Radiolab - Tweak the Vote

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Back in 2018, when this episode first aired, there was a feeling that democracy was on the ropes.  In the United States and abroad, citizens of democracies are feeling increasingly alienated, disaffected, and powerless.  Some are even asking themselves a question that feels almost too dangerous to say out loud: is democracy fundamentally broken?  Today on Radiolab, we ask a different question: how do we fix it?  We scrutinize one proposed tweak to the way we vote that could make politics in this country more representative, more moderate, and most shocking of all, more civil.  Could this one surprisingly do-able mathematical fix really turn political campaigning from a rude bloodsport to a campfire singalong? And even if we could do that, would we want to?Special thanks to Rob Richie (and everyone else at Fairvote), Don Saari, Diana Leygerman, Caroline Tolbert, Bobby Agee, Edward Still, Jim Blacksher, Allen Caton, Nikolas Bowie, John Hale, and Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden.And a very special thanks to Rick Pickren, for allowing us to use his rendition of State of Maine, Maine’s state anthem. Check that out, and all his other state anthems on Spotify or Youtube.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif Nasser, Simon Adler, Sarah Qari, Suzie Lechtenberg and Tracie HunteProduced by - Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Suzie LechtenbergOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Simon AdlerOur newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, it's Lethif. Given the approaching American presidential election, we are on week two of our election run. So last week, if you'll remember, we had the story about the dramatic changes in how we cover presidential candidates in this country. Next week, we have a brand new episode about why and how we count our votes for president. But this week, we have the evolving story of how we cast those votes. The episode I'm about to play for you, it's six years old, which I mean, if you think about the long sweep of American political history, that does not feel like a long time. And yet so much has changed. So when we released this episode, the process

we're about to outline for you, like it was pretty obscure. It was used, I don't know, in a few places, few cities, few states in the US. Now, this is big time. What we are describing to you, it's on the upswing. This is literally going to help decide who the next president is going to be, which I don't know about you that I find that kind of inspiring. It feels like things can actually change in this country. So anyway, we will play the episode now

and then we will do a quick update on the flip side. So without further ado, here is tweak the vote. Yeah, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio Lab. From WNYC. WNYC. Rewind. This part of it, yeah. I'm Robert Kralich. And I'm Letif Nasser. And today on Radiolab, I, Robert, I am going to make you wrestle with your most cherished ideal, American democracy.

Oh, I see. Okay, great. Wait, hang on a second. I'm just struggling with the earphones. Now I have them on. Okay. Okay, great. And I'm going to start things off by introducing you to Jascha.

Jascha Munch. I'm a lecturer on government at Harvard. He studies politics. Uh, what was was going to say? Uh, maybe we could just start with where you grew up. Yeah, so I was, um... So I was born in 1982. I grew up in Germany, moved around a bunch of different places

within Germany as a kid. And then went to college in England. Cambridge. In 2000. And I was kind of studying politics. I was a history major So Yasha was studying politics, but he was studying it in the past So he was looking at you know going all the way back to the cradle of democracy in ancient Greece and then how?

Democracy came to thrive around the world But as he was studying that he was noticing, you know in the news he would see in certain countries like France or Austria You know, there would be these parties, these far-right, ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant parties that were starting to gain some traction. And for Jascha? I saw some of this. This was a little bit scary. Because my family has been in the wrong place at the wrong time for about four generations. His great-grandparents perished during the Holocaust?

My grandparents sort of barely survived from the Soviet Union. My parents grew up in Poland and were thrown out of the country in a huge sort of anti-Semitic wave in 1968. And so the idea that, you know, political systems that seem relatively stable and seem relatively peaceful might suddenly turn fractious and even violent is something that I suppose I always had this sort of dim awareness of even as a kid. So I remember being quite worried by this and having friends who were quite worried about it, but we were worried about it as sort of this weird bad thing that's going on.

I don't think we actually thought that these people might win. Jump to the early 2010s. They start winning. For the first time, Malinopin will have a seat in parliament, along with seven others from her far-right party. These far-right parties in Austria and France, they start to gain power, and it's not just there. The huge swaths of Europe.

What's happening in Italy is also happening elsewhere in Europe. Similar right-wing parties start rising up in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary. An identity crisis for the entire European continent. And it's not just Europe. You have India, Turkey. And what started off as, of course, the United States.

Unlikely, impossible, is now reality. Basically, there's this wave of politicians whose message was, People aren't really listening to you. Your government has failed you. Trust me, I really speak for the people. I'm going to fix everything. And to Yasha, this was like a wake-up call. And not just because of immigration policy or right and left leanings of certain politicians,

but even more deeply than that. I was quite worried about the way in which these political movements perhaps pretended to have some allegiance to democratic mechanisms, but actually we were enemies of it. Like there was this one guy, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party. Who glorified the Third Reich in various ways and really harkened back to the country's fascist past in a positive way. That wasn't a far-fetched fear, I don't think. I mean, a huge number of the world's dictators have been elected democratically at some point, and then they move against democratic institutions in such a way that you can't displace them democratically anymore.

So for Yasha, who by this point was a lecturer at Harvard, he kept seeing this in country after country after country. He saw these citizens willingly elect these wannabe dictators into power. And so he started wondering, what is making these citizens do this? Do they feel like their current leaders don't get them? Do they are they are they riled up about you know some issue of the day like like refugees or income inequality? Or is this a sign that they're upset about something even more foundational? The political system itself. Like are they actually angry with democracy itself? And so I sat down with a friend and colleague to figure that out.

