September 20, 2018 • 43 mins
In the US, winner-take-all voting has created A LOT of political polarization. But what if rather than voting for one candidate, you could rank all of them so if your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your second choice? So long, polarization!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Good day, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. The
trio was reunited like Peaches and Herb and Cream. Peaches
(00:23):
and Herb and Cream. Yeah, didn't Peaches and Herb sing
reunited and it feels so good. Yeah, but I don't
know how you're Clapton figures in. Well, there's three of
us here. Oh, gotcha. And Clapton was an all cream.
I mean, Ginger Baker was a force to be reckoned
with two good point? He still is? Is he still alive?
And unless he died recently. I saw a great documentary
(00:46):
about him. Yeah. I haven't actually watched it. Is it good? Yeah?
He just looks like it is. He's quite a dude. Yeah.
I'm excited already to watch it and you should check
it out, Okay, I will. Um. Oh have you seen Hereditary? Oh? Yeah,
I saw that in the theater. That's pretty cool. Huh.
I liked it. I did too. I like just about
(01:08):
anything puts out. Yeah. Yeah, shout out to eight to four. Yeah.
Um so, speaking of a twenty four and horror movies, Chuck.
We were down in Australia recently. We just got back. Yeah,
I'm sick. I know I am not. I can't believe it,
but I'm not. Yeah, I got sicken. Where was it Sydney?
(01:29):
Oh yeah, you were starting to kind of feel under
the weather, Hugh, it just got full blown. You seemed
okay on the flight back though that those were the beginnings.
I think my body was in combat mode. And then
when I got back here, it just it lowered its defenses.
It said I'm home, and I got some weird Australian
Australian rhino virus man walking around the airport. It was like,
(01:52):
what what you just sneezed on me? What is that?
What was that? Yeah? And we should point out to
people that we took ten plane flights in eleven days.
Is yes, we did, so that that's a pretty good
way to get sick. Yeah, and let's see there it
was Atlanta to l A five hours, LA to Sydney
fourteen hours, Sydney to Perth another four or five hours.
(02:14):
This was all in like one stretch. There was like
two hour layovers in between those three flights, and it
was it was about a thirty three hour experience getting there. Yeah,
and it's not the same on the way home. Yeah,
it was, and it was totally worth it too, I
would agree, although when we come back, we're gonna route
things a bit differently. Yeah. Yeah, Like when when we
(02:38):
landed in Sydney, I remember my first thought was, why
can't we just start here? Yeah? Uh, but there there's
no magic route, but there's probably a better one. Well,
we did the black Magic route if there, if there
is such a thing. Yeah, but boy, uh it was
a grind, but we had a great time. Um had
(02:58):
a couple of days off in between, which was I
don't know if I would have made it had it
not been for those days. Yeah. I think you're right.
I think has been too grueling to do like five
cities in five days. Yeah yeah, and those yeah, they
were cool down days too. You spent most of the
time in Melbourne. Actually south of Melbourne, I went to
the Mornington Peninsula. Well yeah, so you, me and I
(03:21):
were down there too. That's where we saw the penguins
marching from the ocean and gorgeous down there. That's like
their wine country, right, it's one of them. There's another
wine country the year of valley north of Melbourne, but
this is the one by the ocean. Yeah, so wine
country Slash the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, and
you pretty much get happy chuck. Yeah, that's cool, man.
(03:43):
And we spent another day in Sydney to which is
a pretty cool town. Um, just walking around the Opera
house alone is worth it. But there's a lot of
cool stuff to do there too. Yeah. I went zip lining,
I went nice, I went to the beach, I went
to drink a lot of wine, went to a lot
of wineries. And it was that time of the year
(04:03):
in midweek. It was just sort of shut down. So
you know, my buddy Scotty came over. As you know,
I'm telling everyone else, but my buddy Scotty came over
and met me in Melbourne. So we felt like we
kept joking that we had rented the Mornington Peninsula because
there were never more than two people anywhere we went.
That's really And I'll bet the wine tastings they had
a heavy hand. Yeah. They basically was just like, let's
(04:25):
go sit on the porch, Fellas. They brought the bottle
out and we just sat around and drink with the
loveliest people on the face of the earth. Yeah, they
are some really lovely people. And not just in I'll
tell you. We did New Zealand too, which sure he knew.
You mean, I've been to New Zealand before, so I
already had a pretty good idea of just how awesome
New Zealanders are. And we says they call themselves sometimes, um,
(04:46):
but I mean you got to experience the firsthand too. Yeah.
I mean everyone is just so nice and accommodating. Like
the whole no worries thing is it's not just something
they throw around like you feel it. It's four real. Yeah. Yeah,
it's pretty cool man to to just experience it is
is a very cool trip. Yeah, And even flying ten
(05:07):
times in eleven days, their airports in the t s A.
And just the way people are it really made it
pretty pretty great. Like I would have it would have
been a different experience flying ten times around the United
States and lemon days, I think like it would have
been awful, But it was great. We had a wonderful time.
(05:28):
We're definitely coming back. Uh. We both loved on koalas
and kangaroos. Yeah, It's like it doesn't get any better
than that. Oh man. So yeah, you guys will see
us again sometime in the new future. Will do another
tour for sure. And I'm now getting up at six
am tomorrow to watch another AUSI rules football final match.
(05:49):
Oh yeah, you got into that, like for real? Huh
big time. That's cool man, it's great. Why not add
another sport to the pile. Well, I've lost a bunch
of sports. Oh yeah, I'm kind of down to NFL
and college football. No more NBA huh, very little, I see.
It's very It's tough with the Hawks and I'll watch
(06:10):
a little bit of the finals maybe, but and then baseball.
You know, I follow the Braves a little bit, but
since they moved to the suburbs, I'm not as pumped.
It's a little different, isn't it. Yeah, it's just not
as cool. I'm like you, Okay, well shoot, might as
well just add another one, Australian rules football. Yeah, well
cool man. Well, thank you for having us Australia and
(06:30):
New Zealand. We'll see you guys against you right, yes,
And what a great segue, because Australia happens to be
one of the countries in the world as far as
I know the only country in the world that utilizes
ranked choice voting. No, there's there's two others. But yeah,
as far as I know, there's just the three in
(06:51):
Australia has used at the long What are the other two?
The other two are Malta in Ireland. Yeah, yeah, I
mean big countries. Okay, no disrespect to Ireland. Australia is
the only country that's also a continent that uses ranked
choice correcting. So um and yeah, like I said, they've
been using it from what I saw at least a century.
I couldn't find exactly when they started using it, but
(07:12):
I believe it's tied to Robert's Rules of Order, which
is a you know, a book of rules for order
that you can use if you're you know, voting on stuff,
or you have some sort of parliament or whatever you're
trying to do. It's the preferred way of voting, this
ranked choice voting. Right. Oh, they've been doing it for
that long yeah. Century. Oh I thought it would just
(07:32):
for the past five years. No, No, that's it's actually
it's coming around in the US again, even though it
was around before about a century ago. But in Australia
it's stuck for the last hundred or so years. Interesting,
I wonder I read a big article that felt like
they they felt a need to explain to people how
(07:54):
to do it five years ago. So maybe they forgot.
Oh really, you're freaking me out now. But here in
America we are not quite on board. So no, let
me give you a Let's let me give you a
little intro here, Charles. You're ready, yes, okay. So um,
(08:14):
back in the two thousand election, it was the presidential election.
It was a squeaker, you might say, between George W.
Bush and Al Gore. Yeah, apparently the the state of Florida.
So everyone knows about the electoral college. And if you
don't go listen to our episode about the electoral college.
(08:36):
But you can win in the United States the popular vote,
meaning you got you got more people voted for you
than your opponent. But if your opponent wins some very
strategic states, states that have more electoral college votes, they
can actually win the presidency without winning the popular vote.
It happened in two thousand and sixteen, happened in the
(08:58):
two thousand election, and every time time it does happen,
everybody just gets up in arms. And in my opinion,
rightfully so, because the will of the people has not
been served right like clearly the majority of people voted
for somebody else who is not the winner, and it
just really ticks everybody off in this country when that happens.
(09:18):
And in two thousand, it was so close that the
Supreme Court had to decide who was president and it
all came down to Florida. Florida had a lot of
electoral College votes and Bush and Gore were neck and neck,
although Gore ended up winning the presidency as far as
popular voting went, Bush one because in Florida it came
(09:39):
down to he won forty eight point eight four seven
percent of the vote and al Gore won forty eight
point eight three eight percent of the vote. Okay, so
point zero zero nine percent of the vote made the
difference in the state of Florida, and with the electoral college,
if you win that state, you get all the electoral votes,
(10:02):
which pushed Bush over the edge and made him president. Right,
And a lot of people pointed to Ralph Nader, who,
as we all know and love from the Pinto's episode,
is a like a crusader for people, just a great guy.
