THERE IS SOMETHING ABSURD ABOUT A POLITY GOVERNED BY A VANGUARD.

That's an observation I made a year ago, in a meditation that concluded, "Put another way, when the relatively disengaged voters are paying more attention to politics, that's when you have a problem."  Study your history, dear reader.

The absurdity might be a design flaw brought about out of the best of intentions.  "Most elections in the United States are a two-round system of first-past-the-post (FPTP) or plurality, as opposed to majority, voting: In the first round the standard bearer for each political party is selected by plurality vote and then in the second round, this occurs among the top candidates for each party, again by plurality."  That design takes the initial candidate selection out of the hands of party bosses, and gives it to voters, but in a way that gives motivated True Believers the opportunity to be a decisive set: consider how Donald Trump went from almost nobody's first choice in the 2016 Republican primaries to front runner, and once he received the nomination, the usual "binary choice" or "lesser of two evils" or "Hillary is the greater evil" dynamics came into play, to the great surprise of the Bipartisan Establishment.  But the existing, common method is common, and, as Reason's Eric Boehm notes,

Indeed, the chief problem with the more traditional election system is that it forces voters to hold their noses and pick between two bad options. Parties love that, because it means less competition, but the result is a lot of zero-sum politicking and bad policies. And it gives outsized political power to primary election voters, allowing fringe candidates to win power without being broadly endorsed by the general electorate.

Partisan polarization might have preceded the traditional election system, or perhaps the traditional system, with party primaries, in taking candidate selection out of the hands of party bosses and giving it to whoever shows up at the primary, reinforces polarization, to the detriment of the median voter.  That detriment has been on my mind for years, such as in 2010 when I thought as follows about creating Congressional districts without regard to party affiliation.

[Let] Congress change the apportionment formula to produce districts with more viewpoint diversity rather than creating safe districts for both parties. Although such a change has the potential both to favor candidates that cater to the median voter and to upset the conditions favorable to maximum differentiation in the primaries, where the True Believers are more likely to vote, it presupposes more racial comity than may currently exist. Those safe districts are the bipartisan implementation of the Voting Rights Act in such a way as to create majority-minority districts by clustering primarily poor Americans with African roots together to elect Democrats, and at the same time creating Republican districts, often by clustering primarily poor Americans with European roots together.

That might be a possibility with additional Congressional districts, that cube root rule, along with district drawing creating the simplest polygons.  More recently, though, states have implemented different voting methods that might also be beneficial to median voters.

One possibility might be ranked choice voting.  "Citizens no longer have to strategically decide between voting their preference, which may well mean 'wasting' their vote if it’s for the 3rd place or lower candidate, or voting the lesser of two evils."  Leave aside whether voting as if the choice is binary is the desirable strategy, or whether the lesser of two evils is still evil.  Let's consider whether being able to rank choices might give the parties a better idea of what the center of mass of preferences is.

It does, but the parties have to learn the right lessons. In Alaska, Sarah Palin might have won the traditional party primary, and, running as the Republican, been elected to Congress. But Alaska conducts a single primary in which the top four vote getters advance to the general election, and the general election uses ranked choice. In that post, from September of last year, I concluded, "Will Team Palin work on building turnout, or will Team Begich attempt to flip enough Palin voters so as to be first past the post without any instant runoff?"

That's not how it turned out, and the Democrat is Alaska's Member of Congress, and Republican true believers are crying foul.

"Ranked choice voting has once again resulted in an election outcome totally unrepresentative of Alaska sentiments, just as supporters wanted," tweeted conservative columnist Ben Domenech shortly after the results of Palin's race were announced on Wednesday night. Domenech was echoing similar complaints lodged by high-profile Republicans, like Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), who called ranked choice voting "a scam" after Palin lost to Peltola in August's special election for the same House seat.

No, Sarah Palin did not work on building turnout, and enough Begich voters held their noses and put the Democrat second.

Now, here's where the partisan hacks get their boxers in a bind. They look at the first-round totals, see that most Alaskans picked a Republican as their top choice, and conclude that a Republican must therefore represent the state in Congress.

Just as the election designers intended. Apparently in Alaska's Senate election, it was Democratic voters who held their noses and made Lisa Murkowski their second choice, returning her to the Senate.  Thus, Alaskans have managed to retain popular selection of party candidates in primaries, while encouraging appeals to median voters rather than True Believers.

This is exactly what the combination of open primaries and ranked choice voting is supposed to do. It encourages voters to express nuanced opinions about individual candidates rather than asking them to blindly mash the "R" or "D" button after being fueled up with months of campaign rage porn. It turns elections into less of a political Super Bowl and more of an actual attempt to gauge the desires of the voting public and triangulate representation around those interests.

"There's every reason to think the wins for Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola reflect Alaska voters' well-considered preferences," tweeted Walter Olson, a senior fellow for constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Ranked choice voting and the universal primary with which it's paired in Alaska performed as one would want them to. More, please."

Georgia, which uses a runoff for general elections not won by a clear majority, is also contemplating moving to ranked choice.

If voters balk at the idea of a senator representing the entire state while only capturing 45 percent of the total vote, an instant runoff would be a much better option. FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that supports ranked choice voting, argued after the runoff votes were tallied that an instant runoff would do better to capture the feelings of the electorate. Between the November election and the December runoff, it noted, "total turnout dropped from 3.9 million to 3.5 million." In other words, 400,000 fewer voters turned out for the runoff, around five times what Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver received in November.

Walker and Warnock also each received fewer votes overall in the runoff than in the general. It seems illogical to claim that Warnock did not earn reelection with 1.9 million votes, but he did a month later with 1.8 million.

There are examples available in academic or general-interest publications illustrating how several different voting methods, such as first-past-the-post, top two run off, ranked choice, or weighted ranked choice, produce different outcomes.

There's an instructive essay in A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper that suggests even a high-information, high-turnout primary can go wrong.  A first-past-the post primary produces one winner.  A Georgia-style runoff produces a different winner.  An Alaska-style instant runoff produces yet another winner.  Perhaps the problem is in expecting too much of elections.  Those logical problems -- what the third point speaks to -- will be present under a different method of choosing representatives under which multiple parties have a chance.

Those examples generally do not consider the sensitivity of voting method to turnout.  If you expect any voting method to deliver unambiguously superior results, you will be disappointed.  That long essay, which will reward careful study, has in part been overtaken by events.

Also, we’re not convinced that the reason for the two-party system in the United States is due to FPTP rather than RCV. Rather, it is more likely it is an artifact of having a presidential form of government, rather than a parliamentary form of government. In countries with the parliamentary form of government, “third parties” flourish even with FPTP voting and they have real power since they often form part of the ruling coalition.

Perhaps a mathematically superior voting method like Pairwise Comparison could win out, but until all states, territories, and districts of the United States of America are able to count all of the votes within a few hours of the polls closing like Florida, we should stick with first-past-the-post.

We just had a very parliamentary-style election for the Speaker of the House, and whilst Florida election officials have made great strides in counting and recounting votes, their traditional party primary and general election system might have avoided any close elections more recently as a consequence of internal migration, not necessarily as a consequence of partisans appealing to median voters.  That the poobahs of the major parties in states controlled by Democrats as well as by Republicans are among the strongest opponents of moving to instant runoff elections might be counted as a reason for implementing it, a few delays in totaling votes in close elections notwithstanding.