And his friend, it turns out, worked on something called the World Values Survey. Which is a really ambitious attempt to try and get a public opinion around the world. It's basically just a bunch of social scientists who ask a whole bunch of very standard questions to a whole bunch of people all over the world. And they're like, okay, let's actually scrutinize what's being said in here about democracy. And when we actually looked at the numbers, we were honestly flabbergasted by what we saw. Okay, so there's actually three questions in particular that he got interested in. Okay. Here, so let's start with this one. How do you feel about a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections?

Who doesn't have to bother with parliaments or elections? Correct. Yeah. Okay. They also asked this of Americans, just instead of doesn't have to bother with parliament, it was doesn't have to bother with Congress. Anyway, so in 1995, 24% of all Americans endorsed that kind of strongman leader. 24? So you know, one out of every four? Yeah, but in the last several years that number has jumped from 24 to 32%. So now it's a third almost. That's, yeah. Yeah. Say a strong leader who doesn't have to deal with Congress or elections is either a very

good or fairly good thing. Well, that surprises me. It's kind of even more striking in Europe. In Germany, one in six people used to like that idea. But now. One in three. In Germany, where they should know better. In France, the United Kingdom, it was one in four twenty years ago, and now it's one

in two. Half. Half. Yeah. So every second Brit in Frenchman says, yeah, the idea of a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament and elections, that's pretty appealing to me. It's not appealing to me. That is not appealing to me. It's not appealing to me. That is not appealing to me. Yeah. Who would say that they like to not be involved

in a democracy which is about being involved? OK, well, if you think that's crazy, here comes question number two. Flat out, simple, straightforward. How important is it to you to live in a democracy on a scale of 1 to 10? And when you look at Americans born in the 1930s and 1940s, 2 thirds of them give the highest importance to living

in a democracy. They say that's really essential. I mean, I agree with, well, two-thirds seems a little soft to me. Sure, but… Among Americans born since 1980, it's less than one-third. Less than one-third consider it essential to live in a democracy. What? Less than a democracy? What? Less than a third? Yeah. So if a hundred people, a hundred young people

32, 30, 25 would say I love democracy. That's very important. And the rest, what would the rest say? It's not, it's not the most important thing for them deciding where to live. Okay, well then if you, if this is good, where would you like to, like, what would you prefer? Would you like to be living in... Okay, well, that's a good segue to the next question. All right. Final question. Which was about army rule. So do you think that army rule is a good system of government?

Army rule. So we're not, this is no civilians anymore. Soldiers running the government, soldiers following orders, soldiers giving orders? Mm-hmm. So 20 years ago, about one in 16 Americans fought. That was a good system of government. In the most recent poll a couple of years ago, it was one in six. Uh-oh.

And among young and affluent Americans, it's actually gone up from 6% to 35%. So it's a nearly six-fold increase. In America, you have one in three young affluent Americans. A military rule is a wonderful thing. That's what you're saying? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

That's misguided or tragic. I don't know which. So Yasha said something he was like, look like. I don't think the colonels took over tomorrow. One third of Americans would say, this is wonderful. I don't think that's actually true, but it does show a deep lack of attachment to the current political system

and this sort of sense of, you know what, I mean, let's try something new. How bad could things get? I don't think it could be much worse than what we have today. Here's the thing that gets to me. Let's imagine a well-intentioned but totally authoritarian dictator who takes over, gets used to power, and then, as dictators do, chooses to remain in place forever. The adventure of democracy is that it admits that nothing is ever right, we always have to fix it,

and the system has built in it impermanence. Every six years, you elect a senator over again. Every two years, you elect the congressman over again. Every four years, you can have the option to switch presidents. Presidents can't serve beyond a particular point. There will be checks, there will be balances, there will be protection, but the whole thing admits that there's always change and always the ability to change. And this survey you just read me says, nah, we don't believe in it anymore.

Well that's dangerous to me, scary to me. I think my response is if that's the case, and I don't argue that people have these opinions, if that's the case, then let's fix it. Let's not throw it out. Let's repair it in some way. That's what it seems like a moment like this calls for. That's the speech. Basically, you're saying, let's fix it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and there's a lot to fix, right? Obviously. There's corporate money and special interest lobbyists and gerrymandering and minority groups who don't get a voice and active voter suppression in a lot of places, the weirdness of the electoral college, the two party system in general, where it seems like they have nothing to do except for hate on each other. But I figured let's like let's just focus on one thing, voting. Like is there a way to just tweak this fundamental part of democracy? Like can we change the way we vote so that people don't feel, as many people now do, that they're throwing their vote away, that their vote doesn't count, that their

vote is wasted? Okay. So what would you suggest? So what I got is a kind of an alternate universe. It's a different way of doing elections that could have a profound effect on the way our democracy works. And we'll get to that right after a quick break. LUTF Radiolab, we are back. Abie, can you hear me? Yes. There we are. Oh, good. Okay, cool. And we're you hear me? Yes. There we are.