But for since two thousand, a lot of people have
hated Ralph Nader because they said that he handed the
(10:23):
presidency to George W. Bush by acting as a spoiler.
That's something like ninety thousand people voted for Ralph Nader
in the two thousand election, sorry, almost nine thousand, and
since it was that close in Florida, those thousand votes
in Florida for Nader pushed Bush into the lead. Well,
(10:45):
that's just totally unfair because it turns out actually like
three and eight thousand registered Democrats actually voted for Bush.
So you could say that actually the Democratic Party didn't
run a very good campaign in Florida if that was
the case. But for ever, Ralph Naders born the brun
of everyone's hire because of this and the same we
see this in election after election after election, people calling
(11:08):
out people of similar views for voting for a third
party candidate, saying that they split the vote and and
handed them the office over to the their shared enemy. Right.
And one way to solve this problem, the spoiler um,
is by fixing what we call this plurality voting system
(11:30):
which we have, which is if you get more votes
than your opponent, even if it's not the majority of votes,
you still win. It's called winners winner takes all elections,
and that's what we have right now, and it's actually
creating a lot of polarity and polarization in the United States.
That was impressive. Well thanks, Uh yeah, man, I mean
(11:53):
it's basically what you have is, at least in the
United States, is a situation where if you vote for
your favorite candidate, you can actually hand the election to
your least favorite candidate. And that's you know, like with
the Bernie your Busters in the last election, that's kind
of what happened that people that voted with their heart
(12:14):
that were like, I can't vote for Hillary Clinton, or
I don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton on gott
to vote for Bernie. Uh. Very clearly that's that you know,
that does swing an election. People should vote who they
want to vote for. Uh, but there is potentially a
better way. Uh. And we're talking about what Australia does
ranked choice voting, what some cities in the United States
(12:36):
do UM on small local elections. It's sort of seeing
a test run UM all around the country and little
markets to see what people think. UM. Sometimes people are
voting on whether or not they should try. Uh. This
style of voting. Sometimes that passes and then they actually
vote on candidates. But what ranked choice voting is is
(12:58):
when you fill out a you don't just say I
want to vote for this person. You say I want
to vote for this person, and then you know my
second choice would be this person, and my third choice
would be this person. Sometimes it stops there at three.
Sometimes it's capped, but sometimes you just rank all the
candidates in order of how much you want them in office. Right, so, um,
(13:21):
the whole point of ranking them is not just for
the satisfaction of putting the person you like the least
dead last right, maybe filling in the name or the
little bubble next to their name with a skull and crossbones.
The point is it comes after the ballots are tallied.
If Chuck, everybody um voted for one single person, a
(13:42):
majority of people voted for one single person in the
first count, that person won if they had a majority
of the vote, say plus one single vote. Right, yes,
it's done. It's just like a normal election under that,
under that um that circumstance. But let's say one of
the candidates didn't get a majority of the vote. This
(14:05):
is when ranked choice voting really kicks in. And this
is another reason why it's also called an instant runoff vote,
because what happens is an instant runoff election from those ballots.
And I think we should take a break. Oh you
tail this, that's a cliffhanger. Yeah, right after this. Well,
(14:38):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh damp chuck
it stuff you should know? All right, all right, everybody,
If you remember we were talking about don't ranked choice voting,
You list out your candidates in order preference, and then
(15:01):
after you hand your ballot in, they just kind of
work from the bottom up almost and start striking people
out until they get to someone that has a majority. Yeah,
And it's really that simple. It really is like if
you if you think too hard on it, you can overcomplicated.
It's actually pretty easy. And if like what we're going
to explain doesn't quite make sense, go onto the web
(15:23):
and watch there's a couple of minute and a half
long videos that do a really good job of explaining
and using visuals. I think once by k q E
d out in San Francisco and others by Minnesota Public
Radio and both Minneapolis and San Francisco use ranked choice voting. Um,
so go watch those videos and you will totally get it.
But again, if you have a let's say you have
(15:46):
candidate A, B, C, and D, and you cast your
ballot and you like you like them in that order,
Canada as your top choice candidate beats your second choice
candidate SEES three and D is fourth. Right, Okay, easy enough,
so far right, Chuck, Yes, okay. So um, let's say
that after all the tallies are are are all the
(16:07):
ballots are tallied, your guy Canada Day just didn't make
the cut. He he came in dead last. Your your
ballot doesn't get thrown away, It gets set to the
side because whatever all the people who voted for Canada
A chose for a second, those votes get distributed to
those candidates in this next round. Yeah, exactly, And that
(16:29):
is how you end up with a majority. So you
you what you won't wind up is a situation like
you had with the current governor of Maine where he
won the election with thirty eight percent of the vote,
And like, there's something wrong with your voting system if
only thirty eight percent of the people in a in
a in a voting pool like this candidate enough and
(16:51):
they end up winning. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's
the big problem that everybody points to with our current
plurality system is you could if there's three candidates, you
can win with thirty percent of the vote, which means
sixty six percent of the people who voted didn't vote
for you. They voted for somebody other than you. And
(17:11):
the other part of the thing that I've seen from
research in this, Chuck is that when when it's a
winner takes takes all kind of election, like a plurality
election like we have, that seems to um incentivize incentivized
candidates to be more polarizing because what they're trying to
do is energize their base and get their base out,
(17:31):
but they have no incentive whatsoever to reach out across
the aisle to other voters. Um, all they're doing is
getting their base charged up to get out and vote
frequently about issues that don't really mean anything. They're just
kind of like, um, I'm not quite sure what the
term is for him, but nonsensical issues that don't really
(17:53):
mean anything. They just tick everybody off. That kind of
polarization comes from this plurality thing and one of the
ways that UM or one of the reasons so many
people are pointing to rank choice voting as a as
a UM as a kind of a way to solve
this is because it does the opposite. It incentivizes people
to reach out to as many voters as possible because
(18:16):
you want to end up as their number two choice. Yeah.
I mean it's an interesting argument. Um In theory, it
would push politicians towards the center. Uh. However, a lot
of people don't want centrist politicians, and you know, as
we've seen in recent years, people there are a lot
of people that are very hard right and very hard
left that I imagine would reject this kind of voting
(18:40):
because they don't want to go towards the center. Um.
Although right now, you know, independence are largely ignored, third
party candidates are largely ignored, so they would probably embrace
something like this. Uh. But again, I mean, we had
a situation in Kansas where the gubernatorial primary was decided
by less than two hundred votes, So that meant that
(19:01):
fifty votes basically didn't count. I mean, they counted, and
that people got to to speak their mind and vote
their conscience, But fifty two those fifty people, if you
pulled them, they would probably say, well, you know what,
I might like a second chance to vote then on
these two jerks. That was decided by lesson two votes,
(19:21):
right right. And that's where ranked choice voting comes in,
because if you, if you you know, vote your conscience,
which I think it sounds like both of us agree,
you totally should. And I think even further, you should
not deride people who vote their conscience. It's a pretty
terrible thing to do. Um. But if if you share
(19:41):
similar views um with another candidate, they might be your
second choice. You might not like them, maybe they're the
establishment candidate and you're more like the uh, the more
progressive or more far right candidate. You like that person first,
but you're also saying, you know, this person might have
a better shot, so I'm gonn to make sure that
they're my number two rather than the other person. And
(20:03):
so what you're doing then is, rather than the vote
being split like in a winner takes all, if if
your person, your third party candidate doesn't win that first round, um,
the your votes are going to go to that other
more like minded person. So rather than splitting the vote,
you're actually going and helping UH to bowl straight if
your candidate of choice doesn't make it to the second round. Right, Obviously,
(20:28):
you need at least three candidates for something like this
to happen, which doesn't always happen, so you can't always
use this this kind of voting. UH. And Maine, the
state of Maine is an interesting well, it's interesting in
a lot of ways because manners are weird and they
know that. Um, they're very independent and just sort of
(20:48):
a state into themselves in a lot of ways. So
what you've had here, nine of the past eleven governors
have been elected with less than fifty of the vote.
