[EM] A rant about IRV and its recent history in Alaska

[Greg Dennis]

There's a lot to respond to here, but this part is simply false:

It's also possible that RCV spoiled in the 2021 New York City Democratic
> mayoral primary election, which was won by Eric Adams.  It eliminated Maya
> Wiley after the penultimate round of counting, and then counted Wiley's
> votes for either Adams or Garcia.  It's possible that Garcia was a spoiler
> and that majorities ranked Wiley over Adams and Garcia. (I don't know NYC
> political dynamics, but assuming a subset of voters pay attention mainly to
> candidates' gender & race, Garcia voters in that subset would tend to
> prefer Wiley over Adams, and Adams voters in that subset would tend to
> prefer Wiley over Garcia.)  But NYC didn't publish the voters' rankings, so
> the possibility that Garcia was a spoiler can't be checked, except perhaps
> by a "freedom of information" request to compel publication.


The CVR data has been published for years, and is still available here:
https://www.vote.nyc/sites/default/files/pdf/election_results/2021/20210622Primary%20Election/cvr/PE2021_CVR_Final.zip

And we know Adams was the Condorcet winner
<https://fairvote.org/rcv_in_new_york_city/>. There have been a number of
published papers using this data, easily discoverable online.



On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 2:27 PM Steve Eppley <seppley at alumni.caltech.edu>
wrote:

> RCV (a.k.a. Instant Runoff) clearly failed in Alaska in 2024 too.  The
> Republican Party learned an important lesson from the fiasco in August
> 2022: RCV can easily spoil.  So in 2024, one of the two Republican
> candidates who qualified for the general election dropped out to avoid the
> possibility of being a spoiler.  And the one who didn't drop out -- Nick
> Begich -- had similarly pledged to drop out if another Republican finished
> ahead of him in the primary election.
>
> A lesson they haven't yet learned is that the kind of pledge that Begich
> made -- to drop out if another Republican finished ahead of him in the
> primary election -- can lead to spoiling too, because the candidate who
> drops out might be the one who could win in the general election.  Suppose
> Begich had made that pledge ahead of the August 2022 election.  Then he
> would have dropped out to avoid the possibility of spoiling Sarah Palin's
> victory.  But it was Begich, not Palin, who a majority ranked over Democrat
> Mary Peltola in the August 2022 election.
>
> (Peltola's majority over Palin was very narrow.  That means RCV came close
> to electing the extremist.)
>
> In France in 2024 they didn't use RCV, but a similar dynamic led to
> similar pledges to drop out.  To avoid spoiling that would help the
> right-wing party win in the final round of elections, candidates of
> centrist & left-wing parties agreed to drop out if they finished no higher
> than third place in the penultimate round of voting, to avoid spoiling the
> other's chance of defeating the right-wing candidate.  That's the same
> mistake as in Begich's pledge to drop out if another Republican finished
> ahead of him in the primary election.  The candidate who finished third
> might be the one who can win, and in this case the candidate who ought to
> drop out is the one who finished second (or possibly even first).
>
> It's also possible that RCV spoiled in the 2021 New York City Democratic
> mayoral primary election, which was won by Eric Adams.  It eliminated Maya
> Wiley after the penultimate round of counting, and then counted Wiley's
> votes for either Adams or Garcia.  It's possible that Garcia was a spoiler
> and that majorities ranked Wiley over Adams and Garcia. (I don't know NYC
> political dynamics, but assuming a subset of voters pay attention mainly to
> candidates' gender & race, Garcia voters in that subset would tend to
> prefer Wiley over Adams, and Adams voters in that subset would tend to
> prefer Wiley over Garcia.)  But NYC didn't publish the voters' rankings, so
> the possibility that Garcia was a spoiler can't be checked, except perhaps
> by a "freedom of information" request to compel publication. (I wonder
> whether hiding the voters' rankings is a lesson learned by proponents of
> RCV after the Instant Runoff fiasco in Burlington Vermont in 2009.  After
> that fiasco, they changed its name from Instant Runoff to Ranked Choice
> Voting, so I also wonder whether the reason for the change of name was to
> try to hide its track record of spoiling.  And I wonder whether they say an
> RCV election didn't spoil whenever the evidence to check it is unavailable.)
>
> We can expect the Democrats too will eventually learn the lesson that RCV
> is prone to spoiling.  After that, I expect only one Democrat and one
> Republican will run in RCV general elections, plus third party or
> independent candidates who can't win and might be spoilers.  That seems
> like the existing two-party system... which might explain why so many
> Democratic & Republican politicians support (or don't oppose) RCV.  It
> would still have the same terrible flaw that any voting method that counts
> only one majority (or one plurality) has: the majority (or plurality) that
> gets counted can often be a coalition of minorities on different issues.
> That undermines majority rule, undermines politicians' incentive to support
> majority-preferred policies, prevents government policies from being
> stable, incites political polarization, and empowers extremists by making
> their supporters' votes needed by the rest of their coalition.
>
> Another possibility we could hope for, but which seems unlikely because it
> would require the Democratic party or the Republican party to place country
> over party, is that one of the two "big tent" parties would learn to
> completely "stand down" (not nominate a candidate) in elections they might
> not win, so that a "moderate" independent candidate could run and defeat
> the "greater evil" without a spoiler on the ballot to split the coalition
> against the greater evil.  We saw examples of this "stand down" strategy in
> Utah in 2022 and in Nebraska in 2024, when the Democrats chose not to
> nominate candidates for U.S. Senate... that allowed the independent
> candidates who ran (Evan McMullin in Utah and Dan Osborn in Nebraska) to
> assemble larger anti-Republican coalitions than any Democratic candidates
> had assembled in those states.  If those states had been swing states
> instead of solid red states, it's a good bet that the independent
> candidates would have won.  But good luck persuading the Democrats to stand
> down in a swing state or swing district, which would be the opposite of the
> "50 state strategy" that some of them advocate.  The "Democrats stand down"
> strategy makes sense not only in solid red states & districts where a
> Democrat would be a sure loser; it also makes sense in states & districts
> where the Democrat isn't a sure winner if election of the Republican would
> be catastrophic. (Two examples of catastrophes are Trump 2025 and
> single-party domination of all branches of a state government -- such as in
> Texas or Florida -- or all branches of the federal government.)  By a
> symmetric argument, the "Republicans stand down" strategy can make sense
> for Republicans in states & districts where an independent candidate has a
> better chance to defeat the Democrat than a Republican would have.
>
> If the Democrats hadn't nominated a candidate for President in 2024, I
> think it's likely that No Labels would have been able to persuade Larry
> Hogan to run.  Hogan was the popular two-term "moderate" Never-Trump
> Republican former governor of solid blue Maryland, and it seems likely that
> he would have been a Condorcet winner in 2024.  He declined No Labels'
> invitation because he knew the Democrats would nominate a candidate
> (expected to be Biden), which would have given Hogan no chance to win and
> only a chance to be a spoiler.  But in a Hogan versus Trump election with
> no Democrat on the ballot to split the anti-Trump coalition, Hogan could
> have been able to assemble a winning coalition: in addition to "lesser of
> evil" votes from Democratic-leaning voters, Hogan would have been favored
> by swing voters, moderate Republican voters, and some of the voters who
> vote R only because they've been led to believe the D party is socialist or
> whatever. (I think the only real questions about whether Hogan would have
> defeated Trump are whether too many Democratic-leaning voters would fail to
> vote for the "lesser of evils" and either abstain or "waste" their vote on
> a sure-loser third party spoiler, and whether donors would have adequately
> funded Hogan's independent campaign.)
> Years ago, an advocate of Instant Runoff presented empirical statistics
> (from Australia, I think) that seemed to show Instant Runoff doesn't spoil
> much in practice and rarely defeats a Condorcet winner.  But those