Oh, good. Okay, cool. And we're going to start off with producer Simon Adler. Yeah. So in search of democratic inspiration, I called across the ocean to the Emerald Isle to talk to this guy. So my name is AB Philbin Bowman. I currently work for Orgy Radio One on the drive time program. AB is a radio producer reporter for Ireland's equivalent to the BBC, known as RTE, and he's a self-described election nerd. OK, so to sort of start from the start, please, the way I would look at this is American democracy is one of the oldest democracies in the world.

It's kind of like a laptop from 1985. And at the time, everybody was like, oh, my God, this is incredible. It's so fast. It's so responsive. You're going to get so much stuff done with this and to be fair you did But you've got to keep updating your operating system Otherwise pretty soon your democracy is struggling to deal with things like Facebook news feeds and Twitter and leaves itself open to being hacked by Russia Now in Ireland, we got our democracy a little bit later than 1920s

Okay and at that point democracy had moved on from the 1770s, 1780s, when you guys sort of brought in your democracy. And we adopted this, what was then quite modern voting system called PRSTV. PRSTV. Exactly. It sounds a bit like an STD. It does sound quite like a sexually transmitted infection. It does, yes.

Oh, this seems like dead in the water from hello. The extended version is multi-seat PRS-TV. That really sounds like an STI. It's not. One more time. Say it again. Multi-seat PRS-TV. Which stands for multi-seat proportional representation by single transferable vote. I have no idea what that means. Well, weird as it might sound, this is a system of voting that, unlike ours, can make every voter feel heard.

Gets you candidates who best reflect the collective interest of the people and make sure no one ever feels like they're throwing their vote away. I don't believe you. You don't have to believe me. No, okay, I'm following. Tell us. Tell us how this impossible feat, how does this even work? I'm walking through the lower part of Dublin Central.

Well, let's just put this in concrete terms. Great. Okay, so 2016, there's an election for the National Parliament in the Dublin Central District. It's blocks of brick row houses punctuated by these brightly coloured pink or purple or yellow doors. You can think of it like an election district. In Ireland it's what's known as a constituency. Couple adult stores, low-rise white public housing units.

It's a predominantly working class constituency with a lot of difficulties. This is Maureen O'Sullivan, a longtime resident of the constituency with a shock of white hair. And I've always been involved with youth clubs, etc., doing voluntary work and then teaching in communities in the area. And so back in February of 2016, this area of Dublin, along with the rest of the country, was holding their parliamentary elections,

elections for what they call TDs. Wait, what are TDs? Right, okay, well TD is the Irish, the Gaelic for Chachtedala, which translates into Member Parliament. At that time, Dublin Central had three of these TD seats, three people representing them in parliament, one of whom,

I was elected in 2009, was Maureen. And I would be, I am independent, not allied with any party. And going into that 2016 election, things were looking pretty uncertain for Maureen. First of all, there was a field of 15 candidates running for those three seats. And worse, seats one and two were expected to be snagged quite easily by these two high profile major party candidates. Yeah. This again is A.B. Bowman, who actually covered this 2016 election.

They're not locked down, but these are people who look like they are going to get elected. And what that means is you've got this wide open field of folks all fighting against Marine for that third and final seat. Who's our contenders? Well, right. So we're going to focus in on two of them. Can I just get you to introduce yourself? Of course.

Yeah. So I'm Mary Fitzpatrick. First, we've got Mary Fitzpatrick. Mm. Yeah. On the spectrum of American politics, do you know where you fall? You just have two parties. On the spectrum of American politics, do you know where you fall? You just have two parties. She's pretty liberal, been around Irish politics for a while.

Have you interviewed me already? Okay. And second, Gary Gannon, who's a young community worker. This brash guy with red stubble on his face. Quite interesting, quite authentic. And he's sort of an interesting one to watch. Because he's representing this brand new political party. A plucky upstart, I think that's what they call it in the West Wing.

And did you have a slogan or anything? Yes, it was an amazing slogan. It was very simple. And it was just the one word. If. I stole it completely from an old fable about when the Macedonian army was marching on Sparta. And they sent Sparta a message saying that if we win, we will burn Sparta to the ground, we will enslave your women and kill your children.

And Sparta sent back one word message just saying, If. If. Like I said, brash. And then you've got other voices who are left-wing or environmentalist or others. So that's our field. All right. And now here's how things actually work over in Ireland.

Voting is underway in the Republic of Ireland as the country elects 157 new members of its parliament. So, day of the election comes as an Irish citizen, you walk into the voting booth, and it's a very, very long ballot, because it has all of the candidates, all 15 of them, their photo, their name, and then a line next to them. And this ballot is a key component of that updated Irish laptop of democracy. Because instead of just filling in the circle next to one of those 15, you say, My number one choice is this guy. My number two choice is this lady.

My number three choice is this person. And you can go all the way down the ballot giving preferences to as many different people as you like. You write in a number next to each candidate. How about one man, one vote? Got it. Well, it's still one man, one vote. No, it can't be. No, it is, it is, it is, it is. At the end of the day, your vote will only have counted for one person.