Nine of the past eleven, which is amazing, five of
those with less and as I mentioned earlier, the current governor,
Paul Lapage or la Page UH, he won with thirty
eight percent, and as of hours ago, as as of
(21:12):
this recording, he just vetoed a bill for this kind
of voting to continue on his way out the door. Basically,
I saw that there was like there's been a real
push in Maine against this too, and there's a lot
of allegations that it's basically the status quo is worried
that they're not going to be able to get enough
centrist people to vote for them, and so they're gonna
(21:33):
start losing elections rather than these winner polarized winner takes
all um contests that they can win by energizing the
base into a frenzy. So pushed by politicians, I guess right,
pushed by incumbent politicians. No less, Yeah, because the people
voted for it. They had a record turnout, apparently, because
one of the worries is is that more complicated voting
(21:55):
in theory leads to uh, people being less interested in voting,
like this sort of sadly American thing where you have
to make voting super easy and super dumb uh or
dumbed down at least, and if it's just confusing, people
want to understand it and they won't know what to do,
so they may not even vote. But at least in
Maine they had a record turnout, and a lot of
(22:16):
people think it was because they moved to rank choice voting.
And I saw also a two thousand and fourteen study
from the University of Missouri that um they looked at
like seventies six elections or seventy nine elections in twenty
six cities that used ranked choice voting, and they found
that overall there was like a ten percent higher turnout
than in elections that hadn't used ranked choice voting UM,
(22:40):
and that that definitely flies in the face of one
of the great criticisms of ranked choice voting that it's
way more difficult than regular voting. Like you were saying, right,
The thing is is it's not that much more difficult.
It's really pretty easy and the average person can figure
it out. What I think it calls for more though
(23:01):
Chuck is a more informed voter, you know what I mean. Like,
you can't just scantron it. You can't just make a
Christmas tree out of it and expect any kind of
good result, rather than just knowing about your one candidate
and that, yes, I like this person. They most aligned
with my view, so I'm going to vote for them,
and I don't need to know anything about the other
people except I don't want to vote for him. It
(23:24):
means that you need to know something about all of
the candidates because you've got to figure out who's second
and who's third, and who's fourth and who's fifth, um.
And to do that you have to be an informed voter.
Maybe they should in the States do it with pictures
as a who's hot and who's not, or who were best,
(23:46):
who were best in in terms of ranking, just so
we can understand it. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a
there has to be as as far as ranked choice
voting goes, there has to be a a UM, real understandable,
really robust public education campaign that goes along with it.
(24:10):
UM or else it's not gonna get anywhere, I don't think.
But I think so far in like Maine, which I
think you said already is the first state to ever
uses in statewide elections in the US. Right, Yeah, they
hand count there too, they do, but this article what
kind of worried about that? It's like, well, how long
is this going to take if they're hand counting? Well
(24:31):
if if if under the first count like they normally do,
there isn't a clear winner, a majority winner. All those
battlets gets sent to the capital, which which I think
UM uses software from that point on. So it's not
that big of a deal as far as Maine goes. Yeah,
and I read, uh the governor remains UM. The reason
why he vetoed it, he wrote like a op ed
or whatever, made a statement and he he had a
(24:54):
couple of reasons. One was financial, because they came back
and said it would cost an extra three thirty thousand
dollars or something, and he said, you know, they're sticking
it to you. They're sticking to you the taxpayer, with
more money for this election, which I don't know if
I haven't done the math, I can't imagine that would
amount to very much money per person, like per voter. Uh.
And he also said that it was it was sort
(25:16):
of voted on and run through in the middle of
the night. Uh. One of those type of deals where
you know a lot of people weren't there, It wasn't debated,
it was voted on in less than five minutes at
you know, late at night, and that kind of thing,
that kind of sneaky politics. So that's that's what that
was his contention. Although I imagine if the people have
Maine voted for it to begin with, then uh. I
(25:38):
mean from everything I've read, it sounds like he was
just sort of like on the way out the door,
given everybody the finger. Yeah, that's that's what every That's
what I've read too. That's that's kind of my interpretation.
I want to hear from people the people of Maine
though about this. Well, the people of Maine have already
spoken on. On I think June eighteenth, they using the
ranked system for the first time. The first question on
(26:02):
the ballot was do you want to keep using ranked voting?
And it was um. It was passed with like a vote,
So clearly a majority of people in Maine at least say, yep,
let's give this a shot. Was that ranked choice? Was it? Yes?
I used ranked choice? Right, right? And then maybe but
only if this and well, I guess if they don't
(26:23):
do this, and we should do this, right, so maybe
let's take a break, talk about some history. Let's well,
(26:44):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh? Can chuck
stuff you should know? All right? All right, Chuck? So
ranked choice, like we said, it's been around for a
little while in the US took a stab at it before. Um,
(27:06):
I think back in the nineteen thirties in New York, right, yeah,
I mean the Brits used to do it in the
eighteen hundreds, and then America tried it in New York.
Of course, and if this weird thing hadn't happened, it
may still be around today. You never know. But in
a nineteen thirty seven city council election, a communist actually
(27:28):
want a seat because of rank choice voting, and that
changed everything. And I think if it hadn't been for that,
it might have actually caught on. Yeah, because I think
a decade later they used the um the red scare
to basically say, look, you can't have ranked choice voting.
It gets communists in power, you crazy, And everybody said, oh, okay,
(27:51):
let's get away with rank let's do away with ranked
choice voting. And they did. But as in this case,
as in all the other cases where ranked choice voting
has been tried out and then left behind later on,
it's been tied to some other issue, it doesn't seem
like ranked choice voting itself is the problem. It's the
(28:13):
the establishment who's threatened by ranked choice voting tends to
tie it to an unpopular political thing, and then UM
gets rid of it that way, like in Burlington, Vermont
back and I think the mid two thousand's they tried
ranked choice voting and this mayor that got elected was
a super progressive UM who upset I think a Republican incumbent,
(28:38):
and the progressive was doing fine, everybody's happy with him.
But then he got embroiled in a scandal where apparently
he used public funds to keep a telecom company in business.
That did not make the people of Burlington, Vermont very happy.
So he he became a very unpopular mayor, like almost overnight,
while he had been elected through ranked choice voting. So
(28:59):
the republic Kins the next time around said, look what
ranked choice voting did? It got this, this scandal plagued
mayor in office. Let's get rid of ranked choice voting.
And people voted voted against ranked choice voting, and it
was a very close vote, and it was mostly Republicans
who voted against it, but more of them turned out
to vote against ranked choice voting, so it went away.
(29:19):
Same thing with the communists in New York. The Democrats
did that. They said, look, it elected a Communist to
the New York City Council. Let's get away. Let's do
away ranked choice voting. Same thing. So it's not like
the ranked choice voting there's anything wrong with it, and
there may be a lot right with it. It's just
that it gets tied to political scandals pretty frequently. To
(29:39):
get rid of it, I think it's it's because it's
a new thing. People are like, oh, yeah, that was weird.
That was weird. Let's go back to the old way,
even though the old way is broken. Yeah. Oakland, California
is a pretty interesting situation too in two thousand ten,
because people could make arguments I guess on either side here. Uh.
In two thousand ten, for its mayoral election, there were
(30:00):
ten candidates on the ballots. You gotta rank all ten, um,
And I didn't see anything about like, is a ballot
counted if you only rank like four. Oh, that's a
really good point. I wonder if that's an incomplete ballot.
It is. And all that's counted though, is your first vote.
So in the first round of voting, your ballot counts
(30:21):
whether you rank one person or four or three. However,
if you don't fill it out and you just fill
out one, it gets counted once. So you could write
nine out of ten and it only counts the first
from what I understand. Yes, interesting, alright, So in Oakland
and there were ten candidates, Uh, there was a front
runner named Don Parata. He got thirty of what they
(30:42):
called the first choice vote, which is, you know, obviously
pretty low for first choice did not win, and then
Jane Kuan she finished pretty far behind. She only got
of the first preference, but she ended up winning with
fifty to Paradas forty eight percent after they rolled all
those other votes up. Yes, because she had gone to
(31:03):
the other candidates who were long shots and said, hey,
let's let's form an alliance here. Let's let's try to
like get as many voters as possible to vote for us.
And that's one of the things that ranked choice voting does, Chuck,
is it incentivizes you to appeal to as many voters
as possible rather than alienating another candidates voters and just
(31:26):
appealing to your own base. You want those second choice
votes too, because they count in later rounds, and that
means that you have to say, hey, I know I'm
not your first choice. I'm I might even be from
a different party than the one you're planning to vote for,
but let me tell you about some of the things
that we have in common that might change your opinion
(31:48):
of me, which means that there's probably going to be
less negative ads, less negative campaigns, and in some some
um cases, I think for the main Attorney General's office,
some candidates have them together to um to basically run
ads like joint campaign ads saying hey, everybody, I know
(32:09):
you're playing in the vote for me, but maybe put
this person is number two and the other person says
the same thing. And in doing so, what you're doing
is is is rather than splitting the vote, you're consolidating
what would have been previously split votes into something that
could actually lift one or the other to to office. Yeah.
