Letters to the Editor
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Probably Definitely Maybe
I think it's odd that the 97,000 votes cast for Nader are a slam dunk for costing Gore the election, when you say "probably" for the following...
The 1992 race, starring Ross Perot, was also probably spoiled for George H.W. Bush, in Bill Clinton's favor.
Compared to Nader's 2.8 million votes received in 2000, Perot had over 19.7 million votes in '92 and around 8 million votes in '96 - that certainly cost the GOP candidates votes in those elections, had a bigger footprint in those elections. What cost Gore the election was Republican voter fraud in Florida - had Florida's vote been properly and fully counted (and had Gore insisted on that count), Gore would've won - he beat Bush in the popular vote nationwide. It was just Nader's bad luck that he was on the ballot in the state that had hijacked the vote, so it drew such close attention to the counts - like an electoral Vulcan neck pinch. Had Gore even carried his home state of Tennessee, with 11 delegates to the Electoral College...
TN
Bush: 1,061,949 (51.1%)
Gore: 981,720 (47.3%)
Nader: 19,781 (00.9%)
Which Gore lost by 80,000 votes, he'd have won the election both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College, and the Florida vote suppression drive of the GOP wouldn't have mattered. The GOP stole that election; Nader didn't spoil Gore's vote - he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The lesson shouldn't be: beware spoilers, or don't allow third parties to vote, or even change voting (and if people can't handle butterfly ballots, range voting will be quite beyond them). Rather, it should be count the votes that are cast, and run a strong enough campaign and be good enough of a candidate to allow yourself an electoral margin of victory.
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to -- Xrandadu Hutman
Actually I did read the article after I posted and regret my post.
However, I hope you might agree that the headline and taglines are misleading. I'll bet a bunch of people are not reading just because of that.
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regarding Nader....
If the Republican Party had not cheated, Gore would have been awarded the Presidency.
If Nader had not run, Gore would have been awarded the Presidency.
It's not an either/or. Nader was definately a spoiler moreover, it was known beforehand that that was a danger.
Of course Third Parties can run, I have voted Third Party myself in my life. But when you or I do, take responsiblity for the ramifications.
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Good enough for NewsTrust
Excellent article! Having given a few lectures on this subject I can confirm the information. I have posted this at NewsTrust.net for review.
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Preferential voting
Most of this is old news; nowadays, many Universities have introductory Math courses for Liberal Arts students that contain sections on voting. All of Poundstone's alternatives are mentioned there.
Very simply put, preferential voting (which is more often called Instant Runoff voting in the US, although one could be picky and point out that there isn't really a runoff, the voters cast their complete ballots at the beginning) is the best way to destroy the spoiler effect. It enfranchises minority voters and allows for the growth of third parties. It works in Australia, for example.
Proportional representation is good provided the set of positions to be filled is large enough. But say there were 5 places to be filled in each state. If your party gets fewer than 20% of the vote, your vote is wasted, and the spoiler effect is there, large as life. And even 5 per state would increase the US senate to 250 people, a 150% increase.
Of course, Arrow's Theorem says "nothing works," but a careful analysis shows that preferential voting only gives problems in extreme cases.
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Missing the larger point
Unfortunately, this article misses the larger point - voters are aware of the fact that their vote for a spoiler is, in effect, a vote for their second choice. Everyone who voted for Nader or Perot knew that they were, in effect, choosing Bush or Clinton; they simply wanted to avoid moral responsibility for their decision by pretending they voted for someone else. In essence, they wanted to be able to say, "Don't blame me, I voted for someone else." Granted, a few idiots didn't realize what they were doing, but that sort of idiocy can't be very widespread. Indeed, a few idiots voted for George Bush thinking they were voting for the father, but that effect didn't change the outcome - at least not in any way that a believer in voting can worry about. Don't blame the voting system, blame voters who intend to elect their second choice, but don't want to take the blame for it.
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thanks for the response, Farhad
Giving an automatic 10 to the preferred candidate and 1 for the non-preferred candidate does help with a lot of the strategy problems. Doesn't elminate them entirely, but we can't really find a PERFECT system.
I think my ideal (aside from changing to proportional representation) would be IRV administered by touch-screens. Bear with me here. You get a screen saying "Pick your first choice." You do. Then you get another screen saying "Pick your second choice, or choose 'Done' if you would not like to make another choice." This continues until all choices are made or the voter hits Done. A printed form comes out, which you must then confirm by signing. You feed this form back into the computer, and then get a receipt.
OK, so given that people have a hard enough time choosing ONE person, this probably isn't feasible. I think the most feasible of the options given is to select as many candidates as you'd find palatable. This one's easy by any mechanism. And I do think it's plenty fair to every candidate and every voter.
The elephant in the room when thinking about new voting methods, though, is that ANY alternative method would be designed to give Americans more choice. The people in charge (ie Democrats and Republicans) would be the only ones directly hurt by this, because "more choice" means "choice beyond Democrats and Republicans." So there's a conflict there - the people who would have to institute the change would be the ones hurt by it.
Thus, it'll never happen. Democrats and Republicans are far more concerned with their own power than what's good for the citizens. They'd mask it with "It'll be too costly/confusing/difficult to implement" or whatever, which is a fine and convenient cover story, and some of them might actually believe it. But make no mistake, it's about keeping power, and any excuse will do.