It’s not your vote that counts. It’s how we count the votes.
Editorial
It is time for the elections again. A glorious time where we most actively participate in our democracy. A wondrous time where we choose our representatives and leaders. A time of new beginnings, filled with hope for a better future and promises of change.
If only these honeyed words paint the complete picture of elections. While these idealized statements may be the case for some, most of us loathe election time. It is a time of politicians gallivanting about, spewing promises they can’t keep. A time when their faces plastered on tarpaulins and leaflets pile up as unnecessary waste in our cities. A time when people are bullied by others and held captive by election-related anxiety. While there are many factors that contribute to the dismal state of our elections nowadays, I would like to bring light to one big factor, our voting system.
We vote in a plurality based system. A system where we choose a select number of candidates and no more. In the case of the highest seat of the land, we vote for only one president. Amongst plentiful choices we are forced to pick one, and the candidate that gets picked the most wins. I bring light to this because this system is a terrible way of voting with so many other better alternatives out there.
One such reason is what we call the spoiler effect. It is when a candidate enters a race, loses it, but still affects the overall winner. Consider this scenario. In one election, Madame Rose won with a 57% vote against Mister Moneybags with 43% vote, a close race but the winner was clear to be Rose. In the next election, Sir Suave enters the race. Suave has similar platforms to Rose and sways 15% of the voters away from her but can’t touch Moneybags’ strong voter base. Sir Suave still ends up losing the race with 15% but Rose now only ends up with a 42% vote and loses to Moneybags. Suave spoiled the election and made Moneybags win. This also goes against the very principle of democracy, rule of the many, and has made the 43% of people who want Moneybags win over the 57% who don’t. A very good example of this is the current debacle in our own elections, the very reason why I’m writing this article. After their press conference, Lacson, Moreno, and other presidential candidates are seemingly going after Robredo’s votes. With Moreno even calling for Robredo’s withdrawal. They are not improving their chances of winning and only ruining someone else’s. Spoiling the election for all of us. The spoiler effect played a major role in the 2000 American elections. Green party candidate Ralph Nadar secured 94,000 votes in the state of Florida. Not enough to win the election but enough for Al Gore to lose the electoral votes of Florida and ultimately the entire race. That was in a country with 2 major parties dominating the votes, imagine the effect this has on a multi-party state such as ours.
Another downside of plurality voting is that it makes us betray our favorite. Every election we are faced with dilemmas of either picking our favorite or picking the lesser evil between the two frontrunners. We are forced to strategize our voting instead of actually expressing our democratic interests. This inexpressiveness is a hallmark of plurality voting. In a massive roster of candidates, we form varying opinions on a lot of them. But on the ballot, we are only able to express our opinion on one. In a more democratic system, our other opinions should be heard as well.
Plurality voting also puts a strain on the candidates we see running for office. Campaigns are dominated by familiar faces and fully established family names. New candidates struggle to accrue their own voters because the people are trying to avoid the spoiler effect or are strategizing to pick the lesser evil. Candidates with moderate opinions also suffer disadvantages. People are made to choose candidates who lean more towards one direction in an attempt to truly make their vote count. This is what we call the center-squeeze effect, a widely studied phenomenon in voting theory — an academic field that exists due to the many flaws of plurality voting. In a democratic system we would expect a candidate in the middle of the political spectrum to have a higher chance of winning due to them appealing to more voters but thanks to plurality voting only those in one direction experience representation every election.
So what should we do? How do we fix these big issues? I did say there are better ways to vote. One of those is a simple two word fix. Instead of just saying ‘vote for one candidate’ we say ‘vote for one or more candidates’. This is called approval voting. Candidates would no longer fight for bigger slices of a voter pie; they instead would try their best at increasing their approval. They would really have to win the voters’ trust and not just rely on smear campaigns. This way of voting is the most expressive as you can put down your vote for as many candidates as you want. This system can’t be spoiled nor strategized as there is no longer direct competition for votes. And to top it off, this easy to understand system, with only one change to add to our ballots, and it showcases the most accurate level of support each candidate has.
This change would also see rise to lesser strife amongst candidates. In an approval voting candidates would have lesser incentive to slander or start smear campaigns against their fellow candidates. Since candidates can share voters, we might even see active cooperation between them. I am not calling for protection for our politicians, they are after all a minority to our citizens but a positive change for them is a positive change for our democracy.
Such a simple change to our voting system but massive benefits to our democracy. I for one am boggled that we haven’t yet made the change. Maybe the elites of our nation are scared of the notion of approval rating. Maybe they believe that if the power were truly in the hands of the people then their reign would come to a crashing halt. This type of system has seen recent support in the US, with cities in North Dakota and Missouri adopting it. This type of system is also used by the United Nations in selecting the Secretary General. Approval voting hasn’t been widely used due to a lot of opposition from those who wish to remain with plurality voting and those who advocate other systems, such as instant run-off voting, proportional voting, and many other systems worth a look. However, I will remain adamant that plurality voting is the most flawed of the bunch and must be changed. Changing our voting system is as easy as amending sections 210 and 212 of the Omnibus Election Code and can be done anytime we wish.
For the upcoming May 9 elections, we are still forced to strategize and spoil our votes. But I hope that in the future we would allow democracy to return and we would approve of better elections.
Sources:
Ballotpedia. (2021). Approval voting. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://ballotpedia.org/Approval_voting
Hamlin, A. (2021, April 20). Progress. The Center for Election Science. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://electionscience.org/voting-methods/approval-voting-progress/
Maxmin, C. S. (2012, October 30). Beware the spoiler effect. Opinion. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/10/30/third-party-spoiler
McIntee, T. (2021, June 28). Problems with plurality. Medium. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://medium.com/basic-voting-theory/problems-with-plurality-a56deea7bd
