Voting Systems

The recent U.S. Presidential election shed some doubt on the voting system used.  The election results did not match the popular vote, and once again, people are calling for abolition of the Electoral College and a move to a pure popular vote system.  I have discussed this before, so I won't cover everything here, but now that the final numbers are out, I want to revisit a few things.  I also want to discuss voting systems in general, as well as how the U.S. Presidential voting system works specifically.

We all know Donald Trump won,  so I won't go into that.  Hillary Clinton got the most popular votes though.  First let's look at the numbers: Trump got 62,980,160 popular votes, while Clinton got 65,845,063 popular votes.  That put Hillary ahead by 2,864,903 votes.  That is almost 3 million.  As I mentioned before though, 3 million is hardly a relevant number in this case.  If there were 3,000,001 voters, a lead of 3 million would be a huge deal.  If there were 100 billion voters, 3 million is so small that it would likely be much smaller than the voting or counting error.  Here, proportion is the only thing that matters.  Hillary lead the popular vote by 2.2%.  Statistically, this is nothing.  This is such a small percentage that it could easily be the result of voting or counting error, or it could be the result of more nefarious schemes like vote buying.  (For the record, I am not making any accusations.  Until proven otherwise, I will assume that Hillary did indeed lead the popular vote by around a 2% margin.)  The point here is, 2.2% is easily within reasonable statistical error, and thus the popular vote should be considered a tie.  In addition, contrary to popular belief, Hillary did not win the popular vote.  Hillary did not win anything.  The Constitution requires an actual majority to count as a win.  Hillary's 2.2% or almost 3 million vote lead put her at 48%, which is 2% short of winning anything.  If a true popular vote system was used, The Constitution dictates that if a candidate does not get a majority of the votes, Congress will elect the President, and with a Republican Congress and 45.9% of the popular vote going to Trump, Congress would have elected Trump even if they did not want to.  Otherwise, they would have had riots on their hands (and worse, they would not be reelected).  What it comes down to is, no one won the popular vote, so there is nothing unfair at all about Trump being elected.

This still does not sit well with some people (admittedly, mostly liberals, who it would not have sat well with if Trump has won with 90% of the popular vote).  Why should elections be allowed to turn out like this, and why should The Constitution not let Hillary win with only 48% of the vote, if no one else got that much?  People wonder this because they don't understand the voting system.

The U.S. voting system is not one where you vote for who you want to be President.  It is one where you select who you don't want.  A vote for Hillary does not say that you support Hillary.  It says that you don't support everyone else.   The popular vote in the recent election does not suggest that a majority, or even more people, want Hillary to be President.  It suggests that 52% of people are against Hillary being President and 54.1% are against Donald Trump being President.  If anything, the popular vote indicates that neither Hillary nor Trump should be President, because a majority voted against them.

There is currently a misguided movement for states to select their electoral college based on the national popular vote, instead of the popular vote for that state.  The reason I say this is misguided is that it explicitly violates the intention of the voting system setup in the Constitution.  This new system would give whoever got the most popular votes the Presidency, whether or not that person had an actual majority.  While it is unlikely, it is entirely possible that a candidate could win with only a tiny percentage of the popular vote.  For example, given 20 candidates, one could win with barely over 5% of the popular vote.  With the more typical 5 candidates, it would only require barely over 20% of the popular vote to win.  20% of the popular vote means that 80% of the voters voted against you.  Under no circumstances should a person with only 20% of the popular vote become President, because a supermajority voted against that person!  This is the reason The Constitution requires an actual majority at the national level for Presidential elections.

Is there a way to fix this?  Not with a one-vote-per-person system.  One vote per person will always be votes where people select against all but one candidate, instead of voting for who they want.  This system also has other flaws.  For example, third party candidates pretty much never win elections.  This one-vote-per-person system, combined with the requirement for a solid majority is what forces the U.S. into a two party system.  As I have already demonstrated, eliminating the majority requirement is a horribly poor decision.  So, maybe we can do something about the one-vote-per-person part.

There are definitely options here, but none of them are perfect, and none of them are simple.  Additionally, the best ones are expensive.  One option is a multiple vote option, where each person votes for everyone that he or she is not opposed to.  In this election, that could have made a significant difference, as many potential Trump voters instead voted for 3rd parties, while most potential Hillary voters actually voted for Hillary.  It is likely, though not proven, that Trump would have gotten a majority of the popular vote, had 3rd parties not diverted votes.  This diversion of votes by 3rd parties is always a concern during Presidental elections.  The 1996 election saw enough Republicans voting for Ross Perot to hand the election to Clinton, instead of Dole.  Had we used a "who can we tolerate" system, Dole (or even Perot) would have stood a very good chance of winning that one, but a bunch of people who did not want Clinton wasted their votes on Perot instead, and the mere fact that votes can be wasted is a travesty.  The Founders of our nation devised the best voting system they could come up with at the time, but they were far more limited by their technology than we are now.  There is no reason we cannot improve the situation today.

The system I just suggested still has some serious flaws.  What if I really wanted to see Perot elected in 1996, but I was willing to put up with Bob Dole, if it came to that?  The system I just described does not give priority to anyone.  So, maybe Perot gets 51% of the popular vote with this system, but Dole gets 52%.  If those who really wanted Perot had not also voted for Dole, then Perot would have won (but then they would be risking Clinton, their least favor candidate, winning).  Of course, we don't even know how many people favored which candidate, so Dole wins.  Admittedly, this is still better than the current system, and it is way better than the popular vote system that is currently being pushed.  At least Dole was acceptable to a majority of people in this scenario, even if he might not have been the first pick.  Can we improve this?

