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1:17

Thumbtack today. I

1:19

hate that I only have two choices. I

1:22

hate that I only have two choices. Hey

1:24

y'all, you're listening to Explain It To Me, the

1:27

show where you call 1-800-618-8545 with

1:30

your questions and we find you answers. I'm

1:34

John Quillen-Hill. And

1:36

I guess you could say today's question ranked high on

1:39

the list of things to talk about. Hello,

1:41

my name's William. I live in Richmond, Virginia.

1:44

And my question is, why

1:47

is ranked choice voting not a

1:49

thing, really, in

1:52

the United States and a lot of places? And

1:55

what would it take to make it a thing? take

2:00

for us to get there? Is it actually better?

2:02

Everyone, you know, it says, Oh, I hate that

2:04

I only have two choices. I hate that I

2:06

only have two choices. But the, to my mind,

2:08

the only way to get rid of that would

2:11

be to implement ranked choice voting. But

2:13

then as soon as that comes up, people go,

2:15

Oh, no, no, no, that's too complicated. That's too

2:17

complicated. So is it

2:19

actually would it help? When

2:28

did you first hear about ranked

2:30

choice voting? Like, how did you become aware of it?

2:33

Um, that is a good

2:36

question. I have no idea. It was

2:39

years ago. And I actually did get

2:41

to vote before we left New York. I

2:43

got to vote in the election for

2:46

Mayor Adams. Oh, it's

2:54

hard because that is like the that

2:56

is maybe the most prominent example

2:58

of ranked choice voting in the

3:00

country. And it resulted in what

3:02

is possibly the most like indicted

3:05

mayor of New York ever. So

3:07

it's not a glowing endorsement. I was so

3:10

excited to vote in that election. I didn't

3:12

even rank him. So it can't blame me.

3:15

In Richmond, where William and his fiance live

3:17

now, the city council considered adopting ranked choice

3:20

voting in 2022. He was

3:23

super into it. But the city

3:25

council, not so much. Then

3:28

there was pushback against it for

3:30

that reason of like, it

3:32

might be confusing for like lower

3:35

information voters. And also I

3:37

think there was just kind of some skepticism among

3:39

people who historically have been

3:41

disenfranchised to be like, what

3:43

kind of voting shenanigans are you guys trying to

3:45

pull on us this time? Like, I like we're

3:47

not gonna fall for it. And

3:50

if you look closely at how ranked choice

3:52

voting works, you can sort of see how

3:54

they come to that conclusion. It's

3:56

a different kind of voting system. Instead

3:58

of just choosing one for your one

4:00

vote, you can rank a number of candidates based on

4:03

how much you like them. I

4:08

was recently talking to my fiancé the other day, who

4:11

has obviously heard me go on and on about

4:13

this forever. And she was like, I... It

4:16

was kind of confusing, William. And I was like,

4:18

no, no! Oh,

4:22

no! But she was kind

4:24

of like, I don't know, like, it was something about seeing all the

4:26

Scantron bubbles, you know what I mean? It was just like... I

4:29

suppose for some people it could be like,

4:31

you know, the 2000s hanging

4:33

Chad on steroids kind of thing. Oh, gosh.

4:35

Oh, what if I... What

4:38

if I... Can I bubble all

4:40

of them in? Can I vote for people twice? Can I

4:42

give them extra votes? Like, it's like, no, no, no, none

4:44

of that. I'm

4:46

willing to change my mind for sure. If someone gives

4:48

me a better solution, then absolutely. But

4:50

every time someone tries to break the two-party

4:53

log jam just through sheer force, or

4:55

like, with the centrist, we're going to be

4:57

the third common sense, like, no, they know

5:00

they're just playing spoiler. So the

5:02

only way to eliminate that problem is if

5:04

people can genuinely vote their conscience while also

5:07

having a backup, right? Like,

5:09

I probably wouldn't vote for Kamala Harris if

5:11

there was a real left-wing party, but

5:14

I would for sure rank her second, right? Like, that

5:16

would be an easy call. So

5:19

how does ranked choice voting work and

5:22

could it solve our political gridlock? That's

5:25

today on Explain It To Me. The

5:30

really cool thing about working at Vox is that

5:32

all of my coworkers are just so

5:35

smart and nerdy about a lot of

5:37

things. And I mean, nerdy

5:39

as a compliment here. So

5:41

I knew there would be someone in the newsroom that I could

5:43

talk to about this. Enter

5:46

Dylan Matthews. Dylan

5:48

has been at Vox from the very beginning

5:50

and is excellent when it comes to doing

5:53

big, deep dives. In fact, a lot of

5:55

you probably recognize his voice and his work

5:57

from other Vox podcasts. Some

5:59

of that... deep reporting Dylan has done is

6:01

about both sides of the rank choice

6:03

voting debate. Okay

6:06

so you and I both live

6:09

in DC where voters recently said

6:11

yes to rank choice voting. When

6:14

did you first hear about the

6:16

concept of rank choice voting? Like

6:18

when did it you know come into

6:20

your consciousness? So I

6:22

think I first heard about it pretty young.

