Can Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) End Polarization and Save Democracy?
Can Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) End Polarization and Save Democracy?
Plus, The 20th Century Myth of Economic Freedom is Falling Apart
Over the past few years, I have talked a lot about various conditions that are good or bad for freedom, and I have always stressed that polarization and tribalism are very bad for freedom. Today, I want to examine whether the implementation of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) could solve, or at least lessen, the polarization and tribalism we have in the Western political landscape right now. I will not go into what RCV is here, you can look it up if you need to. Basically, it is a method of voting that allows you to choose from multiple options, by ranking the options from, say, 1 to 8, instead of just choosing one option. The theory is that RCV would lessen the polarization because people wouldn't be forced to choose from one of the two big parties anymore.
In the past, I used to think that RCV would not lead to meaningful change in terms of tribalism and polarization. This is because there actually is a country that already uses RCV in both state and federal elections, and has been using RCV for about a century. It's called Australia. However, Australia has a de-facto two-party system, and that has been the case throughout most of Australia's history. Indeed, Australia is arguably more of a two-party country than most other Western countries except America. Up until 2022, all but a handful of the 151 seats in the Australian House of Representatives belonged to either one of the two major parties. There was therefore less space for third parties in Australia than in the UK, Canada and basically every Western European country. It seems that the function of RCV in Australia is to allow people to vote for minor parties without 'wasting their vote', because it would still eventually be channeled into one of the major parties. In fact, the way Australian polls are reported tend to focus on what's called 'two-party preferred', where all the minor party votes are allocated to the major parties, and a final figure where the two major parties add up to 100% is reported. It's kind of like how some American polls only ask about the Democratic and Republican candidates, and force the respondent to choose one of them. If anything, the Australian experience convinced me that RCV reinforces the duopoly, rather than breaking it down.
However, things seem to have changed recently. The 2022 Australian election saw a record number of independents and candidates from minor parties elected. This has been able to happen precisely because people weren't afraid of throwing away their vote by voting for a minor party in the first place, thus RCV was finally functioning in the way we want it to. After that election, multiple analyses also showed that the share of voters not voting for the two major parties has been continually rising for some time. The question here is, given that Australia has had a century of RCV, why is this only happening now? I guess the answer is that we have the internet now. In the past, voters generally got their news from mainstream media only, and would not have been familiar with minor parties in most cases. This was why, even with RCV, a two-party system prevailed. Nowadays, voters could get informed about all their options, which might lead some to vote for a minor party. This is why minor parties, importantly including those that are not clearly aligned with the left or the right, have a good chance of winning something in an RCV system today.
On the other hand, RCV might actually even be necessary to keep the two major parties reasonably moderate, in the age of the internet. A major difference between Australian politics and American politics is that Australia's two major parties, while ideologically similar to their American counterparts, tend to be much more moderate. This is because the Australian parties haven't gradually moved to the extremes like the American parties have in the past 30 years. I think RCV might have had a role in this. In America and other 'first past the post' systems, both major parties have had to move to accommodate elements of their base that have gotten more extreme in the age of the internet. In Australia, however, such elements have generally moved to vote for minor parties instead, while the major parties have largely stood their ground. The major parties aren't too worried about these people moving to minor parties, because their votes actually get returned to the major parties via preferences. This way, the major parties would not have to move to accommodate more extreme policy preferences just to get enough people to be motivated to vote for them.
In conclusion, I think there is very clear evidence that RCV can help reduce the polarization and resulting tribalism that is plaguing politics around the Western world right now. Firstly, RCV allows people to vote for minor parties without fearing that they would 'waste their vote', and this could facilitate the rise of political forces that aren't clearly aligned with the left or the right. Secondly, RCV allows more extreme voters to vote for minor parties that suit their preferences, while not depriving the major parties of their votes. This means that the major parties would not need to move to the extremes just to retain these votes. Together, these two things could go a long way to address the problem of perpetually increasing polarization.
The 20th Century Myth of Economic Freedom is Falling Apart
It might be an opportunity to have a serious discussion about economic freedom
In the late 20th century, a particular idea of 'economic freedom' swept across libertarian and conservative circles, and then into the mainstream. The transformational presidency of Ronald Reagan and prime ministership of Margaret Thatcher were largely premised on this kind of economic freedom. Even the center-left had to bend to this notion of economic freedom, with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair famously coming up with the 'third way' compromise in the 1990s.
After the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the aforementioned kind of 'economic freedom' suddenly became much less popular. At first, it was happening only on the left. A new wave of sometimes socialism-curious economic populism swept through the young left, culminating in the rise of Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Melenchon. At that time, the right was still in the grip of the Tea Party moment, committed to opposing basically all government intervention in the economy. However, with the rise of Donald Trump, the right also began to decisively reject Reagan-Thatcher style 'economic freedom', perhaps in ways even more drastic than the left. For example, Trump brought back protectionism, high tariffs and trade wars. Later on, other right-wing politicians like Ron DeSantis even started a campaign against 'woke corporations', thus attempting to bring the full force of government to bear on the way private business is run. This left-right inversion in commitment to economic freedom is even evident in the kind of country that each side looks up to. Out of all the existing countries around the world, the left most admires Scandinavian social democracies like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which are all ranked inside the top 10 in the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom. On the other hand, the right is most known for admiring Hungary these days, which is ranked a lowly 72nd on the aforementioned index. (I'm not saying that the Heritage Foundation's index is necessarily the best measure of economic freedom, but it has long been a well accepted measure among those committed to the Reagan-Thatcher program.)
To be honest, I am disappointed at the sudden move against economic freedom, particularly the total inversion we are seeing on the right. However, if we are to make the notion of economic freedom popular again, we need to acknowledge that the Reagan-Thatcher program was flawed and inherently unsustainable, and in many ways did not represent true economic freedom either. For example, using taxpayer dollars to pay for corporate welfare is certainly not economic freedom. Nor is running up military spending to pay for the unpopular endless wars. Moreover, 19th century style laissez-faire economics is simply inadequate for the modern world, and any attempt to replicate it in the modern world is likely to implode eventually, and lead to the rise of the opposite, as we saw during the 2010s. Therefore, we need to move to a more sophisticated understanding of what constitutes economic freedom.
The 20th century view of 'economic freedom' actually developed in the context of a variety of factors particular to the 20th century. There was a strong backlash to FDR's New Deal in parts of America, which led to a generalized fear of 'big government'. Some of this backlash was associated with pro-segregationist forces in the South, and racism, rather than economic freedom, was often the real intention there. And there was also the Cold War, which distorted the political discourse in multiple ways. The presence of the Soviet Union and its model of state communism led to the misguided idea that any government intervention in the economy is a step towards Soviet style communism, which would mean the death of economic freedom. While the Cold War ended in 1989, this mentality extended well into the 21st century, with the Tea Party right calling 'Comrade Obama' a 'communist' for introducing Obamacare. However, as the Obamacare example shows, this mentality is making less and less sense over time.
According to the Heritage Foundation's index, Singapore is considered to be the world's freest economy. However, Singapore is definitely not running the Reagan-Thatcher program. The Singaporean government has led the construction of very good infrastructure for the country, which benefits the everyday life of its citizens, and also helps to attract investment. Singapore also has one of the world's best and most extensive public housing programs. These are certainly not what Reagan-Thatcher small government ideology would allow for, but it is actually what makes Singapore's free and prosperous economy possible, and most importantly, sustainable. The examples of Scandinavia and Singapore show that there's really no incompatibility between a strong social safety net and a free economy.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).