This system is good, and it does not significantly increase the cost of elections.  We can do better though, also without increasing costs much.  We could let people vote using priority values.  Each person can vote for some number of candidates, but they have to number them by priority, and no two can have equal priorities.  In the 1996 scenario, I could vote #1 priority for Perot and #2 priority for Dole, to indicate that I can tolerate Perot or Dole, but I would prefer Perot.  Now, Dole can get 52% and Perot can get 51%, but if Perot is #1 priority for more people than Dole, Perot still wins.  In another case, we might see 3 candidates, where 35% of the people want one, 35% of the people want the other, but nearly everyone would prefer the third over the major candidate they don't want.  Using our current system, the third party would not get many votes, while the 30% that prefer the 3rd party candidate would vote for one of the two major candidates, just to prevent the other from getting elected.  This is a horrible situation, as it guarantees that someone that a majority does not want will get elected, even with a national popular vote system.  Using this priority system, people could confidently vote for their major candidate at the same time as expressing their rejection specifically of the other major candidate.  In this case, the third party would win, and while no one would be 100% satisfied, everyone would be content with the final outcome.  This system essentially allows voters to compromise, which is not only great for improving election outcomes, but it is also extremely good for reducing the current polarization of our major political parties.

There is a better way still.  This system will almost certainly make elections cost several times what they currently cost, because it requires multiple elections.  This is an elimination system.  The first election would be a candidate selection election, occurring shortly after the party primaries.  This election would include all candidates just like our current elections, and it would allow people to vote for as many candidates as they want (with the one stipulation that votes for all candidates will be discarded and ignored).  The top scoring candidates would then be the only candidates in the next selection.  The number of candidates selected is flexible, but fewer than 4 would probably be too few, and more than 6 would probably be too many.  The exception here is, candidates with less than 50% approval should never continue to the next round, even if fewer than 4 candidates move on.  This will eliminate candidates that most people specifically don't want, as well as unpopular candidates.  It will keep candidates that significant numbers of people would be happy with.  If there are more than 2 candidates in the second election, voters can vote for as many candidates as they want again, with the same stipulation that votes for all candidates are not counted.  Again, candidates with less than 50% are discarded, then the top few remaining candidates go on to the next round.  At this point, the selection criteria should depend on the number of remaining candidates.  If there are more than 3, then the top 3 are selected, otherwise the top 2 are selected.  In a top 3 election, everyone gets 2 votes, and if more than 1 candidate remains after eliminating those without a majority, a top 2 election is held (if, at any point, only 1 candidate remains, that candidate wins).  In a top 2 election, everyone gets 1 vote, and the winner wins the election.

This system is expensive, because it requires multiple elections.  It is, however, about the most accurate system possible.  The maximum number of elections depends largely on how many candidates can be selected from the first election.  If only 5 candidates are selected, and then 1 candidate is eliminated at each other election, 5 elections could take place.  Of course, this could be reduced.  My suggestion is that a maximum of 5 candidates are selected from the first election (fewer can always be selected, if less than 5 get a majority approval).  This gives the people the option to select from among some of the most popular 3rd party candidates.   The second election should select a maximum of 3.  In this case, 3 is sort of a magic number.  If only 2 are selected, it will almost certainly give an unfair advantage to the major parties, encouraging people not to vote for 3rd party candidates they like, in case it would result in a situation where it was a low probability 3rd party vs a major candidate they don't want.  The final election should be one-vs-one, and voters get only 1 vote each.  This is only 4 elections, and that is only the worst case.  If the first election only has 3 candidates with more than 50% votes, then it goes straight to the 2 selection vote, reducing it to 3 elections.  Of course, in theory, in the initial election, one very popular candidate might be the only candidate to get a majority of votes, in which case the election would be decided (due to a technicality in The Constitution, allowing Congress to pick the day of the final election, a second one would probably still have to be held on a date picked by Congress, as a formality).

This elimination system would provide a number of benefits.  The obvious benefit is that narrowing the options in steps would give the best possible representation of the will of the people.  It would put 3rd party candidates on close to equal ground with major party candidates, allowing the people to feel more confident voting for the candidates they actually want, instead of just voting for the one they feel they have to, so the one they don't want does not get elected.  In addition, it would help people to gauge what everyone else wants, which is very conducive to effective compromise.  For example, maybe you notice, in the first election, that your favored candidate only barely made it to the next round, while the other candidates easily made it.  Now you can choose to either keep pushing for your favored candidate, even though it is clear that the majority is favoring others and like yours as the worst option they can tolerate, or you can choose to move your support to your second favorite, who has significantly more support.  For you, your second best may be almost as good, which would make a good compromise.  In our current system, or any other one election system, you won't even know what compromise might be an option until it is too late.  This ability to compromise is not only useful in more accurately representing the will of the people in elections, it may also foster compromise in other places, reducing some of the toxic political polarization we are currently seeing.

The problem with our current voting system and the national popular vote alternative is that very few people recognize that these systems are all based on the idea of voting for one person to exclude those you don't want.  This necessarily produces voting strategies that dramatically favor a two party system and rarely result in outcomes that are entirely satisfactory to a majority.  A popular vote system that could allow a candidate to be elected without a majority vote by a wide margin is even worse than our electoral college system, which tends to only be off by a few percent of the popular vote and only rarely.  (For evidence, see how elections work in other countries, where a strict majority is not required.)  We need a system that allows people to express more than just who they don't want to win.

There is no reason that U.S. Presidential elections should have to rely on such a poor system as what we currently have, nor is there any reason we should tolerate a popular vote system that could allow a candidate to be elected without a majority of the popular vote.  A one-vote-per-person system is far too limited to really understand what the people want, and with modern technology it would be trivial to implement an improved system.