6:25

So I think you and I were both

6:27

relatively young when Bush v. Gore happened. Oh

6:29

yeah. But one of the

6:31

big things in that election was it was

6:34

incredibly incredibly close. Only a

6:36

few hundred votes separated them in Florida, a

6:38

few thousand in New Hampshire where I was

6:40

living. And in both

6:42

New Hampshire and Florida the number of people

6:44

who voted for Ralph Nader who was running

6:46

sort of a left-wing third party campaign, more

6:49

people voted for him than the margin by

6:51

which Bush beat Gore. And so I

6:54

think a lot of people had the thought

6:56

of man it wouldn't have been nice if

6:58

those Nader voters had voted for Gore and

7:00

then he would have defeated Bush in the

7:02

general election. And I

7:04

ran into rank choice voting as kind of

7:06

a way to systematize that. That

7:09

it was a system in which you could still

7:11

vote for candidates like Ralph Nader if you thought

7:13

that Al Gore was not left-wing enough but

7:16

it wouldn't wind up accidentally electing

7:18

a right-wing candidate. Explain

7:20

to us for those who

7:22

don't know what is ranked choice

7:25

voting? In ranked choice

7:27

selections instead of selecting one person you rank

7:29

all of the candidates in the order that

7:31

you prefer them. So

7:33

the way it works is that when

7:35

you tallied up all the first choice

7:37

votes no candidate has a

7:40

majority then the candidate with the least

7:42

number of first choice votes is eliminated and

7:44

all of their votes are reallocated based on

7:46

what those voters put as their second choice.

7:49

And then you do that until a candidate has a majority.

7:52

It's also sometimes called instant runoff

7:54

voting which is describing that method

7:56

of you sort of run

7:58

an election and then you eliminate a candidate. it and then

8:00

you run it again as if they're eliminated and so on

8:03

and so on until you have a winner. Okay,

8:06

so let's try to explain this with an example.

8:08

Say, you know, we're in the office and we're

8:10

trying to figure out what we all want to

8:12

have for lunch that day. And the

8:15

options are pizza, tacos,

8:17

sushi and Ethiopian

8:19

food. Under ranked choice

8:21

voting, if one of them wins more than

8:23

50% of the vote outright,

8:25

they'd win. But because there are so

8:27

many options, we might not have a

8:29

clear winner. What happens

8:31

next? So let's imagine

8:34

that the main contenders here are tacos

8:36

and pizza. You have maybe 40% first

8:40

choice votes for pizza, 40% for tacos, and then

8:42

maybe 15% for sushi and 5% for Ethiopian. Yeah.

8:50

Because the truly great options sometimes

8:52

get lost. Ethiopian's amazing. So

8:55

let's say that I really want Ethiopian

8:57

food, but I know it's not as

8:59

popular as some other options. If

9:02

we're just going for the thing that gets

9:04

the most first place votes, I might be

9:06

tempted not to vote for Ethiopian, but to

9:08

vote for, say, pizza because I prefer pizza

9:10

to tacos. And it seems like pizza and

9:13

tacos are the two front runners

9:15

here. And I don't want to spoil

9:17

my ballot. I don't want to hurt

9:19

pizza and elevate tacos accidentally. So

9:22

in ranked choice,

9:24

I can still vote for Ethiopian.

9:26

And then when Ethiopian gets eliminated, my

9:29

vote for it will be reallocated to pizza.

9:31

And so I don't have to worry about

9:33

accidentally helping tacos. Is

9:36

this a new idea? Were they doing

9:38

ranked choice voting at all in

9:41

history? Like, I don't know, did people get popes this

9:43

way? I don't actually

9:45

know about that. Did people get popes this way? I

9:47

don't know. I'm not. I don't know anything. I need

9:49

to watch Conclave is what this is telling me.

9:53

So this is a quite old

9:55

system. I think there are

9:57

papers where Thomas Jefferson is writing

9:59

a book. about the theory behind this. And

10:03

some of the most important mathematical theory

10:05

behind voting systems comes from this guy,

10:08

who's a fascinating figure, named the

10:10

Marquis de Condorcet, who

10:12

is a French aristocrat who was very caught

10:15

up in the French Revolution and

10:17

wrote a bunch of papers on

10:20

how voting systems where you rank candidates

10:22

might work. Since it was

10:24

a period where they'd killed the king, they were

10:26

trying to figure out how to build a democracy

10:29

out of nothing. But it's been adopted

10:31

in a few places. It's been

10:33

the voting method in Australia and in Ireland

10:36

for a very long time. OK,

10:40

now we know how ranked choice

10:42

voting works, but does

10:44

it actually work? That's

10:47

next after the break. Support

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out more. We're

13:11

back. You're listening to Explain It To Me. I'm

13:14

John Gwen Hill. Today

13:16

on the show, we're answering our listener,

13:18

William's question about ranked choice voting. Why

13:22

are some people really strongly

13:24

for it while others are

13:26

really strongly against it? Why

13:28

is it so divisive? Yeah,

13:31

I feel in a weird place in that I am

13:33

ambivalent in that I think there

13:35

are very good arguments for it and very good arguments against

13:37

it. But you're right, people get very

13:39

passionate about it. So the core

13:42

idea behind it and the core appeal

13:44

is what I was explaining earlier about

13:46

being able to vote for people without

13:48

being a spoiler, that the

13:50

current system really pushes you to vote

13:52

for one of the two major

13:54

parties. Say you're a conservative

13:57

Republican, but you don't like Donald Trump.