However, in the voting process... You're not just measuring what everyone's first choice is. Like, you might have a favorite choice, but you're not totally equal about the other three choices. And what this system allows us to do is to reflect that. It allows you to say how you feel about the other three choices. And what this system allows us to do is to reflect that. It allows you to say how you feel about the rest of the candidates. And if your first choice doesn't make it, if he or she is way down the list and out

of the running, then your vote lives on in the form of your second choice. So for as long as there's a viable candidate with your number on it, your vote will stay alive in the system. Is this too early for me to raise a warning flag? You can wave. I may ignore it, but let's see it or hear it. The commitment that people make to voting is slight. Most of us are into lunch, sports, work,

and then maybe on the day of a vote, they have their best friend, so you got to vote for Sally. Like they know one, they're not even gonna know seven. Yeah. So the first smell of this is it would take us more time than we want, and we might walk away from this exercise because we don't feel prepared. You can engage with this on whatever level you'd like, Robert. If you only know one candidate's name, you can just put your one next to that person

and hand in your ballot and you're done. Or let's say there's a candidate on there you really, really don't like. You can leave them off the ballot entirely. You're ranking your preferences. It's very simple. Fairly good answer. Okay. So let me walk you through how this plays out. So polls close at 10 p.m. on Friday, February 26th. And then... Then all hell broke loose.

General election 2016 on RTÉ Radio 1 with Rachel English and Sean O'Rourke. The real action begins. It's going to be a day of drama, shocks and surprises. So what happens is we vote on the Friday and on Saturday morning… The votes actually get counted. So for Dublin Central… Dublin Central gets counted in one central location, which is the RDS.

Let's go first to Ireland's largest count centre, the RDS. The Royal Dublin Society. Sean, thank you very much. Welcome indeed to the RDS, where we're counting. It's this barn-like building with big vaulted ceilings. Big, big hall. Huge amount of noise. Firstly, welcome to the count centre here at the show. Okay, well, I didn't realise we were going to go through the post-traumatic trauma of the whole thing. huge amount of noise. Firstly, welcome to the Con Center here at the shop.

Okay, well I didn't realize we were going to go through the post-traumatic trauma of the whole thing. I've kind of blacked it out. No, I'm joking, actually, it was lovely. The doors open at nine o'clock and I arrived. This Bethrong arriving. This is Mel. Mel Mokyaboo. He's a campaign worker for our endangered incumbent Maureen. Maureen O'Sullivan.

And on the morning of the count as he pushed his way through these heavy wooden doors, what he would have seen was this cavernous hall filled with people milling about. Everybody's got clipboards. There's people with tons of sandwiches made. Tea and coffee in abundance and everybody's really excited. And so, shortly after nine o'clock, all the boxes come in. These giant metal boxes of ballots.

So the boxes come in. These giant metal boxes of ballots. So the boxes are opened. Literally, they're lifted up, and there is a cascade and a spilling off all this paper. Because it's all done by paper voting. Wait, what? Yeah, we tried electronic voting in this country, and we didn't like it because it was very fast and I think

we realised that the drama of an election and also the ritual of democracy gets everybody engaged and gets people watching. It's like watching a big sports game. You don't want it to be over in five minutes. And so... Time now for our live update. I have to warn, as we always do at this time on this day, we're talking tallies first of all, which obviously can skew the results. Not just at the RDS and not just for Dublin Central,

but all across the country. Vote counters are dumping boxes of votes and going through them and put them into stacks. First in Kilkenny is Justin McCarthy. Rough bundles in no particular order. 75% of the boxes have been tallied here and they include all of them. And so early on here, the counters are just trying to get a handle on how many first-choice votes each candidate is getting.

From Cavern, Audre Carvel. 100% of the boxes are open and a final... And, well, the ballot counters are doing this official count. There's another group of people standing next to them... Up the Atlantic Way in Donegal... ...doing their own unofficial calculations. Yes, definitely the tally men. There's another group of people standing next to them Up the Atlantic Way in Donegal doing their own unofficial calculations Yes, definitely the tally men

88% of boxes opened and tallied Court North Central All boxes opened, all sheets tallied These tally men, there are several of them put forward by each candidate and They're just looking over the railings waiting for you to turn that ballot Brash up start Gary Gannon again So they can shout out the name of the person that got the number one preference.

I'm not saying it. They're like, Gannon number one, Gannon, Berg. Gallagher. And they're just counting them up. And what they're counting is number one. Yes, they're shouting out and tallying the first choice labeled on each ballot. So you have an understanding

whether you're at the races or not. Which it seemed like Gary was. We have a 98% tally, and there is a growing belief here that the third seat will be between Gary Gannon and... He was getting a lot of first preferences. So I walked in, I got pulled over by one of our national newspapers to do an interview. Let's bring Gary Gannon in.

Hi Gary, it's too early to be saying you're over the line, but you're going well in Dublin Central. Oh God, it's far too early. All the radio researchers are coming over, grabbing me, bringing me over to speak on the radio. There's a bunch of you. I've done 9% as well, so we could be in for another dogfight there. Absolutely, yeah. I've cancelled my weekend plans.

I think I'll be here for a while. It was genuine, like a real nice sense of excitement. But not for everyone. So that morning, I was at home doing different things. Again, this is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. What did you do? Did you make breakfast? Did you go for a walk? I did. I had my breakfast. I walked the dog.

What type of dog? A white, fluffy dog. What's his name? His name is Bailey. So I brought him for a walk. Are you listening to the radio? You're totally disconnected. Yeah. Pretty much. I let my campaigners walk. Are you listening to the radio? You're totally disconnected. Yeah, pretty much.