(32:30):
And I mean as far as appealing to the center
one of the people want that, that's that's got to
be better than what we have now, which is people
digging in so far and so hard to the left
and the right that they're basically they might as well
just come out and say screw you of the country.
(32:50):
And that's that's a broken system. Uh. And there are
a lot of people, including uh Bloomberg View columnists Leonid
Breschitzky speaking of communists. I'm just kidding, Leonid. I'm sure
you're a fine American. Uh. He you know, he basically
came out and wrote an article that said, if we
(33:11):
had gone with this type of thing, Donald Trump would
not not only would he not be president, he would
not have even won the primary because there were so
many sort of establishment traditional conservatives that would never have
voted for Donald Trump, and may have even set out
the election that would have written in like maybe John
casag first, then Jeb Bush second, and then who knows third.
(33:35):
I can't I can't imagine who they would have picked third,
But they probably would have put Donald Trump dead last.
So he would have never rolled up in the primaries
even right. And so the reason why people would have
put Trump dead last in this case is because he
was so he was so far away from the clump
(33:55):
of the other guys who were a little more towards
the middle, and just by day of their being more
of these guys more towards the middle, that means that
there are more voters voting for those people, and so
Trump would have been left out and somebody like Jeff
Bush or somebody who was a centrist would have been
more likely to to reach the primary. And that's the point.
Because more people tend to aggregate towards the center than
(34:19):
towards the fringes. Ranked choice voting serves the center a
lot more clearly than it does the fringes, and it
it drags the fringe candidates toward the center more and
and and get it does away with the polarization that
creates the fringe candidates in the first place. Yeah, and
(34:40):
I guess we should point out that center center of
your own party more like, I don't know, man, I
think center. The thing about the center of the own
party is that the difference between the two is not
as pronounced and so like there's a lot more reaching
across the aisles, which I think is why a lot
of people value you know, centrist Paul. It takes a
(35:01):
lot more is there's a lot more compromise that comes
out of it rather than gridlock. Yeah, I mean, I
guess in theory center right and center left is more
towards the overall center. But when I hear things like
Ted Cruz is more centrist, I mean, it depends on
who you compare him to. I guess exactly he's he's
a little more central compared to Donald Trump, maybe on
the Republican side, but I don't think any Democrat would
(35:23):
identify with him. Sure, agreed, So I think you could
make a case that ranked choice voting would probably keep
somebody like Ted Cruz from being president one day too,
you know, maybe, So who knows what I'm interested in.
Is the money, like one of the things that Governor
la Page or Lapage, do you know what's one it is? No,
(35:46):
I don't, or however you pronounce that in Maine. Let's
go with Lapage. It sounds fancy. Yeah. So Lapage talked
about the money, and that is one of the things
that critics bring up is it will cost a lot
of money. But I'd be curious just to see dollars
lines on runoff elections and what they cost um. I saw, Well,
that's the other thing too, because this would eliminate those
(36:08):
it would right now, from what I saw, there's twelve
states that have run off rules. The rest of the
states don't. It's all winner takes all. But the only
the states that do have runoff rules, that's only in
the primaries. Interesting. Yeah, so in a federal election, uh,
ranked choice voting UM or a general election, it's going
to cost more just because it's it's a little more expensive.
(36:31):
But what I saw was that cost Maine. There's a
Boston Globe editorial by the editors of the Boston Globe
that said, let's do this in Massachusetts. They said it
was just like a hundred and ten thousand dollars more
for the entire state of Maine to run this UM
this election over ones that didn't have ranked choice that
used plurality voting. Yeah, that's like fractions of a penny
(36:55):
per voter, probably right, I should say. Also, since talking
about bringing it to Massachusetts, UM, I thought of doing
this episode because remember our friend Dave who used to
work at Sweetwater Dave Morrell. Oh yeah, he is running
for the UM I think District five House for the
New Hampshire House District four New Hampshire House. He's got
(37:17):
my vote. He the same here. Unfortunately we can't vote
for him, but UM Dave was saying one of his
platform planks is bringing rank choice voting to New Hampshire. Interesting. Yeah,
and he's like, I'm happy to be your number three.
I think he wants to be your number one. Well,
another criticism that this one is the one that gets me,
Like everything else sounds pretty good, but uh, a lot
(37:40):
of these cities limit, like I said earlier at the
very beginning, to the top three candidates. So there's something
called ballot exhaustion. If all three of your candidates on
your list are eliminated, then your ballot is basically just burned.
In fact, I think they burn it. They hold it
up and they burn it in front of your face,
like Tony Collette and hereditary and then laugh at you.
(38:03):
So you would think this probably didn't happen much though,
But there was a study in electoral electoral studies in
two thousand fifteen set in four cities, between nine point
six point seven percent of voters were eliminated due to
ballot exhaustion, which those numbers are super high, they are
very high. Well, one way to get around that is
(38:24):
to um not just rank your top three, but to
rank every single person. I wonder why they did that though,
maybe to make it easier. I'm not sure, but the
San Francisco just ranks the top three for their mayor
mayoral races, which is kind of I don't know about that,
because they frequently have like ten people in there in
the race, like you were saying, so just to rank
(38:45):
the top three that will lead to a lot of
ballot exhaustion, which is a real problem. But again, if
people just rank all the candidates, their ballot will keep
getting getting counted round after round, because after your first
two were eliminated in three and then four, those your
vote for that rank keeps getting added depending on the
(39:06):
round that you're on. It's pretty pretty interesting stuff. Man,
I don't know. You think it'll catch on here? It
has piqued my interest. Same here. I think anything that
does away with um with um polarization and does away
with people who share pretty similar views. But anything that
does away with that, I'm I'm in favor of trying
(39:28):
for sure. Agreed. Well, if you want to know more
about ranked choice voting, go check it out some of
those videos on the web, and um, you're probably going
to learn to like it. But whatever, make up your
own mind. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail. All right, this is a bit long, but
(39:49):
it's a good one. This is from an actual recently
retired New York City detective. Hi, guys, love the show.
I was a NYPD detective for twenty years and just retired,
And I'm glad to say you guys remotely spot on
with the lineups episode. And then he gives us some
really interesting tidbits here. I can't wait. He says, double
(40:10):
blind lineups are better, but they are a huge suck
on resources. You have to transport a witness or witnesses
who also need to be separated fillers the suspect who
requires two detectives to safely transport from one site to
the next. And now you have to find another detective
who who knows nothing about your case, So that usually
means to go to an outside detective squad, who themselves
(40:33):
have their own cases for which they may need blind administrators.
So you can see how this ripples outward. Photo arrays
would be helpful in terms of logistics, but they are
inadmissible as trial evidence in New York. You can only
be used to identify a possible suspect, but in order
to bring charges you have to conduct a live lineup. Additionally,
many victims feel more confident looking at real people than
it photos. UH defense lawyers will claim they want to
(40:56):
be present for the lineup to verify it's impartiality, but
do not actually want to be there and in fact
rarely are UH. If they're not present, they can then
accuse officers of all kinds of misdeeds and an effort
to have the identification suppressed at hearing. If they are
present and observe nothing untoward during the procedure, it becomes
more difficult for them to later claim otherwise super interesting. Uh. Lastly,
(41:20):
I spent the last four years of my career in
a robbery unit that worked with federal prosecutors. We begged
squad detectives not to show photo arrays or conduct lineups.
As we know what Josh said. Many times, it's true.
Witness testimony more often than not as terrible. We build
most of our cases using co conspirator testimony, perpetrator statements, UH,
DNA criminalistics, so, social media analysis, cell phone tracking, security video,
(41:45):
license plate reader data, etcetera, etcetera. Uh, witnesses really just
muddy the waters. Uh. They're best used to say, hey
I got robbed and then just leave it at that.
It also takes the emotional burden off them at trial
should it ever come to that. Yeah, my wife and
are big fans kept us entertained on many road trips.
Thanks guys, have a great day. And that is from
(42:07):
former detective Jason Allison. That is an amazing email. Man.
I'll bet social media is a huge tool because I'll
bet there's so many goons just run around like I
totally just robbed this place. Check it out here, here's
the money. I guys, speaking of huge tools, yeah, uh,
good one, Chuck. Well, if you want to get in
touch with us like the former detective did, that's pretty awesome.