14:00

If you vote for a third party candidate

14:02

who isn't Donald Trump, you're mostly

14:04

helping Kamala Harris. And maybe

14:06

you don't like Donald Trump, but you also don't want

14:08

to help Kamala Harris. Marine Choice voting

14:11

is a way for you to express that preference.

14:14

I think there's also been a lot of

14:16

hope that it would reduce political polarization

14:18

because right now you

14:21

have very heavy incentives toward negative campaigning

14:24

since you're just trying to get people to vote for you and

14:26

not the other person. From this, you'd

14:28

also be competing for second and third place

14:30

votes. And so I think people

14:32

who think politics has gotten too polarized, it's

14:34

gotten too divisive, sometimes gravitate

14:36

toward this idea as a way

14:39

to incentivize politicians to do more

14:41

positive campaigning, to appeal

14:43

less to partisans. So

14:45

those are the arguments in favor. I think

14:47

there are a number of arguments against. I

14:50

think the first is just that

14:52

it's confusing. And this

14:54

is fair enough. Studies that sort

14:56

of look into how Marine Choice voting has

14:58

worked in practice tend to find the places

15:00

where I think the

15:02

two main factors are more older people and

15:05

more sort of minority communities, I think in

15:07

particular immigrant communities, tend to have more, a

15:10

higher rate of errors. These errors

15:12

can come from phenomena known as

15:14

ballot exhaustion and over-voting. Ballot

15:17

exhaustion refers to a case where someone

15:19

votes for fewer candidates than they can.

15:22

So let's say there are eight candidates and I

15:25

only rank five of them, then

15:27

my ballot would sort of have less influence

15:29

depending on how many rounds the election goes

15:31

than someone who ranked all eight. My

15:33

ballot would have been exhausted early. And

15:36

over-voting refers to when someone

15:39

uses the same ranking multiple times. So if they

15:41

rank multiple candidates as number one or number two

15:44

or number three, that's over-voting and

15:46

it can lead to the ballot being thrown

15:48

out because when you're tallying the votes, it's

15:50

not clear who the person meant

15:52

to vote for and it's hard to get an

15:55

accurate tally. And

15:57

so I think there's been some solid critique

15:59

from people saying... saying older

16:01

people and people with limited English

16:03

skills, and they have a

16:05

right to a voice too, and creating

16:07

a voting system that's unnecessarily

16:09

complicated sort of limits their

16:11

ability to have political voice. Another

16:14

is the evidence has not borne

16:17

out the idea that ranked choice

16:19

voting sort of makes politics nicer

16:21

or reduces polarization. And

16:24

I apologize, my explanation for this involves

16:26

a little bit of math. Ooh,

16:29

not my poor day, but I trust

16:31

you. So our buddy,

16:33

the marquee to Condorcet from

16:36

the French Revolution. Our bestie.

16:39

Our bestie, Condi. He

16:42

came up with this concept that's

16:44

come to be known as the Condorcet winner. And

16:47

his idea is that in an election

16:49

where you're ranking people, ideally

16:51

the person who should win is the person who

16:54

would beat every other candidate head to head. There

16:56

might not be a person like this, but

16:58

there might be. And

17:00

ranked choice voting, the way it's implemented

17:03

in the US, does not

17:05

pick the Condorcet winner always. The

17:07

Condorcet winner sometimes is the person who gets

17:09

last because they're kind

17:11

of moderate and don't inspire lots of

17:14

people. Oh, that makes sense. That makes

17:16

sense. And they get eliminated and their

17:18

votes get redistributed. Dylan gave me

17:20

an example of this from a 2022 special

17:23

election in Alaska where they used ranked

17:25

choice voting. Mary Patola,

17:27

who is the current Congresswoman from

17:30

Alaska, is a Democrat. And

17:32

she won due to ranked choice voting

17:35

because it was a three-way election with

17:37

her, a guy named Nick Begich, who

17:39

is just sort of like a normal

17:41

Republican, and Sarah Palin, who is something

17:43

else. Yeah, that's the personality right

17:45

there. And so Nick

17:47

Begich was the Condorcet winner. In a head-to-head

17:49

race, he would have beaten Sarah Palin. In

17:52

a head-to-head race, he would have beaten Mary

17:54

Patola. But he

17:56

got eliminated first, and more

17:58

of his votes went to the Democrats. then to

18:00

Sarah Palin, and so the Democrat wound up winning. And

18:03

if you're a Democrat, you can look at that and say,

18:05

like, hey, this is great. We want to put in an

18:07

election in Alaska. That's wild. But if you

18:09

care about reducing political polarization and

18:12

you want to encourage Republican

18:14

candidates to be less MAGA, for Democratic candidates to

18:16

attack for the center, this might not be what

18:19

you want. But if this is what you want,

18:21

ring choice voting doesn't typically do that.

18:24

It doesn't always favor that candidate. When

18:27

we were talking to William, it was clear

18:29

that one of the reasons he likes ranked

18:32

choice voting is because he thinks that it

18:34

could reduce political polarization. But

18:36

you're saying that it can increase

18:39

the political divide. How?

18:43

So I think the flaw from

18:45

a polarization perspective comes in the

18:47

way that the system uses rankings.