I let my campaigners go over to be part of the tally. Campaigners. It's starting to kind of make- Including Mel. So within the first hour, from some of the tallies that we were seeing, like, Maureen isn't picking up enough votes. I would say, oh, I hope this is not going to be an early day

where there's no need for you to hang around because nobody's in the race any longer. And then, I think I was driving when I got the first call from my campaigners over in the count, saying it's not looking good. ...was elected. Let's go back now to the busiest count centre of them all, to Mary Wilson in the RTS.

Rachel, thank you very much. A first count imminent, we believe, here in Dublin Central. Meanwhile, the counters take all those ballots, now officially sorted by first preference, and they pick up the stack for each candidate on the table and walk that stack back to This wooden shelving unit Again, Mary 5th of Patrick

Behind the tables, at a little bit of a distance, in the center This giant sort of cubby Pigeon holes, just like light flimsy wooden boxes And this is the sacred shrine of Irish democracy on this day The cubby. Absolutely. Because, because when they've counted all of the first preference votes, they placed them all in their respective Cubbies. There's a hush in that part of the arena.

And the returning officer stands up on a stage with a microphone and goes, Following is the result of count one. Here is the first count for the constituency of Dublin Central. 68, 66. And they read out every candidate, how many number one votes did they get? 1021, two, zero.

And first off the bat. At the end of the first count, first and second are pretty much locked down with the two people everybody expected to win. But then in third place, unexpectedly, is Mary Fitzpatrick. Yeah, I mean, I was very pleased to be in third position on the first count. Now, with our system of voting at this point, you're done. The election's over.

The two front runner candidates would have each won a seat and then Mary Fitzpatrick would have won a seat. Gary and Maureen, they'd be out. Done. But in Ireland, not so. In Ireland, they're just getting started. So back to the race. And remember, at this moment, Mary Fitzpatrick is in third, Gary is in fifth, and in seventh... At that stage, I was listening to the radio and I knew what they were saying about Dublin Central. ...is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan.

And what were they saying about Dublin Central. Is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. OK. That... It appears almost certain that Joe Costello and Maureen O'Sullivan are set to lose out. Myself and Joe Costello, you're out. I had some... Why? Because of the numbers. I think the feeling was I was too far down that first preference to come back up. But then looking at the early results coming in from around the country...

But like I said, it's not over yet. So, the way the vote progresses is the sheriff or the presiding officer starts to eliminate candidates. The first elimination is the bottom three candidates. Those candidacies are gone and in the bin. Since Gary's in fifth and Maureen's in seventh, they're safe, for now. But the bottom three candidates, they're gone. Why three?

Because they are so far out that mathematically they could never come back. Between the three of them, they've only got like 150 votes. So we get rid of all three of them. And redistribute those ballots. So if you voted for those people... They just go, okay, who did you vote for as your second choice? And the point is, your vote is still live and is still part of this election. And so, those 150 votes, those 150 ballots, they begin to do this sort of ballet.

The ballots are all in these pigeonholes. Everything is visible. The vote counters walk back to that shrine, to that cubby, and pull the ballots from the cubby holes for those... Three candidates. Then march these ballots back to the front table. And sort them then into bundles of second preference on the ballot. So now you've got stacks for every candidate that was listed as a second choice.

And we distribute them. They take them back to the cubby where they are then added to the remaining candidate' first preferences. And that becomes the second count. Okay. Okay, so what they want is everybody who voted to the degree that it is possible should maybe be participating in electing somebody to the legislature. Exactly.

Excuse me, what time is it now? We're probably middle of the afternoon at this point. And when do we start? We started at nine in the morning. Okay, point taken. People are having a good time. Point taken by you. No, no, no.

What do you mean? I am now watching this program for five hours. That's a long time. I will challenge your statement that just because a competition unfolds slowly, that it is without drama or suspense. All right. I'm sorry that we're making this so hard for you. That's fine. slowly that it is without drama or suspense. Alright. I'm sorry that we're making this so hard for you. That's fine.

But you are not making it easy for us. Anyway, back to the scene. Dublin Central is reduced to three seats. So I'm looking at this going, okay, Mary Fitzpatrick, our candidate in third after the first count, has 2,500 votes. Gary Gannon, currently in fifth, he's only 200 votes behind

her and my instinct is he's going to be more transfer friendly. He's going to get more second choice votes than her. I think he could overtake her. And I start watching where the transfers are going and I start to be proven right. Gary Gannon of the social democrats did very well on transfers. So count two, Gary Gannon is getting 20 votes and now if it's Patrick's only getting two. Count three. The whole process repeats, knock somebody out, do the ballot ballet, redistribute those transfers.

Gary Gannon picks up 60 votes, and Mary Fitzpatrick only picks up seven. So he's gaining on her already. They're talking about me, they're asking, who is this guy, where does he come from, all of these things. And then I was getting a phone call. Mary's stock is falling, well, Gary's all right.

Mary's stock is staying static. You know, we were struggling for transfers. That was the issue. She's not going up much, and the others are gaining on her. So, yeah, it's painful. It's not pleasant. And bear in mind,

you've still got other people picking up votes there. We're seeing little pickups from Maureen. Maureen picked up 49. But not a lot. We're moving ahead slowly. Okay, we have a Dublin Central count coming in. Count four. Again, eliminate the bottom candidate, redistribute those votes.