(42:30):
We always want to hear from experts in the field
that we talked about. You can get in touch with
us via social media. Just go to our website, Stuff
you Should Know dot com and it's got all of
our links up there um. Or you can send us
an email. Just send it to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(42:54):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Good day, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. The
trio was reunited like Peaches and Herb and Cream. Peaches
(00:23):
and Herb and Cream. Yeah, didn't Peaches and Herb sing
reunited and it feels so good. Yeah, but I don't
know how you're Clapton figures in. Well, there's three of
us here. Oh, gotcha. And Clapton was an all cream.
I mean, Ginger Baker was a force to be reckoned
with two good point? He still is? Is he still alive?
And unless he died recently. I saw a great documentary
(00:46):
about him. Yeah. I haven't actually watched it. Is it good? Yeah?
He just looks like it is. He's quite a dude. Yeah.
I'm excited already to watch it and you should check
it out, Okay, I will. Um. Oh have you seen Hereditary? Oh? Yeah,
I saw that in the theater. That's pretty cool. Huh.
I liked it. I did too. I like just about
(01:08):
anything puts out. Yeah. Yeah, shout out to eight to four. Yeah.
Um so, speaking of a twenty four and horror movies, Chuck.
We were down in Australia recently. We just got back. Yeah,
I'm sick. I know I am not. I can't believe it,
but I'm not. Yeah, I got sicken. Where was it Sydney?
(01:29):
Oh yeah, you were starting to kind of feel under
the weather, Hugh, it just got full blown. You seemed
okay on the flight back though that those were the beginnings.
I think my body was in combat mode. And then
when I got back here, it just it lowered its defenses.
It said I'm home, and I got some weird Australian
Australian rhino virus man walking around the airport. It was like,
(01:52):
what what you just sneezed on me? What is that?
What was that? Yeah? And we should point out to
people that we took ten plane flights in eleven days.
Is yes, we did, so that that's a pretty good
way to get sick. Yeah, and let's see there it
was Atlanta to l A five hours, LA to Sydney
fourteen hours, Sydney to Perth another four or five hours.
(02:14):
This was all in like one stretch. There was like
two hour layovers in between those three flights, and it
was it was about a thirty three hour experience getting there. Yeah,
and it's not the same on the way home. Yeah,
it was, and it was totally worth it too, I
would agree, although when we come back, we're gonna route
things a bit differently. Yeah. Yeah, Like when when we
(02:38):
landed in Sydney, I remember my first thought was, why
can't we just start here? Yeah? Uh, but there there's
no magic route, but there's probably a better one. Well,
we did the black Magic route if there, if there
is such a thing. Yeah, but boy, uh it was
a grind, but we had a great time. Um had
(02:58):
a couple of days off in between, which was I
don't know if I would have made it had it
not been for those days. Yeah. I think you're right.
I think has been too grueling to do like five
cities in five days. Yeah yeah, and those yeah, they
were cool down days too. You spent most of the
time in Melbourne. Actually south of Melbourne, I went to
the Mornington Peninsula. Well yeah, so you, me and I
(03:21):
were down there too. That's where we saw the penguins
marching from the ocean and gorgeous down there. That's like
their wine country, right, it's one of them. There's another
wine country the year of valley north of Melbourne, but
this is the one by the ocean. Yeah, so wine
country Slash the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, and
you pretty much get happy chuck. Yeah, that's cool, man.
(03:43):
And we spent another day in Sydney to which is
a pretty cool town. Um, just walking around the Opera
house alone is worth it. But there's a lot of
cool stuff to do there too. Yeah. I went zip lining,
I went nice, I went to the beach, I went
to drink a lot of wine, went to a lot
of wineries. And it was that time of the year
(04:03):
in midweek. It was just sort of shut down. So
you know, my buddy Scotty came over. As you know,
I'm telling everyone else, but my buddy Scotty came over
and met me in Melbourne. So we felt like we
kept joking that we had rented the Mornington Peninsula because
there were never more than two people anywhere we went.
That's really And I'll bet the wine tastings they had
a heavy hand. Yeah. They basically was just like, let's
(04:25):
go sit on the porch, Fellas. They brought the bottle
out and we just sat around and drink with the
loveliest people on the face of the earth. Yeah, they
are some really lovely people. And not just in I'll
tell you. We did New Zealand too, which sure he knew.
You mean, I've been to New Zealand before, so I
already had a pretty good idea of just how awesome
New Zealanders are. And we says they call themselves sometimes, um,
(04:46):
but I mean you got to experience the firsthand too. Yeah.
I mean everyone is just so nice and accommodating. Like
the whole no worries thing is it's not just something
they throw around like you feel it. It's four real. Yeah. Yeah,
it's pretty cool man to to just experience it is
is a very cool trip. Yeah, And even flying ten
(05:07):
times in eleven days, their airports in the t s A.
And just the way people are it really made it
pretty pretty great. Like I would have it would have
been a different experience flying ten times around the United
States and lemon days, I think like it would have
been awful, But it was great. We had a wonderful time.
(05:28):
We're definitely coming back. Uh. We both loved on koalas
and kangaroos. Yeah, It's like it doesn't get any better
than that. Oh man. So yeah, you guys will see
us again sometime in the new future. Will do another
tour for sure. And I'm now getting up at six
am tomorrow to watch another AUSI rules football final match.
(05:49):
Oh yeah, you got into that, like for real? Huh
big time. That's cool man, it's great. Why not add
another sport to the pile. Well, I've lost a bunch
of sports. Oh yeah, I'm kind of down to NFL
and college football. No more NBA huh, very little, I see.
It's very It's tough with the Hawks and I'll watch
(06:10):
a little bit of the finals maybe, but and then baseball.
You know, I follow the Braves a little bit, but
since they moved to the suburbs, I'm not as pumped.
It's a little different, isn't it. Yeah, it's just not
as cool. I'm like you, Okay, well shoot, might as
well just add another one, Australian rules football. Yeah, well
cool man. Well, thank you for having us Australia and
(06:30):
New Zealand. We'll see you guys against you right, yes,
And what a great segue, because Australia happens to be
one of the countries in the world as far as
I know the only country in the world that utilizes
ranked choice voting. No, there's there's two others. But yeah,
as far as I know, there's just the three in
(06:51):
Australia has used at the long What are the other two?
The other two are Malta in Ireland. Yeah, yeah, I
mean big countries. Okay, no disrespect to Ireland. Australia is
the only country that's also a continent that uses ranked
choice correcting. So um and yeah, like I said, they've
been using it from what I saw at least a century.
I couldn't find exactly when they started using it, but
(07:12):
I believe it's tied to Robert's Rules of Order, which
is a you know, a book of rules for order
that you can use if you're you know, voting on stuff,
or you have some sort of parliament or whatever you're
trying to do. It's the preferred way of voting, this
ranked choice voting. Right. Oh, they've been doing it for
that long yeah. Century. Oh I thought it would just
(07:32):
for the past five years. No, No, that's it's actually
it's coming around in the US again, even though it
was around before about a century ago. But in Australia
it's stuck for the last hundred or so years. Interesting,
I wonder I read a big article that felt like
they they felt a need to explain to people how
(07:54):
to do it five years ago. So maybe they forgot.
Oh really, you're freaking me out now. But here in
America we are not quite on board. So no, let
me give you a Let's let me give you a
little intro here, Charles. You're ready, yes, okay. So um,
(08:14):
back in the two thousand election, it was the presidential election.
It was a squeaker, you might say, between George W.
Bush and Al Gore. Yeah, apparently the the state of Florida.
So everyone knows about the electoral college. And if you
don't go listen to our episode about the electoral college.
(08:36):
But you can win in the United States the popular vote,
meaning you got you got more people voted for you
than your opponent. But if your opponent wins some very
strategic states, states that have more electoral college votes, they
can actually win the presidency without winning the popular vote.
It happened in two thousand and sixteen, happened in the
(08:58):
two thousand election, and every time time it does happen,
everybody just gets up in arms. And in my opinion,
rightfully so, because the will of the people has not
been served right like clearly the majority of people voted
for somebody else who is not the winner, and it
just really ticks everybody off in this country when that happens.
(09:18):
And in two thousand, it was so close that the
Supreme Court had to decide who was president and it
all came down to Florida. Florida had a lot of
electoral College votes and Bush and Gore were neck and neck,
although Gore ended up winning the presidency as far as
popular voting went, Bush one because in Florida it came
(09:39):
down to he won forty eight point eight four seven
percent of the vote and al Gore won forty eight
point eight three eight percent of the vote. Okay, so
point zero zero nine percent of the vote made the
difference in the state of Florida, and with the electoral college,
if you win that state, you get all the electoral votes,
(10:02):
which pushed Bush over the edge and made him president. Right,
And a lot of people pointed to Ralph Nader, who,
as we all know and love from the Pinto's episode,
is a like a crusader for people, just a great guy.