18:50

And often, the sort of

18:52

moderate candidates who aren't

18:55

objectionable to anybody, but also don't

18:57

make anyone particularly excited, don't

18:59

get a lot of votes in the first round. Maybe

19:02

40% of people like one really extreme

19:04

left-wing candidate and 40% of people really

19:06

like one extreme right-wing candidate. And then

19:08

the moderate person gets 10%, because

19:11

they don't excited either side too much.

19:13

And I know that it doesn't add up to 100. But

19:15

if those are the three candidates, then the

19:19

moderate gets eliminated first under

19:21

ranked choice voting. And they don't have any

19:23

chance of winning. It's ultimately a

19:25

question of what you want the political system to do. If

19:28

you want it to find the person in

19:30

the middle who is going

19:32

to be acceptable to both liberals and

19:34

conservatives but govern in a way that

19:36

excites neither of them, then you're

19:38

going to want something other than ranked choice voting.

19:40

It seems like it doesn't do that. But

19:43

I have a friend who's pretty left-wing

19:45

who likes ranked choice voting precisely because

19:47

he thinks it increases polarization. That

19:50

his model of American politics

19:52

is we need a

19:54

leftist to take over the Democratic Party.

19:57

And then we need the Democratic

19:59

Party. to win after that. And

20:01

he sees this as

20:04

a way to disadvantage sort

20:06

of mealy-mouthed centrists, Democrats,

20:09

and advantage relatively left-wing

20:11

ones, precisely because they might get more

20:14

of the vote in the first round

20:16

and won't be eliminated early. There's

20:19

no science of which of those is the right kind

20:21

of system to want, but they are

20:24

very different visions of what politics is for. Yeah,

20:27

I'm interested in who tends to be less

20:29

of a fan of ranked choice voting because,

20:31

you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, oh,

20:33

party establishments probably hate this. Like, that is,

20:35

I would think no matter what side of

20:37

the aisle you're on, if you are part

20:39

of a big party apparatus, you probably are

20:41

not a fan of this. Yes, that's exactly right.

20:43

And I think in DC in

20:45

particular, the Democratic Party in DC was

20:47

very, very strongly opposed to this ballot

20:49

measure. And partly that was

20:52

because it was bundled with a reform

20:54

that said that independents can vote in

20:57

the Democratic primary. And the Democratic Party

21:00

cares a lot about sort of who gets to

21:02

decide who wins its primaries. Doesn't like the idea

21:04

of independent voters going and doing that. But I

21:06

think also it does

21:08

encourage there to be more candidates because

21:10

you can vote for candidates without spoiling

21:13

things for other ones. And

21:15

if you're a party apparatus, you kind of

21:17

like there to be a limited number of

21:19

candidates, ideally limited to the ones that you

21:21

like and they're loyal to you. And

21:24

so it can be threatening that way. I think

21:26

in practice, it has historically been a kind

21:28

of left wing thing. When I was first

21:30

hearing about it, the places that

21:32

did it were Cambridge, Massachusetts, San

21:35

Francisco, Burlington, Vermont. These

21:37

are sort of some of America's great left wing

21:39

cities. And recently

21:42

that started to change. In

21:44

Alaska, for example, voters approved a ranked

21:47

choice voting initiative in 2020. But

21:49

this year, they considered whether or not

21:51

to repeal it. The vote

21:54

was really close, so close that it

21:56

still hadn't been called by the time

21:58

we uploaded this episode. But that

22:00

is not the first state I would have guessed 10 years

22:03

ago would adopt this. I think

22:05

part of what's happened is that there are

22:08

a few very wealthy funders. There's

22:10

Catherine Murdock, who is married to Rupert's

22:12

son. I guess she would

22:14

be like the Tom Wam scam in

22:16

the family tree of the Murdocks. Who

22:19

will get a kiss from Daddy? Yes, she

22:22

got a kiss from Daddy and

22:24

used it to fund some rank

22:26

choice initiatives around. So it's, I

22:28

think, sort of centrist donors who

22:30

don't like traditional parties want

22:32

to support a reform that they

22:34

think will make politics nicer and less partisan.

22:37

I want to talk about DC a

22:40

little bit. I just ran into one

22:42

friend who was anti, and his reasoning

22:45

was that it was going to dilute

22:47

the black vote in DC even

22:50

more. What was it he was picking

22:52

up on? Because that, I was like, oh, what?

22:55

Like that... It's really bad when you say it

22:57

like that. Yeah, yeah. I was like, wait,

22:59

what? Well, and you've lived in

23:01

DC long enough that you've probably heard people talk

23:03

about the plan, right? Yeah. Yeah.

