A. How Ranked Choice Voting Works
The way it works is this:
1. When you fill out your ballot, you rank the candidates according to your preference. All first choice votes are counted and if a candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, they are elected.
2. If no candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, the candidate who received the fewest first place votes is eliminated. All first choice ballots cast for the last place candidate are counted instead for their next choice. Ballots that ranked only a candidate who has been eliminated are exhausted and removed from subsequent rounds of tabulation.
3. If you had ranked the losing candidate first, your vote is transferred to your second ranked candidate. The votes are recounted and the process repeated until a candidate receives a majority of non-exhausted votes.
The winning candidate in a Ranked Choice election is required to receive a majority of votes in the final round.
Alaska’s 2022 Congressional race shows how RCV works in practice. Figure 6.1 shows how the winning candidate, Mary Peltola, received a majority of votes over three rounds of ranked choice counting. In Round 1, Peltola received 128,755 first choice votes (48.7%), almost a majority. Chris Bye, the fourth place candidate, received 4,999 first choice votes (1.9%) and was eliminated. In Round 2, Bye’s voters had their votes counted instead for their second choice candidate; ballots not marked with a second choice candidate were “exhausted”, meaning removed from subsequent rounds. Some of Bye’s voters ranked Peltola second, increasing her total in Round 2 to 129,786 votes (49.2%). The third place candidate, Nick Begich, received 64,699 votes (24.5%) in Round 2 and was eliminated. Round 3 proved decisive. While the majority of Begich’s voters preferred the second place candidate, Sarah Palin, 7,477 voters ranked Peltola as their second choice to push her total to 137,263 votes (55%), securing Peltola a majority and a seat in Congress.
Figure 6.1: Ranked Choice Voting Automatic Runoff in Alaska’s 2022 Congressional Election. Data from Alaska Division of Elections. Made with SankeyMATIC.
A fair criticism, also made by Stearns in Parliamentary America, of the Alaska election is that RCV in this instance did not award victory to the Condorcet winner. The Condorcet winner is the candidate that who beat all the other candidates in a head to head match up. In this example, Begich would have beat both Peltola and Palin in a head to head matchup. But, because he came in third place, he was eliminated before the final round.
I still find RCV compelling despite this criticism. In the case of Begich, while he was the Condorcet winner, he was unable to inspire enough support from voters to rank him first. RCV in this way still rewards politicians who can inspire passionate support. RCV rewards politicians who can appeal to a broad swath of the electorate while simultaneously inspiring the necessary support to make it to the final round of voting.
B: How Multimember Districts Work
Multimember districts are districts in which multiple candidates are elected to represent the same set of voters.
There are several different ways elections in multimember districts can be run. For example, my home state, Washington, uses multimember districts to elect its legislature. Each of the 49 legislative districts elects 2 Representatives and 1 Senator. Each voter casts a ballot for all three positions: once for Senator, once for Representative Position 1, and once for Representative Position 2. The three winning candidates all represent the same voters. However, they will have been elected in separate elections. In a multimember Washington legislative district with 55% Democrats and 45% Republicans, Democrats would be favored to win all three seats because each race would pit one Democrat against one Republican. Even though Republicans make up nearly half of voters, they win zero representation.
A different way of running elections in multimember districts is with a proportional electoral system using ranked choice voting, also known as single-transferable vote. In the example above of a three-seat Washington legislative district with 55% Democrats and 45% Republicans, such a system would elect 2 Democrats and 1 Republican. This outcome better represents the interests of the entire district. It is fair. But how does it work from the perspective of the voter?
Reimagine the ranked choice Alaska election won by Peltola. The only change now is that instead of 1 winner, there will be 3. Just as before, each Alaska voter would cast a ballot with their first, second, and third choices, or however many candidates they want to rank. This time, instead of a candidate needing 50% of the vote to win, a candidate would need just 25%. The 25% electoral threshold is calculated using the Droop Quota, which is the threshold that three candidates can beat, but not four. If three candidates have more than 25% of the vote, no other candidate can reach 25%.
The Droop Quota is calculated by dividing 100% by the number of available seats plus 1. In the case of this hypothetical 3-member district, the calculation would be 100% divided by 4 (100%/(3 seats + 1) = 25%) for a 25% electoral threshold. Each candidate, regardless of party, who receives 25% of the vote is a winner.
Figure 6.2 shows how the Alaska election would have played out under this system. Just as before, in the first round, all the first rank votes are counted. Peltola received 48.7% of the vote in the first round and is declared the first winner. Palin received 25.8% of the vote and is declared the second winner. Begich received 23.6% of the vote, not quite enough to win in the first round.
Figure 6.2: Proportional Ranked Choice Voting Hypothetical Runoff in Alaska’s 2022 Congressional Election. Made with SankeyMATIC.
However, the counting in the second round now proceeds a little differently. Before eliminating Bye, the fourth place candidate, the surplus votes from the winners are distributed among the remaining candidates. Surplus votes are any votes not needed to declare the candidate a winner. In the first round, Peltola received 128,755 votes, well over the 25% threshold of 66,148 votes. Peltola’s surplus 62,607 votes will be distributed among the over candidates according to the proportion of all Peltola voter’s second choice option. (Alaska’s RCV Detailed Report on this election does not include data on who the second choice candidate was for Peltola voters.) Let’s say 40% of all Peltola voters ranked Palin second, 40% ranked Begich second, and 20% ranked Bye second. The surplus votes are distributed among the other candidates: Begich receives 25,043 votes (40% of 62,607) and Bye receives 12,521 votes (20% of 62,607). Palin’s surplus 2,182 votes are distributed in a similar way, with 80% of Palin voters ranking Begich second, 10% ranking Peltola second, and 10% ranking Bye second. The second choice votes for Peltola and Palin are exhausted or could be surplus and recounted with their third choice if another round is necessary. Following this recount, Begich receives 89,294 votes and wins the third seat after crossing the 66,148 vote electoral threshold.
In this example, Alaska would elect 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat. The Democrat was the most popular individual candidate, but more Alaskans voted for Republicans overall. With this proportional multimember district system, Alaska’s Republican majority and Democratic minority would both be represented.
If Alaska’s election were run again with 3 seats available, the Democratic Party would likely put 2 or 3 candidates on the ballot. Democratic voters could vote for their preferred Democrat and rank the other Democrat second, and then rank a Republican third. In this way, the Democratic Party could compete for a second of three seats. For a party to win 2 seats in a 3-member district, the combined votes for the party’s candidates would need to win 50% of the vote.