This video is brought to you with support from the Center for Election Science
I’m Mr. Beat
Last year, I released a video about why I thought the Electoral College is terrible.
I don't release a lot of opinion videos.
And many of you did flip out when I released that one.
But this is another opinion video
and it's also about voting.
It's about plurality voting.
We have plurality voting in the United States, but it sucks.
So here's a video why plurality voting sucks.
First of all, what is plurality voting?
It’s when a citizen only gets to vote for one candidate, and the candidate who gets the most votes, aka a plurality, wins the election.
Ok, so why is plurality voting terrible?
Number one. It only allows you to share your opinion about one candidate.
You have opinions about everything. Think about it.
You probably have strong opinions about types of music, or coffee chains, or even different toothpastes.
And your opinion gets to be heard about those things due to participating in the economy.
You choose what songs to listen to on Spotify, what coffee chain to satisfy your caffeine addiction, and what toothpaste will help you keep your breath so fresh and so clean clean.
And just because you like one toothpaste, doesn’t mean you hate all the others. You may like all these coffee chains, so you buy coffee from all of them.
But what about voting for those running for public office?
Well, lots of people run for President.
At the time of this video’s release, 880 Americans have officially filed to run for President in 2020.
One of them is a friend from college. His name is Ryan Von Bevern. Look him up.
He has some great ideas and is a great candidate, but chances are, you’ve never heard of him.
As a matter of fact, you likely would think that many of those 880 candidates are terrific leaders who have terrific platforms.
Even if you don’t follow politics closely, you likely already have opinions about more than just two of the 880 candidates running for President in 2020.
Like, I’m sure you not only have an opinion about this candidate (DT) and this candidate (JB), but you also already have opinions on this one (BS) and this one (EW).
Once the election is closer, you’ll likely have opinions on other candidates.
And you may very well share that opinion with friends and family or online, but with plurality voting, only your opinion about one candidate gets heard.
Number two. It forces voters to pick the “lesser of the two evils.”
Plurality voting makes it so that we often only have two crappy choices when we go to the voting booth.
Ok, so we can vote for a third party, or we can even write in our own name, but because we are often indoctrinated into thinking third parties or write-in candidates have no chance at all to win, we feel pressured to pick between two choices that we are often not that excited about.
And so, we vote out of fear. Sure, we WANT to vote for the candidate we really like,
but instead we compromise by choosing the less bad frontrunner because we’re scared the more bad frontrunner will win.
Voter turnout for the American presidential election hasn’t been over 60% since the 1960s.
In the 2016 election, despite many Americans fearing BOTH of the frontrunner candidates, just 56% of Americans showed up to vote.
More than 111 million Americans did not show up to vote, and I’d argue that most of them were not motivated to.
They simply didn’t care. One big reason why they didn’t care?
They didn’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Number three. It leads to polarizing candidates winning.
Most people have political beliefs that would align them somewhere near the middle of the political spectrum.
However, plurality voting can lead to candidates who fall near the extremes of that spectrum.
Due to the fact that voters can only vote for one candidate,
candidates in the middle of the spectrum tend to lose support. This is because moderate candidates
have their vote divided from either side.
Candidates on the left pick up support from left-leaning moderates and candidates on the right pick up support from right-leaning moderates, leaving the candidates in the middle with few votes, despite the fact that they likely have broader overall appeal than the partisans.
So instead of getting coalition-building candidates with broad appeal, we get polarizing candidates who care more about their side than the majority of Americans.
Simply put, getting rid of plurality voting would help the United States become less polarized.
Number four. It shuts out third party candidates
Plurality voting leads to a two-party system by creating a barrier to entry for new candidates.
These new candidates would normally have lots of support, but since voters are scared to vote for their favorites, they don’t give them a chance.
Because plurality voting leads to a two-party system, only a narrow range of ideas from a broad range of ideas are actually represented.
Third party candidates get shut out, even if they are great candidates with ideas the majority of Americans agree with.
So if plurality voting is terrible, what are the solutions Mr. Smartypants Mr. Beat?
Well, here are three possible solutions...approval voting, score voting and instant runoff voting.
Approval voting is pretty straight forward.
It’s a voting method in which voters get to pick as many candidates as they want. The candidate with the most votes wins.
Score voting, often called range voting, is a voting method in which voters give each candidate a score.
The scores are then either added or averaged, and the candidate with the highest total wins.
Instant runoff voting, often called ranked choice voting or alternative choice voting, is a voting method in which voters rank as many candidates as they want in order of preference.
Ballots are first counted for each voter’s top choice.
If a candidate gets a majority of the vote based on first-choices, the candidate wins.
If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the voters who picked the eliminated candidate have their second choice candidate votes counted.
This process keeps going until a candidate gets a majority, and when the field is reduced to two, it’s an instant runoff, where one or the other has to win due to uh...math.
Before the 2016 election, researchers asked 2,000 Americans to fill out a survey in which they essentially voted for the presidential candidates.
The researchers split them into two groups. The first group got to vote on a short set of these four candidates.
The second group got to vote on a long set of these eight candidates.
Using plurality voting with the short set and long set, Clinton was the winner and Trump was second place.
Using approval voting with the long set, Clinton was in a statistical tie with Sanders, who wasn’t even included in the short set.
Using score voting with the long set, Sanders won.
Using instant runoff voting, Clinton won, Trump was second, and Sanders came in third.
So third party candidates benefited the most when using alternative methods to plurality voting.
So….approval voting, score voting, or ranked choice voting? Which one is the best method?
I honestly don't know.
All three have merit. I think that might be a good idea for another video.
But what I do know is that all three of those voting methods are way better than plurality voting.
If we want to truly be the republic we say we are here in the United States,
we need to truly have representative democracy.
It's way past time to get rid of plurality voting.
Thanks to the Center for Election Science for their support for this video.
The Center for Election Science is a nonprofit organization doing great work trying to make the United States more like the republic it was supposed to be.
Since 2011, they have been fighting for better ways for Americans have their voices heard by advocating alternative voting methods.
In 2018, they led a campaign to make Fargo, North Dakota, the first American city to use approval voting for its elections.
The Center for Election Science is doing great work, and if you agree with this video, you should support them.
So what do YOU think about plurality voting? If you don’t like plurality voting, what is the best method to replace it?
Approval voting, score voting, or instant runoff voting?
Let me know in the comments below.
Maybe we could have a vote on which one is the best voting method.
But what voting method should we use to determine the best voting method?
Oh crap, would that be a paradox?
Anyway, thanks for watching.
