Category Archives: alternative voting systems

Democracy Protection Requires More than Voting Rights

September 17, 2021, 1:52 pmalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, primariesNed Foley

Senator Tim Kaine has a new Washington Post op-ed entitled The Jan. 6 attack demands that we protect voting rights, in which he says: “Only by passing comprehensive voting rights legislation can we live up to th[e] responsibility” to protect… Continue reading

The “Portman problem” is now also the “Gonzalez problem”

September 16, 2021, 7:38 pmalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, primariesNed Foley

Earlier today, I did a post explaining why, if the goal is to reduce the risk of Republicans repudiating the result of a valid victory in the 2024 presidential election by the Democratic candidate, the highest electoral reform priority for… Continue reading

Democrats, democracy, and “the Portman problem”

September 16, 2021, 9:40 amalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, political parties, primaries, theoryNed Foley

Can one party save democracy by itself? I don’t think so, but that seems to be the view of some, as nicely captured by Ed Kilgore in responding to my blog post How Best to End “Electoral McCarthyism”? Kilgore acknowledges:… Continue reading

“Ranked-Choice Voting as Reprieve from the Court-Ordered Map”

August 27, 2021, 7:16 amalternative voting systems, redistrictingRick Hasen

Benjamin Lempert in the Michigan Law Review. Abstract; Thus far, legal debates about the rise of ranked-choice voting have centered on whether legislatures can lawfully adopt the practice. This Note turns attention to the courts and the question of remedies.… Continue reading

“Ranked-Choice Voting Increased Minority Candidates’ Chances”

August 3, 2021, 12:55 pmalternative voting systemsDerek Muller

Steven John Mulroy at RealClearPolitics: “New York City’s first-ever citywide ranked-choice voting election presents a good opportunity to examine a concern raised by RCV opponents: whether the new system hurts racial minorities. Both the New York City experience and… Continue reading

Breaking round-robin ties

July 27, 2021, 8:53 amalternative voting systems, theoryranked choice votingNed Foley

The USA women’s soccer team is advancing out of the preliminary round-robin stage of competition based on a “goal differential” tiebreaker used to differentiate teams with the same win-loss records. “The United States finished second in Group G on the… Continue reading

Could you withstand the pressure?

July 25, 2021, 7:17 pmalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, primaries, theoryNed Foley

Two articles, one in The Atlantic and the other in The New York Times, discuss how first-term Representative Nancy Mace–a Republican from South Carolina–initially condemned Trump for causing the January 6 insurrection, only to backtrack since then.… Continue reading

Trump’s efforts to “primary” Cheney

July 23, 2021, 6:42 amalternative voting systems, election subversion risk, primariesranked choice votingNed Foley

Politico goes deep into the details of former president Trump’s concerted plans to oust Rep. Liz Cheney as revenge for her commitment to honest vote-counting. Particularly interesting are the efforts to change the rules to make it more difficult for… Continue reading

Tournament Elections with Round-Robin Primaries

July 20, 2021, 9:04 amalternative voting systems, ballot access, political polarization, primaries, theory, votingranked choice votingNed Foley

I’ve posted a draft of this paper on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: Round-robin voting uses ranked-choice ballots but calculates which candidates are most preferred by a majority of voters differently from instant-runoff voting. Like a round-robin sports competition, round-robin… Continue reading

“Maya Wiley: I lost the NYC mayoral race, but women and minorities win with ranked-choice voting”

July 12, 2021, 3:45 amalternative voting systemsDan Tokaji

WaPo op-ed: “In an unprecedented race held during a pandemic, with more than 30 candidates, a shortened election cycle and less name recognition than other top contenders, I came in third. But ranked-choice voting (RCV) was neither an… Continue reading

“Ranked-choice voting worked in New York. More places should use it.”

July 8, 2021, 11:51 amalternative voting systemsDan Tokaji

WaPo editorial.

“Why New York’s Election Debacle Is Likely to Fuel Conspiracy Theories”

July 6, 2021, 10:10 pmalternative voting systems, election administration, fraudulent fraud squadDan Tokaji

NYT: It has been one week since the New York City Board of Elections botched the release of preliminary ranked-choice tabulations from the city’s mayoral race, counting 135,000 dummy ballots that employees had used to test a computer system… Continue reading

Foley on Round-Robin Voting

July 6, 2021, 1:39 pmalternative voting systemsDan Tokaji

From Today’s Morning Joe (and Ned’s three–tweet thread).

“In New York City, did ranked-choice voting let the wealthy override the working class?”

July 6, 2021, 8:59 amalternative voting systemsDan Tokaji

From Ben Lempert’s Monkey Cage analysis: Using ranked-choice voting requires voters to gather and consider a lot of information…. The research confirms that ranking several candidates is challenging.Scholars have also found that well-off White voters have more information about… Continue reading