This time around, really not much changes. Then count five. The next person going out has got 800 votes. 31 of them go to Mary Fitzpatrick, but also 190 of them go to Gary Gannon. Gary Gannon has surprised a lot of people in his ability to pick up transfers from... And Gary Gannon has just Gannon has surprised a lot of people in his ability to pick up transfers from... And Gary Gannon has just jumped into fourth place.

We've got quite a fight now in our hands. The standings as they are... So at the place with our Mary Fitzpatrick in third place... She's just barely holding on. In fourth, hot on her heels, is Gary Gannon. And then way at the back of the pack, still in seventh, is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan. That's the state of play at Count 5. Count number six.

Oh here we go, continuing coverage. Michael Gallagher is here. Guys, hello, we're back. This is where two big things happen. Everybody's having their own conversations obviously. One. Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Fein and Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Fein.

One of the front runners expected to take a seat. Gets over the line. And also. I'm walking around just hugging people. Gary Gannon now jumps into third place. It was invigorating. Pushing Mary Fitzpatrick out of a winning spot. Like that, it was on the transfers that got cost. And that's it.

She never recaptured it. So the woman who under our system would have won off the bat, she lost out. That is it. You know? Still hanging on in second to last, but also disheartened, is our incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan, who's expecting to lose. And I suppose maybe seven o'clock, people started to arrive. She actually invited her campaign staff and volunteers back to her place for a concession party.

And I said, when people came in, I don't want to know anything about the elections, I'll catch up tomorrow. Unknown to me, because I was busy with the tea and the drinks and the food, some of them in the house were still in contact with those over in the RDS. To the Dublin Central constituency and to our reporter Damien O'Mara. Damien, you have a development to report. One of those guys still over in the RDS was Mel. I did have a sense, looking at the numbers and saying,

well, OK, but if and then maybe, there's a chance. There's a chance in this. Well, then was that a crazy thought to have or a very smart thought to have? Um, it was just a thought to have. Because despite the fact that all day the media had been saying that Maureen was out... Maureen O'Sullivan set to lose out. Outgoing TD Maureen O'Sullivan. Maureen O'Sullivan might be eliminated.

At count seven, something starts to happen. Three furlongs to go. Coming around the bend, Gary Gannon looks like he's in pole position. But... All of a sudden we weren't reallocating people's second preferences or their third preferences. We'd got to the stage where we were reallocating people's fourth, fifth and sixth preferences. Because keep in mind, most people's votes are still sloshing around the system. And at this point, not only has their top choice been knocked out,

but their second and third as well. So their vote is now being cast for their fourth, fifth, or sixth place choice. And a lot of those, they start going to Maureen. I've known people for years, been elected twice previous to that. So even people who weren't voting for them, number one, number two, number three, their votes were still carrying on past the fours and the fives and just mauled me on those transfers. So we got to count eight.

...beginning to make a bit of ground into the straighters... Maureen makes this massive jump, vaulting her ahead of two opponents into fourth place. Now just a couple hundred votes behind Gary. Did you have any sense this time? No, no, no, because I didn't have the television on. And they decided not to tell me. Not to raise my hopes. We're on the ninth count at the moment.

So the ninth count. The situation is that... Another candidate is axed. They redistribute her votes. It's coming down. It's coming down to it. And when they count up those transfers... Does that mean then that Gary Gannon is likely to be elected or what's the situation there, Michael Gallaher?

Maureen gets some 300 more transfers than Gary, meaning suddenly. Gary Gannon is precisely eight votes ahead of Maureen O'Sullivan. Oh my God, I did not see that coming. She's within eight votes of him. Around quarter to 10. But Maureen, meanwhile, is still convinced she's going to lose. She's actually heading down to the count center to concede the race. I said to myself, I should go over and concede.

So I came out into the car and as I'm driving over to concede, I was just at the traffic lights I can picture it and at that stage the phone call comes. She looks at her phone and it's one of her campaign staff calling. I thought why are they ringing me just to hurry me up to get over or whatever. But in fact they were calling because ...in Dublin Central but Brian Dowling you've been... Just as I mentioned your name Brian we're going to Dublin Central. ...my last time up.

This is the result of the 11th count for Dublin Central. And I deem the following candidate to be elected and they are Maureen O'Sullivan. In her car, Maureen did eventually pick up. And then it was, where are you? You're about to be elected. You're going to be elected. You're going to be elected. She put down the phone, drove to the count center, and when she arrived. Great applause, great hugs, great kisses. So it was just a lovely

explosion of feeling, warm feelings towards me from everybody. Maureen O'Sullivan, congratulations. Thank you very much. You're a very relieved woman. I'm a stunned woman. I was at home reconciled to a new life outside of politics

and then suddenly I'm back in the frame. We had thought that we were too far behind to- So I just said, look, I know what Lazarus felt like. It was that kind of moment. It was that kind of moment. Well, so is this a story of multi-seat proportional representation by single transferable vote working out exactly as it's meant to, or is this sort of a perversion of the system? No, it absolutely is. That day worked out exactly as single transferable votes were meant to do.

One last time, the gracious Gary Gannon. Everybody got their say and everybody got their vote. Don't get me wrong when I say it did hurt, but I mean, I was 28, 29 then. There was a huge sense of we'll show you this. They're going, we'll be back. So single transferable vote on that day worked against me, but I think it worked out perfectly.

