Dear Readers, We've nearly climbed out of our depressive hole that we fell into with last week's General Election, so while we struggle with those last few panting breaths to do so, I thought I'd turn the time over to a faithful reader Evan Stewart who has a "what if" scenario for us to contemplate. Hey, anything to distract us from the reality of the situation, right !? Consider this an exorcism of the election and also a perfect way to turn back to the Oscar race! Here's Evan! -Editor
Like most Americans, I’ve spent the past week or so processing the results of Tuesday’s election, which has produced one of the biggest upsets in the history of American politics. My Facebook feed has been littered with posts urging for the repeal of the Electoral College, usually written by liberals upset that for the second time in sixteen years the candidate that earned a plurality of votes will not occupy the Oval Office. In going through the arguments for and against the Electoral College, I was pointed to a series of videos highlighting the problems with the “First Past the First” (also known as the "Majority Rules" voting system). And in doing so, I’ve come to the conclusion that a better solution than a straight national popular vote might be for the U.S. to adopt a ballot that is similar to that of an institution very close to our hearts: the voting system that the Academy Awards has used to select its Best Picture since 2009.
What if the U.S. voted like the Academy?...
Before explaining my point, let’s just review the pitfalls of “First Past the Post” (FPTP) voting systems. In this voting system, there are a given number of candidates and each voter selects one. The candidate with a plurality of votes becomes the winner.
In the beginning of FPTP voting systems, there might be several plausible candidates in a given election. Over time, however, supporters of candidates on the fringe of FPTP systems realize that their candidate is likely to lose and will invariably opt for a candidate more likely to win. The result is a two-party system where voters feel obligated to pick one of the two main choices for fear that a vote otherwise is a “wasted” vote.
The Academy, on the other hand, uses a ballot known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV). In this system, there are more choices (even if some are more likely to win) and voters are able to rank those choices in order of which films they’d most like to see awarded the Best Picture title. Someone might say, for instance, that they’d most like to see Brooklyn named Best Picture, followed by Spotlight, then The Martian, and so on (aka My 2015 Oscar Ballot).
Votes are tallied according to their #1 pick and the #1 pick with the fewest votes is eliminated. The ballots in its pile are then reallocated to the #2 pick on each ballot. In Round 2, the film with the fewest ballots is again eliminated and its ballots are again reallocated. At this point, some ballots may be on their #3 pick. The process is repeated again and again until one picture crosses the 50% threshold and is named Best Picture. (For a review of the Single Transferable vote, see the video below.)
There are a number of positives that could result if the U.S. were to adopt the STV system:
- It would negate the need for primary elections: One of the biggest complaints of our current system is that elections seem to drag on forever. Hillary Clinton, for instance, announced her candidacy in April 2015. She’d been effectively campaigning for months if not years ahead of that. All of this, of course, was to prepare for primaries and caucuses that were to began on February 1, 2016. These contests regularly take place in small, swing states—states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. The momentum gained in them carries over to primaries in larger states. By the time that those larger states—Texas, Florida, New York, California—have their say, each party’s nominee is pretty clear. Under an STV system, there would be no real need for presidential primaries. Just like the Best Picture race includes five to ten nominees, the General Election could include Clinton *and* Bernie Sanders from the left, Donald Trump *and* Ted Cruz *and* John Kasich from the right.
- No more picking “the lesser of two evils”: A defining complaint during the 2016 election was that many voters were discontent with both Clinton and Trump. With each party able to field multiple candidates under an STV system, voters would be more likely to find a candidate whose views closely align with their own. Prefer The Grand Budapest Hotel to Boyhood and Birdman? With STV ballots, you can express that choice.
- No more “wasted votes” to third parties: After the 2000 election in which Ralph Nader of the Green Party likely siphoned away thousands of sympathetic votes from Al Gore, many have held that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote that can sway an election toward a candidate who those third party voters would have been less likely to support. In an STV system, as under the Academy rules, a vote for a hopeless contender is not a wasted vote—you can vote for Beasts of the Southern Wild as your #1, realizing that your vote will likely be reallocated to your #2 or 3 or 4 pick. You can stick with your principles while (through your lower rankings) still having a say on which of the likelier contenders you prefer.
- It favors consensus: The Best Picture winner doesn’t necessarily go to the film with the most rabid fanbase. For instance, in the 2015 awards (awarded in 2016), The Revenant had loud and very vocal supporters, but was divisive ultimately lost out to the smaller film Spotlight, which was well-liked and therefore more highly ranked by more voters. In the same way, under an STV system, Clinton and Trump might have had the most #1 votes in the 2016 Presidential Election but could have ultimately lost out candidates that were able to scrape together #2 and #3 votes. One must wonder whether a system designed to build consensus might be better for policymaking in Washington than a system that breeds division.
- It should offer a net gain in satisfaction with the result: By electing consensus picks, an STV system should in most cases lead to an electorate that is happier with the results. It’s impossible to predict how an STV vote with this year’s candidates might have worked, but one might imagine that a candidates like Bernie Sanders. He would have been the first choice of many Clinton, the second choice of many more, and could have eked some high placement by supporters of Stein, Johnson, Kasich, or even Trump, and could have overcome his relative dearth of #1 votes. Comparing a Sanders win to the Trump win that we got, it’s easy to imagine that Clinton voters would be much happier, some Trump voters might be, and of course the Bernie Bros would be ecstatic.
- It is a less partisan solution than a “First Past the Post” national popular vote: Democrats have won seven out of the last eight national popular votes and a majority of overrepresented small states typically vote Republican in Presidential elections. Because of this, Republicans are very unlikely to support any effort to overturn the Electoral College if a national popular vote is the only alternative. They fear that population centers on the coasts, typically Democratic, would garner the candidates’ full attention in attempts to run up the voting tally.*** With a STV system, however, any highly partisan areas would have their votes diffused among several candidates from the given party. It would then behoove any candidate to visit as many different areas as possible to drum up support.
Of course, no voting system is perfect. There are many questions that would need to be answered about a Single Transferable Vote system. What would be the requirements for getting on the ballot and how could we keep it from becoming an untenable list of dozens of candidates? What would be the role for party conventions or platforms under the new system? Are Americans informed enough about politics to rank a handful of candidates? Would voters even understand the new process? I can’t profess to know the answers to these, but I am left wondering whether a Single Transferable vote system might give voters the Hollywood ending they deserve.
* In reality, this seems highly unlikely. Do the math and you’ll see that getting the approximately 60 million votes needed to win out of these population centers would require trips to several dozen large metro areas, many of which skew Republican. In fact, I would argue that it could likely result in more people being able to engage with the election than occurs now.