiative and they liked it so much, they are having a voter initiative this year to get rid of it,” Boyle said during the Sept. 17 forum. 
 Two years ago, Republican House Candidate Sarah Palin was defeated by Democrat Mary Peltola in the state’s first ranked choice voting election. No candidate received 50 percent plus one in the Aug. 16 election, forcing ranked choice voting tabulations. 
 The system requires voters to rank all candidates on the ballot in order of preference. The candidate with the least amount of votes falls off the ballot but voters’ secondary choices are redistributed to the corresponding candidates, allowing one to potentially rise to the top with the required 50 percent plus one, even through they may not be the majority favorite.
 Boyle said that if ranked choice voting had been used in the last governor’s race, candidate and former Idaho Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin would have surfaced as the victor.
 The “grass roots” petitioning drive itself, opponents argue, did not explain the details and has intentionally misled the voting public, causing thousands of misinformed, unassuming residents to sign a petition that sounds good on the surface, but that they otherwise would have never supported.
 “I still see, ‘Vote yes on open primaries,’ and it was cast in this idea that we are going to open the primaries back up the same as it was before 2011,” Shippy told the Signal American last week. “That has been the main selling point that I’ve seen.”
 Shippy described a conversation he had with a constituent who questioned why he did not back Prop. 1.
 “He had no idea ranked choice voting was tied to it, and that it isn’t a true primary that is being proposed,” he said. “it’s a ‘Jungle Primary’ where everyone is on the same ballot, so it’s not to open it back up so you can say, ‘Hey, I want to vote on the Republican Primary,’ or “I want to vote on the Democrat primary;’ that’s gone. Everyone goes on the same ballot and then the top four advance to the general election where they use the ranked choice voting system, and that was not made clear by the people pushing it.”
 During the Sept. 17 forum, it was explained that candidates during the primary election would all be listed together on the ballot without identifying party affiliation.
 “The primary would essentially turn into a free-for-all … now you are all lumped together and then the top four primary vote getters go on to the general. Then … in the general, you rank,” said Shirts, a U.S. Air Force JAG officer.
 Compared to the traditional “one person, one vote” system, ranked choice appears more complicated, requiring voters to rank all candidates in order of preference. Failing to do so results in an “exhausted” ballot, meaning the ballot, deemed incomplete, is thrown out.
 “So, you are forced to vote for people you don’t even want to vote for,” one woman exclaimed during the forum.
 Michael Zimmerman, who runs a software company and has an impressive technical background, was invited by Shippy to briefly explain how ranked choice voting works.
 “I really dug into this and … I understand this is more on the back-end side of things, but when you look at traditional voting systems … you have simple options where you select and it’s commuted into a database. With a ranked choice voting system, it becomes more like an algorithm where the complexity increases and there is a larger margin for error.
 “One of the biggest problems with ranked choice voting that I actually found is that if you were to consider a hypothetical election with three candidates a, b and c, and suppose a significant portion of voters prefer candidate ‘a,’ but candidate ‘b’ is a strong second choice for most voters. If supporters of candidate ‘c’ strategically rank candidate ‘b’ as their second choice to prevent ‘a’ from winning, ‘b’ could end up winning even if ‘a’ was the first choice by the majority.
 “It’s exactly what happened in Alaska. So, the entire purpose of ranked choice voting is to allow the Democrat party to gain the system. That’s really what it’s all about.”
 “If your top person is No. 4 and they are eliminated, then your No. 2 goes into effect,” Shirts explained further. “Then you keep going through these rounds until you get to the point where one person gets above 50% … but through that process of elimination, it’s, ‘Ok, your No. 1 is no longer in contention’ or maybe your No. 2 is no longer in contention, now the vote you cast for 1 and 2 doesn’t count anymore; they are using your vote for No. 3, to put that person over the edge.”
 In 2022, a school board election in Oakland, Calif. resulted in a lawsuit that ended with the initially declared winner losing his seat, which ultimately went to the third-place finisher.
 “The Registrar of Voters said that it became aware that its ranked choice voting tallying system was not configured properly for the Nov. 2022 general election right before Christmas, affecting all races, but only the results of the Dist. 4 school board director race,” SFist.com reported, quoting a press release. “The county had already certified the results when it realized the error, and used a corrected algorithm to recount the vote.”
 Shippy said the system would change how candidates campaign, pressuring them to stay neutral on issues rather than voicing their true feelings or revealing thier platforms in detial for fear of losing votes from Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters alike. 
 Another argument Democrats promulgate, according to Shippy, is the idea of voter participation. 
 “The idea is that if we open up the primaries, then people will get out in mass numbers and vote, that’s the claim,” he said. “But when you start complicating things … it will drive voters away, we all know that. It’s going to destroy turnout in my opinion.
 “There is actually a study that backs up what Brandon is saying,” Shirts said. “(ranked choice voting) confuses people … it makes people not even want to go.” Shirts, a military veteran, criticized Idaho Prop. 1 proponents for attempting to make it appear veterans are in support of the initiative.
 “This is always interesting to me as a veteran … you get one veteran involved in an organization, then all of a sudden you are ‘Veterans for Idaho.’ They are trying to make this argument that veterans are excluded from voting the current system, but that’s not true at all … it always surprises me when they throw out the veteran card and think people will buy into it. I don’t think the veterans are overwhelmingly supporting them.”
 Shippy said that in the end, Democrats across the nation are trying to steal the election process and the outside money is helping the cause in Idaho.
 “When you look at where these initiatives are coming from and how this is not unique to Idaho, it’s being introduced in other places, you realize this is an organized event that is being introduced to take over and control the way our elections are held within the United States.”

 

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