But for since two thousand, a lot of people have
hated Ralph Nader because they said that he handed the
(10:23):
presidency to George W. Bush by acting as a spoiler.
That's something like ninety thousand people voted for Ralph Nader
in the two thousand election, sorry, almost nine thousand, and
since it was that close in Florida, those thousand votes
in Florida for Nader pushed Bush into the lead. Well,
(10:45):
that's just totally unfair because it turns out actually like
three and eight thousand registered Democrats actually voted for Bush.
So you could say that actually the Democratic Party didn't
run a very good campaign in Florida if that was
the case. But for ever, Ralph Naders born the brun
of everyone's hire because of this and the same we
see this in election after election after election, people calling
(11:08):
out people of similar views for voting for a third
party candidate, saying that they split the vote and and
handed them the office over to the their shared enemy. Right.
And one way to solve this problem, the spoiler um,
is by fixing what we call this plurality voting system
(11:30):
which we have, which is if you get more votes
than your opponent, even if it's not the majority of votes,
you still win. It's called winners winner takes all elections,
and that's what we have right now, and it's actually
creating a lot of polarity and polarization in the United States.
That was impressive. Well thanks, Uh yeah, man, I mean
(11:53):
it's basically what you have is, at least in the
United States, is a situation where if you vote for
your favorite candidate, you can actually hand the election to
your least favorite candidate. And that's you know, like with
the Bernie your Busters in the last election, that's kind
of what happened that people that voted with their heart
(12:14):
that were like, I can't vote for Hillary Clinton, or
I don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton on gott
to vote for Bernie. Uh. Very clearly that's that you know,
that does swing an election. People should vote who they
want to vote for. Uh, but there is potentially a
better way. Uh. And we're talking about what Australia does
ranked choice voting, what some cities in the United States
(12:36):
do UM on small local elections. It's sort of seeing
a test run UM all around the country and little
markets to see what people think. UM. Sometimes people are
voting on whether or not they should try. Uh. This
style of voting. Sometimes that passes and then they actually
vote on candidates. But what ranked choice voting is is
(12:58):
when you fill out a you don't just say I
want to vote for this person. You say I want
to vote for this person, and then you know my
second choice would be this person, and my third choice
would be this person. Sometimes it stops there at three.
Sometimes it's capped, but sometimes you just rank all the
candidates in order of how much you want them in office. Right, so, um,
(13:21):
the whole point of ranking them is not just for
the satisfaction of putting the person you like the least
dead last right, maybe filling in the name or the
little bubble next to their name with a skull and crossbones.
The point is it comes after the ballots are tallied.
If Chuck, everybody um voted for one single person, a
(13:42):
majority of people voted for one single person in the
first count, that person won if they had a majority
of the vote, say plus one single vote. Right, yes,
it's done. It's just like a normal election under that,
under that um that circumstance. But let's say one of
the candidates didn't get a majority of the vote. This
(14:05):
is when ranked choice voting really kicks in. And this
is another reason why it's also called an instant runoff vote,
because what happens is an instant runoff election from those ballots.
And I think we should take a break. Oh you
tail this, that's a cliffhanger. Yeah, right after this. Well,
(14:38):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh damp chuck
it stuff you should know? All right, all right, everybody,
If you remember we were talking about don't ranked choice voting,
You list out your candidates in order preference, and then
(15:01):
after you hand your ballot in, they just kind of
work from the bottom up almost and start striking people
out until they get to someone that has a majority. Yeah,
And it's really that simple. It really is like if
you if you think too hard on it, you can overcomplicated.
It's actually pretty easy. And if like what we're going
to explain doesn't quite make sense, go onto the web
(15:23):
and watch there's a couple of minute and a half
long videos that do a really good job of explaining
and using visuals. I think once by k q E
d out in San Francisco and others by Minnesota Public
Radio and both Minneapolis and San Francisco use ranked choice voting. Um,
so go watch those videos and you will totally get it.
But again, if you have a let's say you have
(15:46):
candidate A, B, C, and D, and you cast your
ballot and you like you like them in that order,
Canada as your top choice candidate beats your second choice
candidate SEES three and D is fourth. Right, Okay, easy enough,
so far right, Chuck, Yes, okay. So um, let's say
that after all the tallies are are are all the
(16:07):
ballots are tallied, your guy Canada Day just didn't make
the cut. He he came in dead last. Your your
ballot doesn't get thrown away, It gets set to the
side because whatever all the people who voted for Canada
A chose for a second, those votes get distributed to
those candidates in this next round. Yeah, exactly, And that
(16:29):
is how you end up with a majority. So you
you what you won't wind up is a situation like
you had with the current governor of Maine where he
won the election with thirty eight percent of the vote,
And like, there's something wrong with your voting system if
only thirty eight percent of the people in a in
a in a voting pool like this candidate enough and
(16:51):
they end up winning. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's
the big problem that everybody points to with our current
plurality system is you could if there's three candidates, you
can win with thirty percent of the vote, which means
sixty six percent of the people who voted didn't vote
for you. They voted for somebody other than you. And
(17:11):
the other part of the thing that I've seen from
research in this, Chuck is that when when it's a
winner takes takes all kind of election, like a plurality
election like we have, that seems to um incentivize incentivized
candidates to be more polarizing because what they're trying to
do is energize their base and get their base out,
(17:31):
but they have no incentive whatsoever to reach out across
the aisle to other voters. Um, all they're doing is
getting their base charged up to get out and vote
frequently about issues that don't really mean anything. They're just
kind of like, um, I'm not quite sure what the
term is for him, but nonsensical issues that don't really
(17:53):
mean anything. They just tick everybody off. That kind of
polarization comes from this plurality thing and one of the
ways that UM or one of the reasons so many
people are pointing to rank choice voting as a as
a UM as a kind of a way to solve
this is because it does the opposite. It incentivizes people
to reach out to as many voters as possible because
(18:16):
you want to end up as their number two choice. Yeah.
I mean it's an interesting argument. Um In theory, it
would push politicians towards the center. Uh. However, a lot
of people don't want centrist politicians, and you know, as
we've seen in recent years, people there are a lot
of people that are very hard right and very hard
left that I imagine would reject this kind of voting
(18:40):
because they don't want to go towards the center. Um.
Although right now, you know, independence are largely ignored, third
party candidates are largely ignored, so they would probably embrace
something like this. Uh. But again, I mean, we had
a situation in Kansas where the gubernatorial primary was decided
by less than two hundred votes, So that meant that
(19:01):
fifty votes basically didn't count. I mean, they counted, and
that people got to to speak their mind and vote
their conscience, But fifty two those fifty people, if you
pulled them, they would probably say, well, you know what,
I might like a second chance to vote then on
these two jerks. That was decided by lesson two votes,
(19:21):
right right. And that's where ranked choice voting comes in,
because if you, if you you know, vote your conscience,
which I think it sounds like both of us agree,
you totally should. And I think even further, you should
not deride people who vote their conscience. It's a pretty
terrible thing to do. Um. But if if you share
(19:41):
similar views um with another candidate, they might be your
second choice. You might not like them, maybe they're the
establishment candidate and you're more like the uh, the more
progressive or more far right candidate. You like that person first,
but you're also saying, you know, this person might have
a better shot, so I'm gonn to make sure that
they're my number two rather than the other person. And
(20:03):
so what you're doing then is, rather than the vote
being split like in a winner takes all, if if
your person, your third party candidate doesn't win that first round, um,
the your votes are going to go to that other
more like minded person. So rather than splitting the vote,
you're actually going and helping UH to bowl straight if
your candidate of choice doesn't make it to the second round. Right, Obviously,
(20:28):
you need at least three candidates for something like this
to happen, which doesn't always happen, so you can't always
use this this kind of voting. UH. And Maine, the
state of Maine is an interesting well, it's interesting in
a lot of ways because manners are weird and they
know that. Um, they're very independent and just sort of
(20:48):
a state into themselves in a lot of ways. So
what you've had here, nine of the past eleven governors
have been elected with less than fifty of the vote.