23:06

So for people outside DC, this is

23:09

sort of an idea, conspiracy theory slash

23:11

thing that is genuinely happening that you

23:13

sometimes hear older black residents of DC

23:16

talk about as the plan to displace

23:18

them, bring in younger, richer white people

23:20

and sort of turn the chocolate city

23:22

over to white gentrifiers. And

23:25

I can totally see how ranked choice voting feels

23:27

like a tool of the plan. It's

23:31

sort of main advocates tend to be

23:33

kind of like white progressives on the

23:36

council. It tends to be

23:38

opposed by higher ups in the

23:40

Democratic Party who tend to be sort

23:43

of older, black, maybe loyalists going back

23:45

to the Mary and Barry days. They

23:47

view this as a threat to sort

23:50

of the political institutions that they spent

23:52

generations building up. And I

23:54

think there's a real thing in there too, which

23:56

is they're representing a lot

23:58

of older black retirees. parties, and

24:00

we have real evidence that

24:02

older people and people

24:05

of color or regions

24:07

and precincts with higher populations of

24:10

those people tend to see more

24:12

errors with rank choice voting. And

24:14

so I think if you care about the

24:16

influence of those populations, it's not unreasonable to

24:18

look at rank choice and say, like, this

24:20

is confusing. And I

24:22

think it's very reasonable to look at the evidence

24:24

and say that this would in fact reduce black

24:26

political influence and that you're disturbed by that. So

24:29

recently, voters in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada,

24:32

Oregon, they all voted against introducing

24:34

some form of rank choice voting.

24:36

Does that seem like a trend?

24:39

Yeah, I was sort of surprised by how sweeping

24:41

the rejection of it was in those states, especially

24:44

because it won by a ton here in D.C.

24:47

And I think there's a few things to

24:49

point out there. One is there's been some interesting

24:51

research on ballot measures that finds that people have

24:53

a bias to know that even

24:57

when they're structured in different ways

24:59

so that what you would think

25:01

is the yes position is the no position, just like saying

25:03

the word no, people tend

25:05

to like more than polling picks up

25:07

typically. Oh, we're like toddlers that way.

25:09

We're like toddlers. Or I think people just have

25:11

a status quo bias. They like the world as

25:13

it is for the most part, and they're afraid

25:16

of change. So I think that might be part of

25:18

it. But I think also people,

25:20

especially in complicated things like this, often look

25:22

to leaders who they trust, and those

25:24

leaders tend to be in political parties. And

25:27

I think that can be harmful for these

25:29

measures that are sort of aimed at reducing

25:31

the power of political parties. In

25:34

Colorado, for instance, Michael Bennett, who's

25:36

a popular Democratic senator there, he

25:38

was urging people to vote against this. Vote

25:41

no on 131. It's bad

25:43

for our democracy. It's bad for Colorado. I

25:46

think that was influential on a lot of Democrats

25:48

voting there, that they

25:50

might not know a lot about this proposal and

25:52

might not have time to learn, but they know

25:54

they like Michael Bennett and they know they trust

25:57

him. So people like that going out

25:59

on the air. I think has an

26:01

impact, especially on things that are complicated like

26:03

this. Like, it's not abortion where like everyone

26:06

knows what their opinion of it is. It's

26:10

complex and new and people I

26:12

think often defer to people they

26:14

trust. After

26:17

the break, a dramatic example

26:19

of ranked choice voting in action.

26:23

I don't think they ever released the inner

26:25

ballots, but I would be fascinated to see

26:27

what happened the year it was Moonlight vs.

26:29

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29:12

We're back. We've been talking

29:14

a lot about how ranked choice voting

29:17

works or doesn't work in politics, but

29:20

it isn't only found at the ballot

29:22

box. Ever heard of

29:24

a little thing called the Heisman Trophy? If

29:26

your answer to that question is no, actually, I

29:29

haven't, it's a prize they give to

29:31

the best college football player each year. Those

29:34

winners are chosen using a type of

29:36

ranked choice voting. And same

29:38

with recipients of the Cy Young Award for

29:40

Major League Baseball pitchers. It's

29:43

also used in one big contest that

29:45

a lot of people have feelings

29:49

about. One

29:52

use case that I find really interesting is that

29:54

it's used at the Oscars. So

29:57

for picking best picture in particular. members

30:01

of the Academy will rank movies.

30:04

And I find that interesting because

30:06

the sort of forgettable ones get

30:08

eliminated first because they have the

30:10

lowest number of first choice votes,

30:12

it does seem to

30:14

push them maybe toward more interesting best

30:16

picture choices than they might otherwise have

30:18

made. Remember, the rankings

30:20

only come into play if there's no

30:22

majority winner after the first round. If

30:25

all the voters loved, say, the 2010

30:27

hit movie Shrek Forever After and it

30:30

won in a landslide, rankings

30:32

wouldn't come into consideration. I

30:35

don't think they ever released the inner ballots,

30:37

but I would be fascinated to see what

30:39

happened the year it was Moonlight versus La

30:41

La Land. Oh my god, there's a lot

30:43

that I want to know about that Moonlight versus

30:45

La La Land. I've got a lot

30:47

of questions about that one. That was amazing.

30:51

I am so mad that I left my

30:53

watch party. We walked out and while we

30:55

were in the cab, all the madness happened.

30:58

Well, I remember being really upset. I was like,

31:00

La La Land, Moonlight was so

31:02

good. I wept in the theater, what?

31:04

That cinematography and I was like, dang.

31:07

And then just and the

31:09

Oscar goes like, no. La

31:11

La Land. Yeah. And

31:15

just everyone's face, like tag yourself.

31:17

I'm Ryan Gosling. It was madness.

31:20

I'm sorry. No. There's a

31:22

mistake. Moonlight, you guys won

31:24

best picture. Moonlight won.

31:29

This is not a joke. I'm afraid they read the wrong thing.

31:33

How do you feel about the results

31:35

of best picture, especially because it's like

31:37

ranked choice voting? What are your thoughts

31:39

on how they've been lately? I

31:42

would have expected because ranked choice sometimes

31:45

eliminates very moderate appealing to

31:47

everybody candidates in politics early.