> statistics are misleading, because they neglect potential candidates who
> are deterred from running either to avoid being a spoiler or because
> Instant Runoff would create the false impression that they're very
> unpopular.  It also ignores the effect of voter preference information that
> the parties gain when STV Proportional Representation elections are run
> alongside Instant Runoff... information that can be useful for predicting
> Instant Runoff spoiling and avoiding the spoiling by standing down or by a
> party nominating only one candidate.  Particularly noteworthy is Instant
> Runoff's deterrent effect against potential Condorcet winners who would
> lose and appear to be very unpopular given Instant Runoff because they
> would be sandwiched between two other candidates, one of whom would be
> classified as a spoiler if the Condorcet winner chose to run & lose.
> An Instant Runoff winner who's said to be a Condorcet winner based solely
> on the candidates who chose to run and the actual votes cast, but who would
> have lost pairwise to a potential candidate who didn't run, should not be
> deemed the sincere Condorcet winner.
>
> Greg Dennis asks "why leave out the November 2022 election where RCV
> elected the Condorcet winner Peltola?"  Because we're not claiming RCV
> always defeats the Condorcet winner.  However, was Peltola really the
> *sincere* Condorcet winner in November 2022?  It's impossible to know for
> certain, because RCV may have deterred potential candidates from competing,
> or the primary election may have prevented potential candidates from
> competing in the general election.
>
> By the way, my definition of "spoiler" is narrower than RBJ's definition.
> He calls X a spoiler if X, by running, causes the winner to change from
> some Y to some Z.  I call X a spoiler if both of the following conditions
> hold: (1) X, by running, causes the winner to change from some Y to some
> Z.  (2) The number of voters whose order of preference has X > Y > Z
> exceeds the number of voters whose order of preference has X > Z > Y.  In
> other words, X is a spoiler if X, by running, causes the election of a
> "greater evil" of most of X's supporters.  We can also define a
> counterfactual spoiler: someone who would be a spoiler if s/he runs, but
> chooses not to run.  Similarly, we can define a counterfactual Condorcet
> winner: someone who would be the sincere Condorcet winner if s/he runs, but
> chooses not to run.
>
> Spoiling (which violates the IIA criterion) isn't necessarily bad.  For
> instance, if Scissors by running changes the winner from Paper to Rock, the
> additional preference information gained when Scissors runs may suggest
> Rock is better than Paper.  In this case, we should hope Scissors isn't
> deterred from running.
>
> The possibility of rock-paper-scissors preferences shows that some
> spoiling and violation of IIA is unavoidable for ANY plausibly democratic
> voting method. (That means any voting method that tends to reduce to
> majority rule when there are only two candidates.  Cardinal voting systems
> offer no escape from this tendency, because voters in the majority who
> prefer Paper over Rock have an obvious strategic incentive to vote the
> maximum for Paper and the minimum for Rock when only Paper & Rock are
> running, which is equivalent to majority rule.)
>
> --Steve
> On 12/5/2024 12:34 AM, Greg Dennis wrote:
>
> Why leave out the November 2022 election where Peltola was the Condorcet
> winner against Begich?
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2024 at 4:46 PM robert bristow-johnson <
> rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:
>
>> This is what we've learned from the 2-year history of Ranked-Choice
>> Voting in Alaska.
>>
>> The Instant-Runoff Voting method of RCV failed in Alaska August 2022 at
>> everything that RCV is supposed to do for us (as it also did in [Burlington
>> Vermont 2009](
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view)).
>>
>> Essentially, it was a spoiled election with all the bad things that come
>> with a spoiled election.  In August 2022, Sarah Palin was a loser whose
>> presence in the race materially changed who the winner was.  Had Palin not
>> run, Begich would meet Peltola in the final round and defeat Peltola.  (We
>> know this from the [tallies](
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y32bPVmq6vb6SwnMn6vwQxzoJfvrv6ID/view)
>> from the Cast Vote Record.)
>>
>> The definition of a Spoiler is a loser whose presence in the race
>> materially changes who the winner is.
>>
>> So then these voters for the spoiler, Palin, they find out that their
>> second-choice vote was never counted.  Their favorite candidate was
>> defeated and their second-choice vote was never counted.  If just 1 out of
>> 13 of the Palin voters that marked Begich as their lesser evil (there were
>> 34089 of them); if about 2600 of these voters voted tactically (the tactic
>> is called "compromising") and marked their lesser-evil (Begich) as their
>> first-choice vote, then Begich would have met Peltola in the final round
>> and beaten Peltola.
>>
>> They were promised that it was safe to vote for their favorite, Sarah
>> Palin, but by doing so they caused the election of Mary Peltola.  But they
>> prevented Begich from having a head-to-head with Peltola because Palin did
>> instead and lost.
>>
>> There were about 112000 voting GOP and 75000 Dem.  The GOP vote was split
>> and RCV promised that it would resolve the split vote correctly, but it
>> didn't.  IRV propped up the *weaker* of the two GOP candidates against
>> Peltola and that candidate lost.  If, instead, RCV had put Begich up
>> against Peltola, Begich would have won.
>>
>> They were promised that RCV would let them vote their hopes, not their
>> fears.  But they would have been better off voting their fears.  They were
>> promised their second-choice vote would count if their favorite candidate
>> couldn't get elected but that second-choice vote was never counted for
>> these Palin voters.
>>
>> More Alaskans, 87899 to 79461 (an 8438 voter margin), preferred Begich to
>> Peltola and marked their ballots saying so.  But Mary Peltola was elected
>> instead.
>>
>> This November, again, more Alaskan voters marked their ballots that
>> Begich is preferred to Peltola by nearly the same margin, 8354 (164117 to
>> 155763).
>>
>> Both times about 8000 more Alaskans said they would prefer Begich over
>> Peltola to go to Washington and represent the state.  And, both times,
>> Alaskan voters marked their ballots saying so.  Both times, Instant-Runoff
>> Voting was used.
>>
>> What was different?
>>
>> Sarah Palin was in the race in 2022 and not in the race in 2024.  And
>> different winners resulted.
>>
>> --
>>
>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>>
>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>
>> .
>> .
>> .
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>> info
>>
>
>
> --
> *Greg Dennis, Ph.D. :: Policy Director*
> Voter Choice Massachusetts
>
> e :: greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org
> p :: 617.835.9161
> w :: voterchoicema.org <https://www.voterchoicema.org/>
>
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-- 
*Greg Dennis, Ph.D. :: Policy Director*
Voter Choice Massachusetts

e :: greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org
p :: 617.835.9161
w :: voterchoicema.org <https://www.voterchoicema.org/>

:: Follow us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/yeson2rcv> and Twitter
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