Ranked Choice voting may have exciting possibilities... but I'm not so excited about the nearly-standard use of Instant Runoff Voting to count Ranked Choice ballots. Ranked Choice ballots can be counted in many ways. 1/6
Kelly Born @KellyKborn
4 Sep 2022
1/ I continue to be really excited about the possibilities of Ranked Choice Voting, especially after the Alaska election.
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While folks on the left may be happy about this particular result, I think it's worth being clear that Begich was very likely the Condorcet winner in this election. That is, Begich probably would have won both Begich-Palin and Begich-Peltola runoffs. 2/6
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As far as I could tell from looking at the Alaska elections website a few days ago, I don't think Alaska has made the full ranking data of the ballots available, so I can't verify this. 3/6
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Instant Runoff Voting tends to produce results that are very dependent on how the candidates are distributed across the political spectrum, and also most strongly emphasizes the top end of voters' rank lists. (So does FPTP.) It's also pretty susceptible to strategic voting. 4/6
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In this particular case, if a relatively small number of voters whose real preference was Palin-Begich-Peltola had instead strategically voted a Begich-Palin-Peltola ballot instead of a Palin-Begich-Peltola ballot, Begich probably would have won instead of Peltola. 5/6

Sep 4, 2022 · 5:50 PM UTC

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I'd prefer voting systems that really supported multiparty democracy, including things like mixed-member-proportional legislatures. But I probably lean against accepting the unpredictability of cross-party IRV (or, worse, California's way) over the current 2-party system. 6/6
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