31:49

I would have expected that

31:52

to happen in the Oscars.

31:55

They seem to find a lot of

31:57

movies that seem completely inoffensive and not

31:59

that exciting. exciting, like Coda, and

32:02

give them Best Picture anyway. So

32:05

I've mostly been sort of surprised at how

32:07

little it's changed things. That being said, I think

32:10

an interesting year that I would love to

32:12

see the ballots for is 2019

32:14

where Parasite won. And

32:17

Parasite is a really weird movie to

32:20

win Best Picture. Almost

32:22

no non-English movies win. It's

32:24

like very political and about class. And

32:26

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the

32:28

kind of movie that you need a

32:30

weird voting system to win. Yeah,

32:32

I'm almost like, does the Academy know this

32:35

movie's about them? Like,

32:37

do you know? Yeah.

32:40

Interesting. I

32:42

remember just being shocked that it won because I just

32:44

on the grounds of like, this is too good a

32:46

movie to win Best Picture. Okay,

32:48

so we got another question about

32:50

ranked choice voting from Marcus

32:52

in San Francisco. San

32:55

Francisco has sort of, ever since I

32:57

moved here, done ranked choice

32:59

voting. And I'm curious why a

33:01

more national stage or even state

33:03

stage hasn't taken this approach to.

33:07

I find it makes the election more

33:09

fair for smaller candidates and allows a

33:11

truer choice of who the majority is.

33:14

Why isn't ranked choice voting a

33:16

bigger thing? What would it

33:18

take for it to become more widespread? When

33:22

we've had really big changes in

33:24

the way the US does really

33:26

anything, when we adopted income taxation,

33:28

which required a constitutional amendment, when

33:31

we did women's suffrage, when we passed the poll

33:33

tax amendment or lowering the voting age to 18

33:35

from 21, all of those were

33:39

constitutional amendments and they were

33:41

all kind of trans-partisan things. Suffrage

33:44

was not a Democrat Republican issue.

33:46

There were suffragists and anti-suffragists within

33:48

both parties. And

33:50

I think it would require

33:52

a kind of bipartisan coalition of

33:55

people pushing for a new system to get

33:57

over the hump. I

34:00

can see an election with rank

34:02

choice that produces a bizarre

34:05

seeming outcome, like a winner no

34:07

one saw coming, or like a

34:09

really delayed count because it's more complex

34:11

to tally the results. I

34:13

could imagine problems like that being

34:15

really, really harmful and really stunting

34:17

progress toward rank choice voting because

34:21

people sort of are already afraid of change,

34:23

and so anything that makes it seem unstable

34:25

and risky is really worrying. People

34:29

already question election integrity.

34:33

I'm over on, I call it blue ski,

34:35

I know it's blue sky, but the blue

34:37

anon over on threads, they are, I'm like,

34:39

y'all need to stop. People

34:42

don't trust elections anymore, and maybe that would

34:44

or wouldn't help. I don't know. This

34:46

is the other thing that's interesting about rank choice

34:48

in the US is the reason

34:50

rank choice is possible here is that the

34:53

way we do elections is so radically decentralized

34:56

and it's just run by individual counties

34:58

and states and cities all

35:00

running at their own way with their own rules about

35:02

sort of who can get a mail-in ballot and when

35:04

the mail-in ballots have to be in by and how

35:06

they're counted and how do you

35:08

rank the candidates and what's the order that

35:10

the candidates are on in the ballot. None

35:13

of these decisions are made centrally. I

35:16

pity people covering US elections in other countries because

35:18

you can't just say like, this is the way

35:20

US elections work. There's a way that

35:22

like Maricopa County elections work and then there's a

35:25

way that DC elections work and they are not

35:27

the same way. So we

35:29

have this first pass the post style of voting,

35:31

which is what we do now, and

35:34

there's rank choice voting, which has popped up

35:36

in various states. Is there a

35:38

secret third thing? Like what are the indie

35:40

darlings of voting? Are there other options? Sure.

35:43

Oh man. Are there other obscure voting

35:45

systems? This is a whole corner of Wikipedia

35:47

that you can fall down. I love a

35:49

rabbit hole. Sure. Let

35:52

me identify two. So

35:54

one is what's called approval voting. And

35:57

with approval voting, the idea is that instead

35:59

of ranking... you just vote for

36:01

the candidates who you think are acceptable to you. So

36:04

maybe I think that Kamala Harris or

36:06

Cornel West would be an okay president.

36:09

Or maybe I'm just the world's most

36:11

understanding guy and I think both Kamala

36:13

and Donald Trump would be acceptable. And

36:16

so then you check both of them and

36:18

then they add up who got the most checks. And

36:21

I think this has a similar

36:23

pitch to ranked choice voting where it's

36:26

meant to encourage people

36:28

to seek sort of

36:30

additional votes rather than attacking other candidates.

36:33

It hasn't been tried a whole lot in practice,

36:35

I think it's interesting, but we just need

36:38

to know more. The other one, which

36:40

I think makes a lot of sense for

36:42

legislatures is what Germany and New Zealand do,

36:45

which is called a multi-member proportional.

