Update: Funding Accomplished!
If you'd like to know how you can make a further contribution, please go to our website's donation page.
Who is The Center for Election Science?
The Center for Election Science (CES) is a nonpartisan, 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to advancing smarter electoral systems. Our team is a driven group with varying academic backgrounds who try to make the world a better place.
What's the project?
We're conducting a nationally representative poll in collaboration with the polling arm of the University of Chicago, NORC. They've been doing polling for 75 years. This poll will include all the ballot-qualified US presidential candidates. Each poll respondent will answer according to a number of different voting methods.
Wait, what's a voting method?
A voting method is the rule that says what kind of information you can put on your ballot and how that information is calculated to decide who wins. An example of what you're used to seeing is a ballot that only allows you to choose one candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins. This is called plurality voting, also known as first past the post.
But there are lots of ways to do this. You can rank candidates and calculate the results in a number of different ways. You can score candidates on a scale. You can even choose as many candidates as you want. These are methods like approval voting, score voting, instant runoff voting, Condorcet, Borda, and others.
Okay, that was interesting, but why does the voting method matter?
The voting method makes a big difference in single-winner elections with more than two candidates. And even in elections that initially have only two candidates, the voting method can influence whether other potential candidates decide to run. Under a voting method like plurality, otherwise interested candidates might stay away for fear of being labeled a spoiler.
Other areas affected by the voting method:
- Who wins
- Partisanship
- Voter turnout
- Whether you can safely vote your honest favorite
- Treatment of third parties and alternative ideas
- Ability to remove politicians who don't serve your best interests
So the voting method matters. But why this project?
Did you know what a voting method was before visiting this campaign? It's okay. Most people are right there with you—one reason why this project is so needed. This project creates an unprecedented poll that lets the public see alternative voting methods in action within the context of an election that they can relate to.
We're bringing attention to the issue by gathering information that otherwise wouldn't exist. There is no other point where you have a direct effect on those who represent us than when you vote. But your vote loses its real potential with the wrong voting method. Consider that the people we elect control how trillions of our tax dollars are spent, and they make the laws that govern you. The voting method turns out to be a big deal when you look at it that way.
Also, don't forget that voting takes place in a number of other contexts as well. Consider voting for awards, board members, and other important collective decisions. We hope to inspire everyone to think about how they vote, even when it's not within government.
Oh, the perks!
As we said, we're a nonprofit. Our perks focus on bringing you into our community. We want you to learn about why better voting methods are important, get excited, and spread your newfound knowledge to others. We look forward to learning about you and what sparked you to get passionate about this cause.
What's the initial goal, and what are the stretch goals?
$10K: This is the minimum we need to cover our costs and run a basic, nationally representative poll.
$19K: We can test hypotheses about alternative independent candidates, voter turnout, tactical voting, and the debates.
$30K: The folks at the University of Chicago can help with the analysis so that we get the results out quickly.
$35K+: More funds help us strategically generate more media and cover our operational expenses.
When's this poll going to happen?
We'll be doing the poll in mid-October. We only get one shot. We'll start to analyze the data immediately after.
What else have you done?
Our website is one of the largest layperson-friendly voting method resources on the internet. We were the first to produce a professional explainer video on approval voting, which we successfully crowdfunded. We've conducted straw polls for FreedomFest and the Republican Liberty Caucus. We collaborated on a nomination process for the Hugo Awards. And we organized the voting system for the Webby Awards. We also regularly give talks around the country on voting methods.
I research all my giving. How can I research you?
We pride ourselves on being transparent, so much so that we have a page on our site called "transparency". You can find our tax records, annual reports, and internal documents.
This cause is vital, and I have the capacity to give a major gift beyond this project.
We're flattered! You can reach us by e-mailing contact@electology.org. We can take it from there. Our executive director is also an attorney who is familiar with different giving strategies.
How can we get this featured on Indiegogo's front page?
- Those icons by the video at the top are important. Try clicking on the Facebook and Twitter buttons. You can also send an e-mail to your friends—particularly the ones that complain about voting.
- After donating, you can comment on this page by clicking on the tab by the video.
- "Follow" this page by clicking the heart by the video.
FAQ
I get the feeling that you don't like plurality voting and you favor approval voting. What about biased results?
Our analysis does have us in a place where we favor approval voting in many situations, including government elections. And we clearly oppose plurality voting. The polling itself will be contracted out to NORC and conducted by a mix of phone and online forms—independent of us. We do design the questioning in collaboration with NORC. We use parallel question structure and counterbalancing to avoid issues, including systematic error.
Are you trying to change the way we vote for president?