Nine of the past eleven, which is amazing, five of
those with less and as I mentioned earlier, the current governor,
Paul Lapage or la Page UH, he won with thirty
eight percent, and as of hours ago, as as of
(21:12):
this recording, he just vetoed a bill for this kind
of voting to continue on his way out the door. Basically,
I saw that there was like there's been a real
push in Maine against this too, and there's a lot
of allegations that it's basically the status quo is worried
that they're not going to be able to get enough
centrist people to vote for them, and so they're gonna
(21:33):
start losing elections rather than these winner polarized winner takes
all um contests that they can win by energizing the
base into a frenzy. So pushed by politicians, I guess right,
pushed by incumbent politicians. No less, Yeah, because the people
voted for it. They had a record turnout, apparently, because
one of the worries is is that more complicated voting
(21:55):
in theory leads to uh, people being less interested in voting,
like this sort of sadly American thing where you have
to make voting super easy and super dumb uh or
dumbed down at least, and if it's just confusing, people
want to understand it and they won't know what to do,
so they may not even vote. But at least in
Maine they had a record turnout, and a lot of
(22:16):
people think it was because they moved to rank choice voting.
And I saw also a two thousand and fourteen study
from the University of Missouri that um they looked at
like seventies six elections or seventy nine elections in twenty
six cities that used ranked choice voting, and they found
that overall there was like a ten percent higher turnout
than in elections that hadn't used ranked choice voting UM,
(22:40):
and that that definitely flies in the face of one
of the great criticisms of ranked choice voting that it's
way more difficult than regular voting. Like you were saying, right,
The thing is is it's not that much more difficult.
It's really pretty easy and the average person can figure
it out. What I think it calls for more though
(23:01):
Chuck is a more informed voter, you know what I mean. Like,
you can't just scantron it. You can't just make a
Christmas tree out of it and expect any kind of
good result, rather than just knowing about your one candidate
and that, yes, I like this person. They most aligned
with my view, so I'm going to vote for them,
and I don't need to know anything about the other
people except I don't want to vote for him. It
(23:24):
means that you need to know something about all of
the candidates because you've got to figure out who's second
and who's third, and who's fourth and who's fifth, um.
And to do that you have to be an informed voter.
Maybe they should in the States do it with pictures
as a who's hot and who's not, or who were best,
(23:46):
who were best in in terms of ranking, just so
we can understand it. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a
there has to be as as far as ranked choice
voting goes, there has to be a a UM, real understandable,
really robust public education campaign that goes along with it.
(24:10):
UM or else it's not gonna get anywhere, I don't think.
But I think so far in like Maine, which I
think you said already is the first state to ever
uses in statewide elections in the US. Right, Yeah, they
hand count there too, they do, but this article what
kind of worried about that? It's like, well, how long
is this going to take if they're hand counting? Well
(24:31):
if if if under the first count like they normally do,
there isn't a clear winner, a majority winner. All those
battlets gets sent to the capital, which which I think
UM uses software from that point on. So it's not
that big of a deal as far as Maine goes. Yeah,
and I read, uh the governor remains UM. The reason
why he vetoed it, he wrote like a op ed
or whatever, made a statement and he he had a
(24:54):
couple of reasons. One was financial, because they came back
and said it would cost an extra three thirty thousand
dollars or something, and he said, you know, they're sticking
it to you. They're sticking to you the taxpayer, with
more money for this election, which I don't know if
I haven't done the math, I can't imagine that would
amount to very much money per person, like per voter. Uh.
And he also said that it was it was sort
(25:16):
of voted on and run through in the middle of
the night. Uh. One of those type of deals where
you know a lot of people weren't there, It wasn't debated,
it was voted on in less than five minutes at
you know, late at night, and that kind of thing,
that kind of sneaky politics. So that's that's what that
was his contention. Although I imagine if the people have
Maine voted for it to begin with, then uh. I
(25:38):
mean from everything I've read, it sounds like he was
just sort of like on the way out the door,
given everybody the finger. Yeah, that's that's what every That's
what I've read too. That's that's kind of my interpretation.
I want to hear from people the people of Maine
though about this. Well, the people of Maine have already
spoken on. On I think June eighteenth, they using the
ranked system for the first time. The first question on
(26:02):
the ballot was do you want to keep using ranked voting?
And it was um. It was passed with like a vote,
So clearly a majority of people in Maine at least say, yep,
let's give this a shot. Was that ranked choice? Was it? Yes?
I used ranked choice? Right, right? And then maybe but
only if this and well, I guess if they don't
(26:23):
do this, and we should do this, right, so maybe
let's take a break, talk about some history. Let's well,
(26:44):
now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want
to learn a thing or two from Josh? Can chuck
stuff you should know? All right? All right, Chuck? So
ranked choice, like we said, it's been around for a
little while in the US took a stab at it before. Um,
(27:06):
I think back in the nineteen thirties in New York, right, yeah,
I mean the Brits used to do it in the
eighteen hundreds, and then America tried it in New York.
Of course, and if this weird thing hadn't happened, it
may still be around today. You never know. But in
a nineteen thirty seven city council election, a communist actually
(27:28):
want a seat because of rank choice voting, and that
changed everything. And I think if it hadn't been for that,
it might have actually caught on. Yeah, because I think
a decade later they used the um the red scare
to basically say, look, you can't have ranked choice voting.
It gets communists in power, you crazy, And everybody said, oh, okay,
(27:51):
let's get away with rank let's do away with ranked
choice voting. And they did. But as in this case,
as in all the other cases where ranked choice voting
has been tried out and then left behind later on,
it's been tied to some other issue, it doesn't seem
like ranked choice voting itself is the problem. It's the
(28:13):
the establishment who's threatened by ranked choice voting tends to
tie it to an unpopular political thing, and then UM
gets rid of it that way, like in Burlington, Vermont
back and I think the mid two thousand's they tried
ranked choice voting and this mayor that got elected was
a super progressive UM who upset I think a Republican incumbent,
(28:38):
and the progressive was doing fine, everybody's happy with him.
But then he got embroiled in a scandal where apparently
he used public funds to keep a telecom company in business.
That did not make the people of Burlington, Vermont very happy.
So he he became a very unpopular mayor, like almost overnight,
while he had been elected through ranked choice voting. So
(28:59):
the republic Kins the next time around said, look what
ranked choice voting did? It got this, this scandal plagued
mayor in office. Let's get rid of ranked choice voting.
And people voted voted against ranked choice voting, and it
was a very close vote, and it was mostly Republicans
who voted against it, but more of them turned out
to vote against ranked choice voting, so it went away.
(29:19):
Same thing with the communists in New York. The Democrats
did that. They said, look, it elected a Communist to
the New York City Council. Let's get away. Let's do
away ranked choice voting. Same thing. So it's not like
the ranked choice voting there's anything wrong with it, and
there may be a lot right with it. It's just
that it gets tied to political scandals pretty frequently. To
(29:39):
get rid of it, I think it's it's because it's
a new thing. People are like, oh, yeah, that was weird.
That was weird. Let's go back to the old way,
even though the old way is broken. Yeah. Oakland, California
is a pretty interesting situation too in two thousand ten,
because people could make arguments I guess on either side here. Uh.
In two thousand ten, for its mayoral election, there were
(30:00):
ten candidates on the ballots. You gotta rank all ten, um,
And I didn't see anything about like, is a ballot
counted if you only rank like four. Oh, that's a
really good point. I wonder if that's an incomplete ballot.
It is. And all that's counted though, is your first vote.
So in the first round of voting, your ballot counts
(30:21):
whether you rank one person or four or three. However,
if you don't fill it out and you just fill
out one, it gets counted once. So you could write
nine out of ten and it only counts the first
from what I understand. Yes, interesting, alright, So in Oakland
and there were ten candidates, Uh, there was a front
runner named Don Parata. He got thirty of what they
(30:42):
called the first choice vote, which is, you know, obviously
pretty low for first choice did not win, and then
Jane Kuan she finished pretty far behind. She only got
of the first preference, but she ended up winning with
fifty to Paradas forty eight percent after they rolled all
those other votes up. Yes, because she had gone to
(31:03):
the other candidates who were long shots and said, hey,
let's let's form an alliance here. Let's let's try to
like get as many voters as possible to vote for us.
And that's one of the things that ranked choice voting does, Chuck,
is it incentivizes you to appeal to as many voters
as possible rather than alienating another candidates voters and just
(31:26):
appealing to your own base. You want those second choice
votes too, because they count in later rounds, and that
means that you have to say, hey, I know I'm
not your first choice. I'm I might even be from
a different party than the one you're planning to vote for,
but let me tell you about some of the things
that we have in common that might change your opinion
(31:48):
of me, which means that there's probably going to be
less negative ads, less negative campaigns, and in some some
um cases, I think for the main Attorney General's office,
some candidates have them together to um to basically run
ads like joint campaign ads saying hey, everybody, I know
(32:09):
you're playing in the vote for me, but maybe put
this person is number two and the other person says
the same thing. And in doing so, what you're doing
is is is rather than splitting the vote, you're consolidating
what would have been previously split votes into something that
could actually lift one or the other to to office. Yeah.