Perfectly. I mean, let me just see if I get this right. There's this woman, Maureen, who hardly anybody loves. She scores almost no votes as the favorite. She's just everybody's, you know, a fourth, fifth, sixth, I'll choose Maureen. And yet, because the votes keep getting shuffled and shuffled and shuffled,

it's Ms. Meh who becomes the winner. Like she's chosen because a lot of people don't hate her. Yeah, well, so here's what it makes me think of, right? And I had this moment where I was just imagining if we had been using this at various crucial moments in our very recent history, things could have gone an entirely different way. Take the American presidential election of 2016

between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, but also Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Yeah, but nobody voted for them. Well, no, but hardly anybody, that number of hardly anybody, that's a sizable enough number that they could have swung the election one way or the other. If you look at really key states, the deciding states, if you presume Gary Johnson's votes were split and if you presume all of Jill Stein's votes went to Hillary Clinton,

Hillary Clinton would have won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the whole kit and kaboodle. Well, that's interesting. Now, the weird thing is you can just keep playing this game and it'll drive you crazy, but you can keep playing it. So if you go back to the 2016 Republican primaries where Donald Trump emerged victorious, right? Over 10 people or something like that. Over 10 people, right? But there was a sizable number of people in those primaries who were never Trumpers. If those people had been able to block their votes together, they might have been able to rally behind a candidate who was not Donald Trump. And then rewind even further back the 2000 election where the number of votes that Ralph Nader got in Florida were more than the difference between Bush got and Gore got.

Now elected, elected Republican, can you? Okay, so so so go back to Ross Perot, right? George H.W. Bush was running against Bill Clinton in 1992. Ross Perot, it's very controversial whether he really was a spoiler in that election, but I mean, if you ask the Bush people, they say he definitely was. And so if the Peroters went to Bush,

then Bill Clinton would have just been a historical footnote, he wouldn't have been the president. Like it's like a huge, huge seismic difference in world history. So when we come back, we're not going to be looking at my own imaginative math. We're going to look at what is rank choice actually look like if it was in the United States, because it is in the United States. That's about to happen. Yeah. When we come back. Welcome back. I'm Robert Kroehlwitsch. I'm Lutif Nasser and this is Radiolab. And we're trying to fix democracy in this hour,

in little bits and pieces. Yeah. So let me just let me just back up for a second because we have been talking about this and thinking about this around the office for, for a little while. And at some point, as we were, as we were kind of meditating on this dwindling faith in democracy, one of our fellow producers at our sister show, more perfect, Sarah Kari, she just took me and Simon great, great, and just dragged took me and Simon. Great. Great. And just dragged us into a studio.

Okay, so we've been having this conversation about whether our democracy is broken for like a few months now. And like every meeting that we've had, I've been the one in the room being like, guys, our democracy is fine. Like, have you seen other places? This is crazy. Like who are these people that think like our democracy is fine. Like, have you seen other places? This is crazy. Like, who are these people that think, like, our democracy is broken? Like, they don't know what they're talking about.

And do you know why? Like, where, where, where's that feeling coming from? Well, uh, okay. Can you tell me your name? Uh, Osma. And who are you? Probably because of this woman. Oh, I'm Osma. I'm Osma. Who are you in relation to me? Oh, I'm your mom. My mom and both of my parents actually grew up in Pakistan. That is the beginning 25 years of my life that I spent and I feel that...

Which is a pretty young country and it's just struggled so much to keep its democracy alive and healthy. And I saw the consequences of not getting the full democracy there in Pakistan. So then after living 25 years of next 25 years of my life in America, I really found out the value of democracy as an individual and as a group also. So I can differentiate now very well between those two. So that's kind of how I've always understood our democracy. But then Simon, I listened to your Ireland story with all of this ranked choice voting stuff, and that's the first moment when I was like, oh, like maybe our way of doing things is broken. Like maybe we do need an update. Okay.

And okay, why? Well, what, what about it? Uh, made you switch teams? Because, um, it made me suddenly aware of the fact that in our system, candidates don't actually need a majority of the votes to win. So you, you have candidates who then make that calculation where they say, I only really have to win the votes of people who are in my base.

And if that's, if those, if my base is bigger than everybody else's base, then like screw everyone else. Yeah. It seems like in a democracy, most people should vote for the person who wins. Not just that the person who wins is going to have the biggest base, like a bigger base than everybody else. It should be that most people are in some way, in some preference, supporting the person

who comes to power. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny, when I heard about rank choice voting, I was like, oh, this system is so cool because I feel like it addresses that exact problem. And so I totally got sucked into it and I started looking around and it turns out there are a bunch of people who think that this could be used here in the US. And not only that, it already is. And when I asked around,

a number of people pointed to this moment in 2000 with the election when Bush loses the popular election, but he wins because he wins in Florida. And so people look at the results in Florida and see that a bunch of votes that might have gone to Al Gore, they go instead to Ralph Nader, who then becomes sort of notorious as this spoiler that maybe ruined the election for Al Gore.

And after 2000 at that point, you do see some cities that start to adopt ranked choice voting at the local level. And so what I did is, I grabbed Lettif and we kind of did this cross-country Ranked Choice voting tour. And the first place we're going to start with, hello San Francisco. Yes, San Francisco is here. Is San Francisco. Is this Dominic?