36:48

You elect everybody from their individual district

36:51

and then you check and you see

36:53

if the seats that

36:55

they want in the district match their vote

36:57

share. And if they don't, parties that are

36:59

underrepresented get additional seats. So

37:02

the idea is that there are

37:04

still districts, people are still representing

37:06

specific geographic locations and their specific

37:08

needs. And I think that's a

37:11

way to sort of encourage smaller

37:13

parties to represent a broader swath

37:15

of the political spectrum that

37:17

also doesn't sort of concentrate all the

37:20

power in the party and still sort

37:22

of gives people in like

37:24

rural areas the ability to pick their own

37:26

representative who is someone from

37:28

their area who understands their particular needs.

37:31

Something that William mentioned is that when

37:33

he lived in New York, there was this

37:35

thing called fusion voting. So like someone in

37:38

New York could vote for Kamala Harris, but

37:40

that vote for her would count under

37:43

the banner of the working families party

37:45

versus the Democratic Party. Can

37:47

you talk a little bit about that? How does

37:49

that factor into all of this? Sure,

37:52

so fusion voting is a really interesting

37:54

and very New York sort

37:56

of- Concrete bung

37:58

hole. Just kidding. I love New York. For

38:02

whatever reason, New York has this long history

38:04

of fusion voting. I think some of the

38:06

early stuff with it happened during

38:09

FDR that he and some allies

38:11

set up something called the American Labor Party that

38:13

endorsed him for president, but was meant to be

38:15

like, are you a socialist or a communist who

38:17

can't bring himself to vote for a Democrat? The

38:20

American Labor Party. You can vote

38:22

for these Democratic candidates, but on a different line.

38:25

So yeah, so fusion voting is an interesting idea.

38:28

And I think in states that allow it

38:30

has sort of allowed different

38:32

parties other than Democrats and Republicans to

38:34

build themselves up. Lee Drutman, who's

38:36

a political scientist who thinks about these things a lot,

38:38

has become sort of a big advocate of fusion voting

38:41

on the grounds that it might create more

38:43

state and local parties. So if

38:46

I'm in DC, I could run as

38:48

a Democrat slash Democratic socialist

38:50

or a Democrat slash B&B so

38:52

that people know I'm a Democrat. And that's

38:55

really important in DC, but also I'm this

38:57

other thing. And I can

38:59

use that to signal another set of priorities to

39:01

people. The sense that

39:03

I get, and you know, I've admittedly have

39:05

had this sense. It's like, okay, ring choice

39:08

voting will be like the panacea and it

39:10

will solve all of our problems. And

39:13

why do we why do so many of us

39:15

think of it that way? The

39:19

writer Scott Alexander has this nice

39:22

sort of binary that he sometimes

39:24

talks about of conflict theory versus mistake

39:26

theory. And that sort of conflict

39:28

theory is thinking of problems as like,

39:31

we could have a fair economy but

39:33

those bastards, the billionaires, the government

39:35

or whatever, like are, and we just need to

39:37

fight them and win. And mistake theory is looking

39:39

around and being like, this is a system that's

39:41

broken. I should like repair it the way I

39:43

would repair my plumbing. And I think a

39:46

lot of sort of analytically minded people of all

39:48

kinds tend to be mistake theorists. And

39:50

I think ring choice voting really appeals

39:53

to a mistake theory part of your brain

39:55

that you're like, politics seems really broken. How

39:57

could we fix it? Well, here's a technical

39:59

thing where we like, align the plumbing and

40:01

it works better and it flows better. But

40:03

I think the danger of that worldview

40:05

is democracy

40:08

is not really like plumbing. It

40:12

might not be the case that you can

40:14

just fix some technical things and come out

40:16

the other side with a work in democracy.

40:19

Maybe the issue is the opinions

40:22

people are coming in with, the way they react

40:24

to other people with different opinions, the

40:27

ways that they come to live

40:29

and come to an understanding with each other. And

40:32

that's all just really, really hard

40:34

and personal and defies attempts to

40:36

patch it with a technical fix.

40:42

Dylan Matthews, thank you so much for explaining

40:44

this to us. Anytime. OK,

40:51

time to call William back. Well,

40:55

the last time we talked, it was before November 5th.

40:59

Anything big happened? Any updates since

41:01

then? No, haven't

41:03

heard anything. Yeah, it's been real quiet. I

41:06

medically sedated myself and I just woke

41:08

up this morning. That's why I'm so

41:10

sleepy. Did

41:15

you see that a lot of voters

41:17

actually rejected ranked choice voting this year?

41:20

No. Oh, OK. Well,

41:22

broke some views. I saw

41:25

that I think DC passed

41:27

it. Yes, we did. We

41:29

did. On the other

41:31

hand, yeah. On the other

41:33

hand, wah, wah, wah. Yeah,

41:35

voters in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada,

41:37

and Oregon rejected adopting it.

41:40

Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. You know,

41:42

it's the 50 nifty United States. We've

41:45

got a lot of different things going

41:47

on. What a

41:49

bloodbath for my chosen

41:52

hobby horse. Oh, geez.

41:55

Wow. I

42:00

think from our conversation, the biggest thing on your

42:02

mind is whether or not ranked choice

42:04

voting will fix political polarization. Or

42:08

at least help. I wasn't expecting it to be

42:10

imaginable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at

42:12

least help maybe sometimes.