(32:30):
And I mean as far as appealing to the center
one of the people want that, that's that's got to
be better than what we have now, which is people
digging in so far and so hard to the left
and the right that they're basically they might as well
just come out and say screw you of the country.
(32:50):
And that's that's a broken system. Uh. And there are
a lot of people, including uh Bloomberg View columnists Leonid
Breschitzky speaking of communists. I'm just kidding, Leonid. I'm sure
you're a fine American. Uh. He you know, he basically
came out and wrote an article that said, if we
(33:11):
had gone with this type of thing, Donald Trump would
not not only would he not be president, he would
not have even won the primary because there were so
many sort of establishment traditional conservatives that would never have
voted for Donald Trump, and may have even set out
the election that would have written in like maybe John
casag first, then Jeb Bush second, and then who knows third.
(33:35):
I can't I can't imagine who they would have picked third,
But they probably would have put Donald Trump dead last.
So he would have never rolled up in the primaries
even right. And so the reason why people would have
put Trump dead last in this case is because he
was so he was so far away from the clump
(33:55):
of the other guys who were a little more towards
the middle, and just by day of their being more
of these guys more towards the middle, that means that
there are more voters voting for those people, and so
Trump would have been left out and somebody like Jeff
Bush or somebody who was a centrist would have been
more likely to to reach the primary. And that's the point.
Because more people tend to aggregate towards the center than
(34:19):
towards the fringes. Ranked choice voting serves the center a
lot more clearly than it does the fringes, and it
it drags the fringe candidates toward the center more and
and and get it does away with the polarization that
creates the fringe candidates in the first place. Yeah, and
(34:40):
I guess we should point out that center center of
your own party more like, I don't know, man, I
think center. The thing about the center of the own
party is that the difference between the two is not
as pronounced and so like there's a lot more reaching
across the aisles, which I think is why a lot
of people value you know, centrist Paul. It takes a
(35:01):
lot more is there's a lot more compromise that comes
out of it rather than gridlock. Yeah, I mean, I
guess in theory center right and center left is more
towards the overall center. But when I hear things like
Ted Cruz is more centrist, I mean, it depends on
who you compare him to. I guess exactly he's he's
a little more central compared to Donald Trump, maybe on
the Republican side, but I don't think any Democrat would
(35:23):
identify with him. Sure, agreed, So I think you could
make a case that ranked choice voting would probably keep
somebody like Ted Cruz from being president one day too,
you know, maybe, So who knows what I'm interested in.
Is the money, like one of the things that Governor
la Page or Lapage, do you know what's one it is? No,
(35:46):
I don't, or however you pronounce that in Maine. Let's
go with Lapage. It sounds fancy. Yeah. So Lapage talked
about the money, and that is one of the things
that critics bring up is it will cost a lot
of money. But I'd be curious just to see dollars
lines on runoff elections and what they cost um. I saw, Well,
that's the other thing too, because this would eliminate those
(36:08):
it would right now, from what I saw, there's twelve
states that have run off rules. The rest of the
states don't. It's all winner takes all. But the only
the states that do have runoff rules, that's only in
the primaries. Interesting. Yeah, so in a federal election, uh,
ranked choice voting UM or a general election, it's going
to cost more just because it's it's a little more expensive.
(36:31):
But what I saw was that cost Maine. There's a
Boston Globe editorial by the editors of the Boston Globe
that said, let's do this in Massachusetts. They said it
was just like a hundred and ten thousand dollars more
for the entire state of Maine to run this UM
this election over ones that didn't have ranked choice that
used plurality voting. Yeah, that's like fractions of a penny
(36:55):
per voter, probably right, I should say. Also, since talking
about bringing it to Massachusetts, UM, I thought of doing
this episode because remember our friend Dave who used to
work at Sweetwater Dave Morrell. Oh yeah, he is running
for the UM I think District five House for the
New Hampshire House District four New Hampshire House. He's got
(37:17):
my vote. He the same here. Unfortunately we can't vote
for him, but UM Dave was saying one of his
platform planks is bringing rank choice voting to New Hampshire. Interesting. Yeah,
and he's like, I'm happy to be your number three.
I think he wants to be your number one. Well,
another criticism that this one is the one that gets me,
Like everything else sounds pretty good, but uh, a lot
(37:40):
of these cities limit, like I said earlier at the
very beginning, to the top three candidates. So there's something
called ballot exhaustion. If all three of your candidates on
your list are eliminated, then your ballot is basically just burned.
In fact, I think they burn it. They hold it
up and they burn it in front of your face,
like Tony Collette and hereditary and then laugh at you.
(38:03):
So you would think this probably didn't happen much though,
But there was a study in electoral electoral studies in
two thousand fifteen set in four cities, between nine point
six point seven percent of voters were eliminated due to
ballot exhaustion, which those numbers are super high, they are
very high. Well, one way to get around that is
(38:24):
to um not just rank your top three, but to
rank every single person. I wonder why they did that though,
maybe to make it easier. I'm not sure, but the
San Francisco just ranks the top three for their mayor
mayoral races, which is kind of I don't know about that,
because they frequently have like ten people in there in
the race, like you were saying, so just to rank
(38:45):
the top three that will lead to a lot of
ballot exhaustion, which is a real problem. But again, if
people just rank all the candidates, their ballot will keep
getting getting counted round after round, because after your first
two were eliminated in three and then four, those your
vote for that rank keeps getting added depending on the
(39:06):
round that you're on. It's pretty pretty interesting stuff. Man,
I don't know. You think it'll catch on here? It
has piqued my interest. Same here. I think anything that
does away with um with um polarization and does away
with people who share pretty similar views. But anything that
does away with that, I'm I'm in favor of trying
(39:28):
for sure. Agreed. Well, if you want to know more
about ranked choice voting, go check it out some of
those videos on the web, and um, you're probably going
to learn to like it. But whatever, make up your
own mind. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail. All right, this is a bit long, but
(39:49):
it's a good one. This is from an actual recently
retired New York City detective. Hi, guys, love the show.
I was a NYPD detective for twenty years and just retired,
And I'm glad to say you guys remotely spot on
with the lineups episode. And then he gives us some
really interesting tidbits here. I can't wait. He says, double
(40:10):
blind lineups are better, but they are a huge suck
on resources. You have to transport a witness or witnesses
who also need to be separated fillers the suspect who
requires two detectives to safely transport from one site to
the next. And now you have to find another detective
who who knows nothing about your case, So that usually
means to go to an outside detective squad, who themselves
(40:33):
have their own cases for which they may need blind administrators.
So you can see how this ripples outward. Photo arrays
would be helpful in terms of logistics, but they are
inadmissible as trial evidence in New York. You can only
be used to identify a possible suspect, but in order
to bring charges you have to conduct a live lineup. Additionally,
many victims feel more confident looking at real people than
it photos. UH defense lawyers will claim they want to
(40:56):
be present for the lineup to verify it's impartiality, but
do not actually want to be there and in fact
rarely are UH. If they're not present, they can then
accuse officers of all kinds of misdeeds and an effort
to have the identification suppressed at hearing. If they are
present and observe nothing untoward during the procedure, it becomes
more difficult for them to later claim otherwise super interesting. Uh. Lastly,
(41:20):
I spent the last four years of my career in
a robbery unit that worked with federal prosecutors. We begged
squad detectives not to show photo arrays or conduct lineups.
As we know what Josh said. Many times, it's true.
Witness testimony more often than not as terrible. We build
most of our cases using co conspirator testimony, perpetrator statements, UH,
DNA criminalistics, so, social media analysis, cell phone tracking, security video,
(41:45):
license plate reader data, etcetera, etcetera. Uh, witnesses really just
muddy the waters. Uh. They're best used to say, hey
I got robbed and then just leave it at that.
It also takes the emotional burden off them at trial
should it ever come to that. Yeah, my wife and
are big fans kept us entertained on many road trips.
Thanks guys, have a great day. And that is from
(42:07):
former detective Jason Allison. That is an amazing email. Man.
I'll bet social media is a huge tool because I'll
bet there's so many goons just run around like I
totally just robbed this place. Check it out here, here's
the money. I guys, speaking of huge tools, yeah, uh,
good one, Chuck. Well, if you want to get in
touch with us like the former detective did, that's pretty awesome.
(42:30):
We always want to hear from experts in the field
that we talked about. You can get in touch with
us via social media. Just go to our website, Stuff
you Should Know dot com and it's got all of
our links up there um. Or you can send us
an email. Just send it to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(42:54):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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