N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie. J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you? N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you? J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good. One of the reasons why I'm good is, we're about ready to do an episode that Nia has told me is a surprise, so I'm not entirely sure what we're going to be talking about. N. Rodgers: Well, we're not doing a full episode. We're doing a little short because I don't understand something and I want you to explain it to me. I suspect that if I don't understand it, I'm not the only one that doesn't understand it. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: There's a selection in Alaska, which as we all know, is going to be weird anyway, because it's Alaska. But they did this thing called ranked choice voting. I don't understand how Sarah Palin got the most votes but didn't end up with the number 1 position. I don't understand it. Can you explain it to me in 15 minutes or less? I know you're going to have to give me the broad stroke view and I'm sure there's lots of nuance to it, but I'm curious about it because I don't understand it. J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. First thing, listeners, what Nia is referencing is that N. Rodgers: This is further congressional seat. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: This is for the congressional seat that was vacated by the gentleman who passed away, and he had been in that seat, I think since rocks were a feasibility study and dinosaurs roamed the earth. It had been a long time that he had in rule. J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You're talking about representative, I think his name was Dom Yong. N. Rodgers: Yong? J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. N. Rodgers: Yeah. J. Aughenbaugh: Alaska elected in late August to fill the seat, this vacant House of Representatives seat. N. Rodgers: This was their primary? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, she's going to be filling the seat for the rest of the term. Then they will do the regular House of Representatives election. But history was made because a Democrat, Mary Peltola, became the first Alaskan Native and first woman to represent Alaska in the United States House of Representatives. It's a noteworthy election, right? N. Rodgers: Right. J. Aughenbaugh: But she won the election because Alaska, recently, the voters of Alaska, decided to go with ranked choice voting. Basically, voters ranked candidates in order of preference. Basically how the system works is this, Nia. Let's say you have an election using ranked-choice voting. When you go to vote, you don't pick just one candidate, you actually, rank all of the candidates based on your preference. N. Rodgers: Let's say that the candidates are fruit. J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. N. Rodgers: We apples, grapes, oranges, and grapefruits. J. Aughenbaugh: So we've got four? N. Rodgers: Right. J. Aughenbaugh: You go to vote, and you rank those four pieces of fruit, and they tabulate the results. The fruit that receives the least amount of votes gets eliminated. N. Rodgers: That's grapefruit, they're gone. J. Aughenbaugh: Grapefruit, they're gone. But let's just say for instance. N. Rodgers: That means that, of all of the voters, grapefruit didn't get enough number 1s to stay in the list? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. All the voters who picked grapefruit as their first choice, now, their second choice is tabulated. Okay? N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: The idea is, if one of the candidates gets a majority, after you have eliminated the preference with the least amount of votes, then you have a winner. N. Rodgers: So you just keep eliminating choices? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Until you get to a majority, and once you cross the majority line, that's the winner? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and you keep on going until you actually get a candidate that tops 50 percent of the votes cast. N. Rodgers: Okay, so grapefruit could conceivably have had a bunch of votes, but if they weren't number 1? J. Aughenbaugh: No, if they are last. Remember you get eliminated when you are the last choice, right? N. Rodgers: Right. J. Aughenbaugh: Again, we're going to go back to the fruit example. Grapefruit received the least amount of preferred votes. N. Rodgers: Of number 1 votes? J. Aughenbaugh: Number 1 votes, so they get eliminated, so you get three pieces of fruit left. Now, those voters who had picked grapefruit, their second choice now becomes their first choice. N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: Did their second preference push a candidate over 50 percent? N. Rodgers: Did it push oranges over 50 percent? No, it didn't. J. Aughenbaugh: If it did not, then the now last choice of the three gets eliminated, and all of those voters who picked the third. N. Rodgers: Grapefruit and the oranges, you go to their third choice. J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. N. Rodgers: If that's grapes, and it pushes grapes over 50 percent. J. Aughenbaugh: You now have a winner. N. Rodgers: I see. J. Aughenbaugh: Now, in the Alaska election, there were three candidates. You had the aforementioned Peltola. You had former Alaska governor, former Republican party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and you also had Republican, I want to say he was a state legislator, Nick Begich. J. Aughenbaugh: Now, in the results none of the three candidates received 50 percent but Begich was third. All of Begich voters their second preference was then tabulated, because he gets removed. N. Rodgers: He's our number one choice there, number two choice is in this instance Peltola. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and that's what happened. N. Rodgers: I see. J. Aughenbaugh: Even though after the vote results were initially tabulated Sarah Palin had the most first preference votes. When Begich's was removed his voters second choice was Peltola, and enough of them picked Peltola as their second choice to make her now the preferred candidate. She got over 50 percent, but of course, that led Palin supporters to go ahead and say she was robbed. Because if they didn't use ranked-choice voting and they just went with the standard first to the finish line, Sarah Palin had the most preferred votes cast for her. N. Rodgers: But she didn't have over 50 percent. J. Aughenbaugh: Fifty percent, that's right. N. Rodgers: She needed over 50 percent to win the election and she had what, 48 or whatever it was. Whatever it was, I see. Am I correct that what the outcome of something like this is, is that it means that you really should not run two candidates from a party because, you will split the vote. J. Aughenbaugh: It will split the vote. N. Rodgers: Because if he hadn't been a part of it Sarah Palin might have been the first choice of enough people to put her over at the beginning and then that would have just been that. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: What it does then is make the parties choose carefully who they put forward in an election. This thing were in the primaries where you have all of these people fighting it out to be the nominee and be all grumpy with each other and undermining each other means that you might give it to your opponent because of the way you've divided out your party. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: They're going to do it again in the fall? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Sorry. J. Aughenbaugh: The midterm election. N. Rodgers: I didn't mean to sound rude, but will they do it in the real election? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, the midterm election, the regular midterm election. N. Rodgers: Should that will affect also Lisa Murkowski? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Because she's up. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: She's a senator so she's up. That's how they end up with a Democrat as their congressperson? J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. N. Rodgers: Which has got to make a huge majority of conservative Alaska want to lay down on the floor and scream. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, there are all kinds of upset. Now of course, and a number of political scientists have said this in response, the Republican Party of Alaska only have themselves to blame, because they could not coalesce around a single candidate to run for the house seat. N. Rodgers: They let that be a fight that they didn't need to. They should have had internally dealt with and then put somebody up and everybody get behind that person. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because historically, Alaska in roughly the last 30-40 years has been a solidly Republican state. Most of their state positions controlled by the Republican Party. Lisa Murkowski is a Republican, she's probably not considered. N. Rodgers: Although, she's probably a moderate Republican in Alaska. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yes, she's moderate for the Republican Party today, let's be very clear. N. Rodgers: She's not what we would call moderate, she's just moderate in comparison. J. Aughenbaugh: Comparison. Now it begs the question, do a lot of other government jurisdictions in the United States use ranked-choice voting? The answer is no. N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: There are 10 cities that use it, Maine was the first state to authorize ranked-choice voting for statewide elections. N. Rodgers: I'm not surprised, Maine. J. Aughenbaugh: Interestingly enough, their states Supreme Court has held that ranked-choice voting violates their state constitution. N. Rodgers: They've got changes to make one way or another? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Didn't Richmond City just entertain the possibility in Richmond and then didn't even really? J. Aughenbaugh: Then the City Council tabled the proposal. N. Rodgers: Tabled it. There we go. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, tabled the proposal. N. Rodgers: It gets complicated, I think what I've heard from the press is that people in Alaska were saying we need practice doing this, because we didn't really understand what we were doing the first time just wait till November it'll get better. J. Aughenbaugh: It's not entirely new some cities adopted ranked-choice voting in the '20s and '30s, but it fell out of favor in the 1950s. But we're talking about large cities that use ranked-choice voting. Cambridge, Massachusetts where Harvard is located, it's right outside of Boston, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, San Francisco, Oakland, California use it. New York City recently use it. N. Rodgers: They just added that, didn't they? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and they used it for their New York City mayor election. N. Rodgers: How's that going for them? J. Aughenbaugh: Well, they elected Eric Adams. According to polls in New York, he seems to be doing an okay job. N. Rodgers: Okay. J. Aughenbaugh: Some of the benefits of ranked-choice voting it helps when you have elections where no candidate wins 50 percent. N. Rodgers: Because then you don't have to hold a special election. It saves money and electoral time because you don't have to go back and say, all right people, we are in a dead heat and now we have to have another, or Denver, I'm looking at you we have to flip a coin, sorry. I know I sounded sarcastic there because I was, I don't understand that we're going to pick our candidate by flipping a coin. It would prevent something like that, so that's why you would do it. J. Aughenbaugh: When it was considered in the 1920s and '30s, it was thought that it would help eliminate these spoiler effect. I'm going to give you a hypothetical, let's say you have an election, and because somehow third and fourth party candidates get on the ballot but they take votes away from one of the major political parties candidates which then leads the other major political party candidate to actually win 50 percent. This is what many Democratic Party officials have been thinking in regards to ranked-choice voting because what they have in mind is the 2000 presidential election year. N. Rodgers: With Ralph Nader? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Which everybody blames Nader for Gore's loss, which they shouldn't. They should put the blame where it belongs which is solely on Florida, but anyway. J. Aughenbaugh: Or you can go ahead and blame Al Gore for basically running away from the achievements of the Clinton administration. N. Rodgers: And being boring as a candidate. There's lot of blame to go around. J. Aughenbaugh: There are arguments against ranked-choice voting, and you are seeing one of the criticisms from the Palin supporters. How's this fair, our candidate got the most votes and she lost the election. How is that fair? N. Rodgers: Yes, voter confusion and loss of faith in the system. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: I can see where that would be, if you think it's not fair, you're just going to walk away and not vote next time. They're going to have trouble getting people out to vote in November if they think that the election was and maybe not even stolen but just too confusing to figure out what to do. J. Aughenbaugh: This is a complicated system. Think about this Nia, you know who else uses ranked-choice voting? N. Rodgers: No clue. J. Aughenbaugh: You're going to love this. The reason why I bring this up is that you and I are huge movie fans. The Academy Awards use ranked-choice voting to decide the best picture award. N. Rodgers: Oh yes, that never goes badly. Me I'm just saying there have been films where I've been like, really? J. Aughenbaugh: That's particularly the case today because now the Academy Awards announces 10 potential winners for the Best Picture award. The members of the Academy do ranked-choice voting. J. Aughenbaugh: None of the 10 get 50 percent after the first vote. Then they eliminate the movie that received the least amount, and then they go ahead, and redistribute those voters second preference to the remaining movies. N. Rodgers: I'm just going to say that the other gladiator one, Schmuck on Law, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, and Traffic were all nominees. I'm saying the Gladiator benefited from this system. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I still go back to I think it was 1980 when a perfectly good movie, a little bit of a tear jerker what was it? Ordinary people directed by Robert Redford and they get it started Timothy Hutton. N. Rodgers: Timothy Hutton. J. Aughenbaugh: It won best picture, but one of my all-time favorite Martin Scorsese movies, Raging Bull lost. N. Rodgers: Really? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: See benefits from the system, but also you and I are feeling like the people in Alaska who supported Governor Palin like to say, ''Man, what do you mean that we lost? Or what do you mean that that's not?'' J. Aughenbaugh: But many political scientists have cautioned. It's a relatively new system, we ought to give it time. N. Rodgers: We're going to let it work itself out. J. Aughenbaugh: Let it work itself out, but one of the major takeaways and you identify this early on in the episode is that if the major political parties, don't want to have happened to their candidates what happened to governor Palin then the parties need to go ahead, and coalesce around candidates for the elections. N. Rodgers: Not just candidates, electable candidates. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: They need to stop throwing people out there who may or may not be electable because you're too scared to tell them no right? That you're too scared to worry about their ambition or you want to see where they say no. You need to be more careful about who you put out. J. Aughenbaugh: We've talked about this in previous podcast episodes about elections generally. Political parties need to be more responsive than just to their base because the base, the party faithful tend to be more ideologically extreme than the bulk of American voters who are a little to the left, or a little to the right of center, or moderate. If you're either political party, if you nominate it's going to come back and bite you in the proverbial took us with ranked-choice voting. It's just going to come back anyway. N. Rodgers: If you were playing the wrong game, what you would do is you would choose a moderate-ish candidate, more or less moderate, Republican, but moderate Democrat but moderate, so that if your person didn't get 50 percent immediately, if they counted. J. Aughenbaugh: They would be an acceptable second choice. N. Rodgers: Exactly for the other side, for another group of people. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: That's what you need is to be able to say, well, they may not be our first choice, but they're not a terrible choice. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I can live with this candidate, but I can't live with those other ones. N. Rodgers: Exactly, so you need to put your money and your focus behind that individual? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, which forces political parties particularly in the United States, the two dominant political parties in the United States currently to stop being so, if you will partisan or polarized. N. Rodgers: But it does bring up an interesting question of if you had a third party candidate and I know we're going along, but now I'm into it like Ross Perot who was very popular, if you had that person running as the second person of okay, well, if I can't get my person, I could live with Ross Perot. He might actually get elected if enough people on both sides, so that means that third party candidates, if they were more moderate or they were less fringy, that they might actually do better in elections than they have done in that's the way to go, I've just found my way to the presidency. J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and that's one of the advantages that supporters of ranked choice voting point out. Ranked-choice voting actually gives voters more choice. N. Rodgers: Right. If you're Jill Stein and you're really pretty moderate about most things, if you sell yourself to both sides as listen, I agree with you guys on these issues, and you guys on these issues, and both sides rank you as their second choice. You have the possibility of either being elected to the decision or at least doing better in the polls than you have done previously, which allows you levers of power. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and now you're getting at what you see with a lot of third, fourth, fifth parties in Western European nations, because they are not just single issue parties, they may have been created because of concern about a single issue, but they have fully developed platforms. N. Rodgers: They've had to do that in order to get enough tractions. J. Aughenbaugh: Enough seats in parliament, to actually have leverage to negotiate with the more dominant political parties who don't get a majority in a parliamentary election and have to cobble together a coalition government. N. Rodgers: Is that why Republicans generally don't like ranked voting? Because they prefer the two-party system? J. Aughenbaugh: The benefits of the two-party system, at least theoretically, is that they're supposed to give voters a choice, but as you and I discussed some of our more recent presidential elections. N. Rodgers: Hasn't been much of a choice, a rock and a hard place, oh goody for me. J. Aughenbaugh: While I'm holding my nose, which of these two don't stink the most? Again, there are pros and cons to almost any voting system. What, nevertheless, I like most political scientists would advocate caution. N. Rodgers: Before you throw it out you mean? J. Aughenbaugh: Correct because let's see how it works. N. Rodgers: Can I ask you a personal question? J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: Are you excited for the Alaska November election to see. J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. N. Rodgers: What happens with it? For political scientists, this is an experiment for you all in the field right? J. Aughenbaugh: This is a natural field experiment we hardly ever get. N. Rodgers: Well and relatively low stakes because the other side will not be killed if they don't win the election, like it's not. Interesting, so are we going to come back and talk about it after November and see how it worked? J. Aughenbaugh: I think we should because again, until we get more data points, these are just initial conclusions. We need more data points like any good scientist, what is the trend? N. Rodgers: We should see that with New York as well as. J. Aughenbaugh: What's the pattern here? What are we learning from this voting system? N. Rodgers: Well, I feel like I have a little bit better handle on it and also I'm in the bleachers waiting to see how the game [inaudible] . J. Aughenbaugh: I was fascinated and it's not very often I actually pay attention to Alaskan electoral politics. N. Rodgers: Congressional because you pretty much know that's going to go Republican. J. Aughenbaugh: When it didn't, and they went ahead and picked this groundbreaking person, keep breaking ground. N. Rodgers: It's exciting. J. Aughenbaugh: I love that stuff. I want to see people that we've not had in elected positions. N. Rodgers: Voices that we haven't heard from there? J. Aughenbaugh: If I was a citizen of Alaska, I would have a certain amount of pride right? N. Rodgers: Me too, and I also would temper my concern if I were a Republican in Alaska, that she's a Democrat because she's an Alaskan Democrat. Which is not the same as a New York, California, Colorado Democrat she's not. It's not like she's going to suddenly. J. Aughenbaugh: She's not a San Francisco Democrat. N. Rodgers: Exactly. She's not suddenly going to say, ''Here, let me get in bed directly with the left part of the party.'' That's just not going to happen because by her nature, she's going to be a moderate or conservative Democrat. It's not like she's going to suddenly put the lamp shade on and start dancing, that's just not how this is going to work. J. Aughenbaugh: I would be really surprised if in her first speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, she went ahead and said that the federal government should stop drilling for oil in Alaska. N. Rodgers: She's not going to do that. Cool, well, thank you so much Aughie, I appreciate you explaining it to me. Now, I have a better idea of how it works and why some people wanted it. Now, we'll get to see how it works in real life and you can explain to me whether it worked or failed. J. Aughenbaugh: All right. [inaudible] N. Rodgers: Thank you.