42:15

And OK, it's

42:17

hard to know for sure. But

42:21

there are some instances where ranked choice

42:23

voting can actually increase division among

42:25

voters. I got

42:27

to find a new thing. No, you don't. You don't. But I

42:29

want to know how you're feeling. You don't have to find a

42:31

new thing. But I want to know how you're feeling right now.

42:34

It's just like it is hard because,

42:37

as you know, despite the jokes

42:39

about not knowing what happened on

42:41

November 5, I do know

42:43

what happened. Yeah. And I

42:46

mean, that's part of what I was thinking. That

42:48

was what made sense in my brain was like, I

42:50

know some people like to be extreme. I

42:53

want to give people the opportunity to do that

42:56

safely and then still go for

42:59

the compromise candidate. But I guess that makes

43:01

sense. If the math doesn't math,

43:03

as they say, then yeah, then

43:06

the condorsé, I believe, is how you pronounce

43:08

it, gets

43:10

kicked to the curb accidentally. So

43:14

how you feeling? What you thinking? There's

43:17

something about hearing it laid out. Yeah. From

43:21

a source I trust so much that is just

43:23

devastating. Absolutely

43:26

devastating. Good, but

43:28

good. This is good. I

43:34

mean, butts. Butts,

43:37

butts, butts. Ooh, I see

43:40

that. All butts. Butts,

43:43

butts, butts. I mean, I'm trying to I

43:45

know that there's this is this is this

43:47

is for math consumption. I'm trying not to

43:49

swear too much. You can cuss

43:51

if you want to. We can always beep and delete.

43:54

OK, great. Um,

44:02

okay. I'm gonna be a different person

44:04

from now on who doesn't who doesn't

44:07

shout this at anyone who will listen But

44:10

I desperately Then

44:12

I but I need a new thing. I need a

44:14

new thing. I don't think you need a new thing. You

44:16

can still know No,

44:18

no, no, no that I want

44:21

to replace this thing If

44:23

this thing is not as good as I

44:25

if this thing is not as like I didn't again I never

44:27

thought it would be like the magic magic

44:29

potion that like fixes all the problems But I

44:32

did think it would help and I thought it

44:34

would like get us closer to something resembling A

44:37

multi-party, you know place where people have

44:39

actual choice blah blah blah blah If

44:42

this isn't the thing that will necessarily do

44:45

that. I I just got to find the

44:47

thing that is better for that. I Guess

44:52

on the one hand it feels sad

44:56

because I think

44:58

I want to believe the best

45:01

in people and There's

45:03

something about there's something really alluring

45:06

about Thinking well if

45:08

we just had a slightly better system We

45:10

as a species could coax the best out

45:12

of each other more consistently, right? But

45:15

it sounds like maybe we

45:18

can't and that sucks

45:22

But it just means doing the

45:24

work of persuasion rather than tinkering

45:27

I guess And

45:29

the thing is rank choice voting isn't

45:31

necessarily a bad option. It's just we

45:34

got a lot of stuff going on and It's

45:37

gonna take a lot of different stuff to

45:39

fix it one one arrow

45:41

in the quiver perhaps situationally,

45:44

yes, yes, yes Well,

45:47

I want to thank you for calling in

45:49

because I learned a lot. Yeah and Elections

45:52

are always wild times, but it feels

45:54

like there's a lot of hashtag discourse

45:57

going on and I'm glad you brought

45:59

your question to us Yeah, I

46:01

feel like the other episodes I've listened to, I feel,

46:03

I was like, is it, is this gonna have a

46:05

happy ending? I feel like they've

46:07

all had, this is like pretty, pretty

46:09

swell or whatever. And

46:11

this is, and I'm, I'm happy that this is like, no

46:15

man, like, sorry. And

46:17

I'm like, okay, very good. Thank you so much.

46:30

If you, like William, have a question, something

46:32

you'd like us to explain to you, please

46:35

give us a call. Our number is 1-800-618-8545.

46:40

We really love listening to these.

46:42

So seriously, call in. This

46:46

episode was produced by Sophie Lalonde

46:48

and fact-checked by Caitlin Pinsymoug. It

46:51

was edited by Jorge Just with help from

46:53

Natalie Jennings. Mixing sound design

46:55

and engineering by Christian Ayala. Our

46:58

supervising producer is Carla Javier, and

47:01

I'm your host, John Glynnehill. I

47:04

want to give special thanks to you, our

47:06

listeners, for making the show possible. By

47:09

calling in your questions, by sharing it with

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your family and friends, and by

47:13

supporting Vox's journalism through our membership

47:15

program. Learn more and

47:17

join today at vox.com/members. Thanks

47:21

for listening. Talk to you soon. Oh,

47:30

I want to tell you something else cool we learned. Yeah.

47:33

The Academy picks the best picture

47:35

via ranked choice voting. Of course,

47:38

those elites, those insufferable elites. But

47:43

that makes total sense. Yes. I

47:45

just imagine them with a monocle and a cigar and a

47:48

top hat. Exactly. Exactly. And

47:51

some people would really pull it off. Like for

47:54

some reason, my first thought was Sigourney Weaver. Oh, she was

47:56

on a top hat. No. So

47:58

do a booing with that woman in a top hat. That's

48:00

stat. And I'm at a monoclonal cigar.

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