Is Hillary Unstoppable? Is the GOP Winner Simply the Strongest Loser?
Published January 21st, 2008These current primaries are an excellent example of how broken the US voting system is. On the Democrat side, the biggest factor in Hillary’s “inevitability” is that her opposition is fractured. As the early frontrunner, right away her competitors positioned themselves as Anti-Hillary. But because there are (now, still) two opposition candidates, the Anti-Hillary vote is fractured. And there is some good evidence that Obama voters would like Edwards as their second choice, and vice-versa. So when Hillary wins a state with 40%, that means 60% of the vote was against her. This is the same problem faced with Al Gore-Ralph Nader, or even George Bush-Ross Perot. In all these cases, it is beneficial for the supporters of the 3rd place candidates to actually vote for for their second choice. This is a ridiculous way to choose political leaders - you should never hurt your cause by voting for your favorite candidate.
So here we are, and most people in the Democratic Party are voting against Clinton. But, by doing so, they virtually ensure her victory. Now of course, this is remedied in a primary - one of the “alternatives” can drop out and throw his support to the other alternative, and that unifies the opposition. We know that cannot be done in a general election though - but what if it could? That’s the concept behind Approval Voting - you simply vote for whom you approve. There are other alternative voting systems, many that are even more robust than Approval, but they aren’t as simple. They involved ranking candidates or giving them points to indicate strength of support, or they involve complicated resolution rules. I’m OK with all those - but it is very possible, likely, that the general electorate will not approve of a voting system they do not understand - and rightfully so. Approval solves most “gaming the system” problems and is dumb-as-a-rock simple. So while Hillary’s momentum is largely because her opposition is fractured, if Edwards hangs around to play Kingmaker - he can choose who he crowns.
The GOP side is even more of a mess. With “legit” candidates in Romney, Huckabee and McCain, as well as significant “alternatives” in Ron Paul and maybe Giuliani - it’s a real mess. I can’t imagine a better place for clearing up the picture with approval voting than here. Real frontrunners would end up gaining far more support than the rest. Instead, the GOP is faced with multiple Kingmaking scenarios and possibly ending up with a candidate that simply had the most fractured opposition. Go figure.
So why is it so hard to change the way we choose our leaders? Well, the answer is…our leaders. To open up voting to Approval Voting would allow for much greater voices from third and minor party candidates. And if I know anything - it’s that the current ruling parties will never, ever voluntarily weaken their stranglehold on power. This is another example of the monolithic parties owning their duopoly on American Politics to the greater end of suppressing the voice of the electorate. With the rise of the internet, this has never, ever been more obvious. In the past, they parties could pus and popularize the myth that their bases were of one voice - but that’s clearly not true anymore. Look at the largest partisan sites on the net (DailyKOS or RedState or Instapundit, for example) and you’ll see that their readers poll quite differently than general national polls. Ron Paul has raised millions of dollars from people who never show up in national or state polls.
I know I’m just shouting into the ether here - but I truly believe that the political establishment in America is broken in multiple and significant ways. Part of it is the generally poor political education of the average American. As Churchill once said, “The best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter.” But Churchill also said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” And it’s very true. But back to my point - part of it is the average voter, but the other part is that there are huge blocks of informed, intelligent voters who’s voices are being marginalized or ignored largely due to procedural inadequacies - our voting system.
My dream is a day where America’s leaders are chosen for the content of their character, not because they’re a member of a certain party, not because they have or don’t have religion, not because their opposition was fractured, not because we use the most simplistic and worst voting system possible.
No arguments here. The problem is how to accomplish such a change. I think the only way is to get cities and eventually states to switch to approval. People are scared of math and science (sigh) so no matter how flawless the mathematical evidence is, people are going to resist. If you can prove that approval voting is not just theory, but works in practice on smaller elections, you might be able to work up to larger ones. Unfortunately, I think IRV has a head start here.
In addition, all the third parties and fringe candidates need to get behind it. Fixing the system is clearly in their best interests. The combined voice of these smaller players might have significant influence. IRV also seems to be ahead here with the backing of the Greens.