The short answer is not in the immediate future. Historically, alternative voting methods have been implemented at the local level first. Using this poll for the presidential election is a way for people to see how alternative voting methods have the potential to fundamentally change our elections.
Could we ever use another voting method to vote for US president?
We could actually, but because of the Electoral College, we can't use just any voting method. States can make agreements between themselves called interstate compacts. There are many ways to trigger a compact to, in effect, have a national popular vote. Logistically, however, the alternative voting method still needs to interact with other states that use plurality voting in the interim.
As it is, approval voting would be the only alternative voting method that would work here since it can integrate with states still using plurality, and it doesn't require a national central tabulation since it allows for precinct-level summability. Take that, Electoral College!
What about the Constitution?
A couple points:
1. States are free to assign their electoral votes however they wish.
2. There is nothing in the constitution that says we must use plurality voting. The same goes for state constitutions.
What about one person, one vote?
A little background:
The U.S. Supreme Court made the “one person, one vote” rule explicit in Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533). The rule stated that no vote should count more than any other so that it has unequal weight. This unequal weight would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. And it was Baker v. Carr (369 U.S. 186) that extended the Equal Protection Clause to districting issues. In Reynolds, the state of Alabama set up its districts so that they varied wildly in population. The districting was so bad that it gave some voters’ ballots as much as 41 times more weight than others. Because the weights of the ballots were different between districts, that violated the “one person, one vote” rule.
But alternative voting methods such as the ones we're studying do not weight people's ballots differently. Everyone is treated fairly, and no one is at a disadvantage. So no violation. Alternative voting methods have also survived challenges in US court, bolstering this conclusion.
Don't they do something like one of these in Europe or someplace?
There are a few places around the world, including in some US states, where methods besides plurality voting are used in executive elections. Right now, those tend to involve ranking.
But be sure you don't confuse this with proportional representation. To use a proportional voting method, you have to be electing multiple equal seats at the same time. Executive (single-winner) offices don't lend themselves to this and are inherently not proportional regardless of the voting method. This poll only tests single-winner voting methods.
Note, however, that we do support proportional voting methods.
Are you just promoting third parties and independents?
No. But we do want to promote competition and accountability, and that means creating a level playing field with a much lower barrier to entry. Our voting method has turned major parties into what the public unequivically indicates is poor. The opinion polls we've referenced objectively reflect that. There's also the Princeton study that found our Congress to be completely unresponsive to voters.
But we believe major parties can be stronger and more effective as a result of better voting methods. They can nominate better candidates. Plus, the presence of competition can keep them more accountable so that they behave better. Surely, most elected officials really do want to do better by voters, but it's our job to provide them the environment where they're actually encouraged to do so.
Didn't some theorem somewhere say that all voting methods are just as bad?
No, that's not what those theorems say.
There are a couple popular theorems dealing with voting methods. One is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. That theorem looks at ranking methods and proves that no ranking method can satisfy some basic fairness criteria. Note, however, that this theorem is only for ranking methods. Also, it says nothing about the degree nor the frequency that a voting method fails a particular criterion.
Another theorem is the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem which indicates that all voting methods must succumb to some form of tactical voting. Tactical voting is when you give dishonest information in order to maximize the value of your own ballot.
All this isn't as bad as it sounds. We can actually do simulations like Bayesian Regret that account for a number of factors in order to measure average voter utility. In other words, we can account for the frequencies and degrees of election anomalies and tactical voting within each voting method to find out how well they perform, on average, in terms of satisfying voters.
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We aren't alone in appreciating the very real differences in voting methods. See the report from Voting Powers and Procedures at the London School of Economics and Political Science. (Spoiler: They didn't like plurality and tended to prefer approval voting.)
Conclusion: Even given that no method is perfect, some methods can still be clearly better than others—though exactly how that plays out isn't always agreed upon. But the expert consensus is that plurality voting (our choose-one method) is quite terrible.
What after this?
For as small as we are, we do A LOT of work. With real funding, we could do substantially more work. And so we're always on the lookout for large funding sources. Unfortunately, however, though voting methods are extremely important, they are not an intuitively obvious target (as you may have noticed). Consequently, we are not able to take on as many projects or scale them up as large as we would like.
Here are some projects that better funding would allow us to do:
- Voting methods simulation with automatic tactical learning
- Ballot generation and calculation software for alternative voting methods
- Wizard tools for picking the best voting method for your election
- Media outreach campaign & expansive marketing
- Strategically target localities to push ballot initiatives (with a 501(c)4)
- White papers on best practices
- Open voting method course materials for schools
- Further polling on local elections using alternative voting methods
- Expand electoral consulting services
P.S. We use creative commons and open source code for all our work.
