An example ranked choice ballot from FairVote
Seattle voters are being asked to vote on voting this fall.
With King County ballots mailed out, voters will be asked if the current top-two system of primary elections for the mayor and city council should be maintained or changed. They will also be asked what that change should look like if it happens. Everybody votes on the options — whether you want to change the system or not.
Approval Voting
CHS reported here in June on the qualification for the fall ballot by Initiative 134 which would transform elections for mayor and the city council to a new approval voting format. The change move away from Seattle’s current “top two” primary election format to a new system in which voters would mark their ballots for as many of the candidates they want, a system the group Seattle Approves says results in a stronger, more widely supported set of candidates but opponents say will make voting in the city needlessly more complicated and could possibly monkeywrench better reforms.
Ranked-choice Voting
Responding to some of those concerns, the Seattle City Council added another option for Seattle voters to choose a “ranked-choice” system, instead. Under ranked-choice, voters rank candidates in order of preference and the results are tallied. The top two candidates that emerge from the combined voter pool ranking go through to the General Election.
Both systems have support from groups claiming they provide more equitable results that better represent the electorate but the push for ranked-choice has a longer track record here.
CHS reported on stalled county efforts to implement a new system in 2021. That summer, CHS ran a mock Seattle mayoral primary election in ranked-choice format. You can see the results here. Among the CHS participants, M. Lorena González and Andrew Grant Houston came out on top. Real-world winner Bruce Harrell didn’t fare as well in the mock but what it lacked in predictive power, the exercise hopefully made up for by showing how a ranked-choice election plays out with multiple rounds eliminating the lowest ranked candidates and distributing the rest of each ballot’s rankings until only two candidates remain.
If all of that sounds more complicated than simply tallying votes and declaring the top two vote getters the winners, you’re right.
But the cost could be worth it. Advocates for ranked and approval voting say the systems more accurately capture voter preference and can eliminate the need for expensive runoff elections.
The first question about I-134 on the ballot will set the stage. Do voters want to change the primary process at all? If so, the odd one-two punch of democracy will play out and the top answer between Approval Voting and Ranked Choice will win out.
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very excited about approval voting, and glad – it’s the simpler alternative and a great way to get more representative elections. Glad they started the process. just cast my vote today.
To btwn: Glad you’re excited about approval voting. It’s certainly better than traditional plurality (winner-take-all) voting.
But if you eventually get a chance to vote via approval voting, think twice before you approve any candidate other than your favorite. Doing so dilutes your vote for your favorite, reducing her chances of winning. Ranking others below your favorite in ranked-choice voting doesn’t do that. Both reforms have pros and cons and it’s good to be aware of as many of them as possible.
You’ve described the problem with ranked choice voting, that approval voting solves.
RCV prevents your 2nd choice from hurting your 1st choice, which intuitively seems good. But it can also prevent your 2nd choice from hurting your 3rd choice. Which is very bad.
For instance, in the last city attorney race, a Republican (Davison) won. But if Thomas-Kennedy voters had insincerely/strategically voted for Holmes (their lesser evil), then he would have won, and they’d have at least avoided the Republican.
With approval voting, once you’ve strategically voted for your 2nd (like Green supporters strategically voting Democrat) you can also vote for your true favorite without fear. Granted, the top-two runoff muddies this a bit compared to a single-round approval voting election, but it’s still a generally safe strategy.
Decades of game theory and analysis of large approval voting elections shows that it is a more accurate (and radically simpler) approach compared to RCV.
Seattle Times ran an informative opinion piece on ranked choice: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont-believe-these-5-common-myths-about-ranked-choice-voting/
Grain of salt as it’s an opinion, but it offered some good examples.