University of Colorado switches from approval voting to RCV
In September 2022, the legislative branch of the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder Student Government voted to adopt ranked choice voting (RCV) for student elections, beginning immediately with the elections of October 2022. CU Boulder had previously used approval voting, but switched to RCV after a number of issues plagued the Spring 2022 elections. A scandal involving bribery among some candidates led to their disqualification and the 2nd-place ticket of candidates received the nomination. That experience led to a number of election changes, including the switch from approval to RCV.
Ranked choice voting gives voters more power of expression in their vote, because most voters do, in fact, have different levels of preference between candidates. In a situation such as the CU scandal, RCV would have assured that the second-place ticket was, in fact, the next-preferred choice by the majority of voters. With approval voting, differences in preference remain unknown.
Going forward, CU students will have the most impactful method of expression for casting their votes. With the opportunity to rank candidates (or candidate tickets, in CU’s case), voters can express satisfaction with multiple candidates while also expressing their particular level of satisfaction with each. RCV recognizes that often those differences are significant and important to the voter. For a detailed comparison of approval voting and ranked choice voting, see https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/
As Americans wrestle with modern political challenges – extreme partisanship, distrust, fake news, lack of representation that reflects the whole electorate – many are examining the electoral system itself and recognizing that an update to our 18th-century model is in order. Colleges, universities, professional associations, and institutes are often the first proving ground for alternative voting methods. Their experiences demonstrate the value of these systems for public elections. Through this experience, ranked choice voting has emerged as the best alternative to the current winner-take-all system.
CU Boulder was the last remaining big university using approval voting. In 2017, Dartmouth transitioned from approval voting back to plurality voting as a natural disintegration due to bullet voting. This is because approval voting incentivizes strategic voting. Voters are savvy. They are naturally motivated to analyze how their vote will best help their most preferred candidate, and with approval voting, the best strategy is to vote for just that one. As a result, approval voting devolves back into a plurality result, with winners gaining office with less than majority support. For the whole unfortunate history of approval voting at Dartmouth, see The Troubling Record of Approval Voting at Dartmouth.
Ironically, the Dartmouth student body could have avoided that whole saga if they had heeded the lessons learned from their alumni association’s earlier experiment with approval voting. The AA used approval voting for its trustees elections for several years, but the problems finally led to its repeal, with an 80% vote to do so.
Similarly, in 2019, Princeton switched from approval voting to ranked choice voting, leaving only CU Boulder continuing with approval. With CU’s switch to RCV, the results from the university proving ground seem clear. Ranked choice voting is recognized as the best method available because it delivers majority winners with no incentive for strategic voting. For a list of campuses using RCV, see https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting-information/#rcv-in-campus-elections.
In the world of private associations, experiments with approval voting reveal similar results:
The largest and most important use of approval voting was in elections for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional association with more than 400,000 members. After adopting approval voting in 1987 the IEEE board voted to eliminate it in 2002. The Institute’s newsletter reported that about 80% of members were voting plurality-style for only one candidate. Rather than have some voters get a tactical advantage over others, it decided to accept plurality outcomes rather than a system prone to tactical voting.
– Excerpt from Why Approval Voting is Unworkable in Contested Elections
Ranked choice voting would have served the IEEE well, but being burned by one alternative method often leads to being “gun-shy” and simply reverting back to the old system that was equally bad. This is an important dynamic to consider as voters and legislators evaluate options for improving public elections today.
For high stakes elections, including any election for public office, a voting system should be straightforward for the voter and not incentivize strategic voting. Ranked choice voting fulfills these criteria while delivering majority winners and providing better representation of the community than our current system.
Photo credit: University of Colorado at Boulder under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
