American Voting Methods

Voting Methods in America
The current state of voting and political rhetoric and gridlock seeming to be the new normal begs the question. What if there was a different voting method employed to select our elected officials would the outcomes and focus of the campaign change? What if there was a method choosing our leaders that fostered positive communications and message in order to garner the support of constituents instead of tearing your opponent down and never really focusing on the issues that matter to voters. Is a voting system like this even possible? If you would’ve asked me when I turned eighteen or even a few years ago if a change was necessary regarding the way America votes the answer would’ve been a resounding no. However,
The analysis of the best voting method was tabled by economist Keith Arrow and he set out to at least define basic fairness criteria which is famously known as Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. Here are few of the criteria he determined to be essential in any fair election. The first criteria, Majority Criterion: states a candidate with a majority of 1st place votes should always be the winner. Next is the Condorcet criterion: a candidate that beats each of the other candidates in pairwise comparison should always be the winner. The next criterion is the monotonicity criterion that states if a candidate is declared the winner, he or she should still be the winner had a voter moved the candidate higher on their preference ballot and should not hurt by being moved up. The last criterion is now as the independence-of-irrelevant alternatives criterion, which states that the winning candidate should not be affected if one of the losing candidates had not been in the race. If a voting method violates one of these four criteria, the potential for an unfair result from using the voting method exists. (Tannenbaum, 2014) Presently social scientist and mathematicians have been unable to develop a method of voting that
Additionally, several states use this method for overseas voters in the event of a run-off election. (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff- FairVote, n.d.) Some of the benefits of a RCV system include promoting majority support, decreasing negative campaigning, minimizes strategic voting, mitigates impact of money in politics, saves money and time when replacing primaries or run-offs, provides more choice to voters, promotes reflective representation, and provides fair representation when electing multi-winner elections. (Ranked Choice Voting - An American Voting System, n.d.) One of the negatives of a system of voting like this many would argue is it could potentially lead to a large number of candidates for a particular election giving the citizens so many options leading to a blurring of the principles between the candidates. To address these issues of inclusion and fairness states like California and Washington have moved to a top-two system where a primary is held including all party affiliated candidates compete for the top two spots in the general election. Using RCV and moving to a top-four system in the primaries would allow more opportunity for third-party or independent candidates inclusion in elections.