Panel 3: Is Ranked Choice Voting Better or Worse than the Status Quo?

Most people agree that plurality voting is one of the worst ways to elect representatives. Is ranked choice voting a better option, or do its flaws outweigh its benefits?
Speakers:
Chase Oliver is the Libertarian candidate for U.S. President in the 2024 election. In 2022 he ran for U.S. Senate against Herschel Walker and incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock. Oliver was widely credited with causing the runoff election between Warnock and Walker. He advocates the adoption of Ranked Choice Voting to avoid future runoffs.
Phil Izon spearheaded the initiative petition to repeal Ranked Choice Voting in Alaska, which was used there for the first time in 2022. He has written two books critical of RCV and is writing a third. He is currently working on a petition to remove electronic voting machines from Alaska's elections. His background is in finance and marketing.
Duncan Siror is the Vice President of STAR Voting Action and a board director at the Equal Vote Coalition. He leads the STAR Voting Ohio chapter and educates marginalized and underserved communicates on the importance of electoral reform. Outside of his voting reform activism, Duncan works in IT as a network analyst.
Andy Jennings received his Mathematics Ph.D. in 2010 with a thesis on voting systems. He co-founded the Center for Election Science and served on its board for seven years. He has worked in Arizona toward legislation promoting alternative voting systems. This spring, he will be teaching a course at Arizona State University on mathematics and voting.
Note: Unfortunately, Duncan was unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances. Arend Peter Castelein stepped in for him last minute.

[@Mutex50]

The one thing I like about the top X runoffs in Alaska and soon Nevada is that it can put to light some of the problems of IRV that is harder to see than in municipal elections. In a purple state like Nevada where you can have 3 strong candidates, we are much more likely to see Condorcet failures.
Also, one good thing about IRV in Alaska is that Lisa Murkowski would not have won the Republican Primary, but she did win with this new system. She could have easily have lost though if Al Gross entered and became a spoiler.

[@trevinbeattie4888]

One of the other problems with RCV that was only touched on briefly here (32:52) but is covered more in Panel 4 is that of tabulation and auditing. RCV (or IRV) requires votes to be collected and counted centrally as you can’t determine which candidates should be eliminated until _all_ of the votes are in, so you can’t get precinct-level results and likewise can’t audit them at the precinct level. This presents a legal challenge in some states in addition to the logistical challenge because their laws or constitution may _require_ results to be counted at the precinct level. As is pointed out in the next panel, human (or machine) error can happen in any system but when the tallies are done across multiple precincts then errors have a far lower area of impact and are easier to correct than a state-wide error would have.

[@trevinbeattie4888]

This was a good discussion; I can see valid points from both the pro-RCV and anti-RCV advocates. These are important considerations for me since a proposal for RCV will be on my state’s ballot this November. (We tried to get STAR voting on the ballot, but it failed to get enough signatures. So for us it’s literally RCV or status quo.)