A proposed middle ground for ranked choice voting to improve accessibility
- Guest contributor
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By Michael Riederer
If ballots are like Baskin Robbins with many flavors of ice cream, we don't need to choose between the pistachio and rum raisin. Notably, at the state level we have primary races to limit the top-of-the-ticket ranked ballot to four candidates. If it's inevitable that CBJ is to pass ranked choice voting (RCV), let's do it right and not force frivolous ranking at the expense of clarity. Let me explain.
For fishermen, choosing the right rain gear comes down to a few trusted options. I prefer Norrøna for style, but if it's raining hard I might need Grundéns. For the dirty work in the engine room, Carhartt is the answer. These three options have gotten me through whatever Juneau brings.
Top-three RCV works the same way. Almost all of the useful information comes from a voter's top three choices. Ranking a long list adds very little, but it does make the ballot busier and harder to read, especially when many candidates choose to run like in the 2023 and 2024 CBJ Assembly elections. Smaller boxes and tiny text lead to more mistakes and less clarity.
Allowing each voter to simply rank a personal podium — first, second and third — is intuitive to understand and statistically robust. Let the instant runoff calculations do the rest to reach a majority consensus. Nothing nefarious, just a good representation of the public opinion while encouraging more candidates and avoiding the vote-splitting pitfalls of pluralism.
RCV promotes healthy discussion, community, and political civility as candidates must form a majority quicker than their rivals do. A candidate might not be everyone's Norrøna (first choice), but they may be enough of a Grundéns or Carhartt (second or third choice) to get the job done.
The math shows why this works. For your fourth or fifth ranking to matter, your first, second, and third choices all have to be eliminated first. If your first choice has about a 55% chance of reaching the final round, your second has about half of that, and your third half again.
According to Dickerson, Marin, and McCune in their 2023 research on "An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Ballot Truncation on Ranked-Choice Electoral Outcomes," ranking a fourth candidate only changed the outcome 1.5% of the time. While ranking a fifth candidate only added about 0.4% of accuracy.
Personally, this matches how I shop for rain gear. Too many jackets crammed in one aisle makes shopping overwhelming, even if all the jackets are good. The same is true for ballots. Top-three RCV keeps things simple so voters can express their core preferences without getting lost in the clutter. This reduces cost during ballot printing by saving ink and paper, while improving clarity. It's not a new idea and it's what many municipalities in the USA already do.
As a note on multi-seat or dual-seat races, like school board elections: voters already choose several candidates today. Ranking your top three is simply a clearer way of doing what we already do. You list the three people you genuinely prefer, and the count repeats until each open seat is filled. It's no harder for voters. In many ways, it's simpler and more consistent across the whole ballot. If more than three members ever needed to be elected at once, the limit could be adjusted as appropriate.
Top-three RCV captures the choices that matter without pretending we have strong opinions about 10 different candidates competing for one or two spots. For a pragmatic, independent-minded town like Juneau, your top three votes are what matter most. These ballot considerations would encourage civic engagement and consensus building, while attracting long-term leaders that can navigate CBJ through the future...all while keeping the ballot simple.
• Michael Riederer is a former North Douglas resident.