Yes, this is. Oh, hey Dominic. What's up? Hi, what's up? So this is Dominic Fricasa. Check check check. Yeah. He used to do radio. You got the pipes for it Dominic. Hey, let me know if you need any ad spots so we can get right to it, you know? Okay, cool. But he now he's a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm a City Hall reporter for the Chronicle? Yeah, so the very first rank choice election in San Francisco happened in 2004. But it was actually a rank choice voting became, I guess, the city's method or the city's system, if you will, back in 2002, where there was a ballot initiative that was passed by voters that said,

like, look, this is going to be the system that we're going to implement going forward. So the vast majority of local elected offices are chosen with rank choice contests. So city council. The board of supervisors. The school board. Our assessor recorder. And in one very specific election. The case in the mayor's race. The case in the mayor's race. The case

in the mayor's race. Okay great. I can't believe this was just a few months ago. It seems like a long time ago at this point. Okay so early 2018 the San Francisco mayor's race kicked off. And when it really kicked into gear there were three leading candidates. really kicked into gear. There were three leading candidates. You had Hi, I'm Board of Supervisors President London Breed. London Breed. And you had Hello, I'm Mark Leno. Former San Francisco Supervisor Mark Leno. And you had Hi, I'm Jane Kim.

A current supervisor, Jane Kim. And these are all Democrats. The field of candidates is set now. OK, so out of the gate. New front runner in the San Francisco Mayor's race. London Breed. This campaign is a winning campaign. She was the more moderate, more established candidate. She's getting one heck of a bounce in the polls.

And she had a fairly strong lead and a lot of wind in her sails. A two to one leap over her two closest rivals, Mark Leno and Jane Kim. And as the campaign made its way to election day, things were going pretty well. We are winners. It was almost like, sure, there are three names on the ballot. But at the end of the day, it was more like London Breed, London Breed, and London Breed. The favorite in the recent polls heading into Tuesday's ballot. But at the end of the day it was more like London Breed, London Breed, and London Breed. The favorite in the recent polls heading into Tuesday's election. But then right before the election something happened that you basically never see in American politics. We are proud to stand together to say that we are united in our belief that we need fundamental

change here in the city and county of San Francisco. In the very last few weeks before election day, the two underdogs, Jane Kim and Mark Leno, they held a press conference on the steps of City Hall. Mark and I are opponents, as everyone knows. They stood outside City Hall, literally joined hands, and said, And I'm proud to be the first set of candidates to truly take advantage of the rank choice voting system and encourage our supporters to vote for both of us. Wait a second.

So what you're saying is vote for me, definitely vote for me, but also vote for this guy who I'm running against. Yeah, exactly. Vote for me first, but vote for Jane second, or vote for me first and vote for Mark second. So like, if one of us were to come in last, like let's say Mark comes in last, if all the people who voted for him ranked Jane as their second choice,

then all of those votes would go to her, and vice versa.. That way they actually have a better chance of beating the front runner. London Breed. And that made a lot of sense. They were both quote unquote more progressive candidates and, you know, saw each other, at least the rhetoric goes, as the person that they'd like to see as mayor, if not themselves. Was that, was that a surprise move to you as you were covering it? Did you see that coming?

I didn't see it coming. No, I think that was a surprise to a lot of people. I almost had to do a double take when I saw these new campaign posters supporting both Jane Kim and Mark Leno for mayor. After that press conference, Mark Leno and Jane Kim started appearing in campaign ads together. I'm Jane Kim. And I'm Mark Leno. Jane Kim started appearing in campaign ads together. I'm Jane Kim.

And I'm Mark Leno. Campaigning for one another. Mark and I are opponents. But Jane and I agree. You should pick our next mayor. Not the billionaires. And so basically the whole campaign is like, if you don't vote for me first, then at least vote for me second.

Let's stand together. Vote for me and Mark Leno. Vote for me second. Let's stand together. Vote for me and Mark Leno. Vote for me and Jane Kim. KPIX5's Jo Vasquez is with the London Breed campaign. We're just moments ago. Breed addressed the crowd, Jo. So on election night, London Breed has a pretty commanding lead

as the polls are coming to a close. And basically she's trying to get up to this marker of 50% of the votes plus one vote. That's a majority and If she can get to that then she wins. There's no rank choice Runoff there's no vote swapping And as the night goes on she is not yet declaring victory, but this crowd is celebrating. She's got like a double digit lead. Like things are looking pretty good. They are celebrating the person they believe could be the next mayor of San Francisco.

Holy smoke, she's beating Mark Leno by 10 percentage points and she's beating Jane Kim by more than that. So we're getting to midnight. I'm completely bleary eyed staring at my laptop, refreshing the Department of Elections website every few seconds when 1230 at night. It happens. In the early returns, London Breed had a sizable lead, but she didn't reach 50%.

She came in just shy of 50%. So the rank choice voting system kicked in. And all of a sudden sudden this entire race has changed. Okay, so the rankings had been Lennon Breed number one, Mark Leno number two. Jane Kim, who was in third place, was now eliminated in that ranked choice system. But when Kim got eliminated, a huge chunk of her voters, about three out of four, went to Leno because Leno was their second choice.

And now by a raised or a thin margin, Mark Leno is leading the race. The Kim Leno strategy had come to fruition. He's up.84 percent, the slimmest of leads. The mayor's race is still too close to call. The race would actually drag on for days. As more ballots got counted. Tens of thousands of outstanding ballots. We didn't have a mayor chosen until, I think, eight days later.

When... Whoooooooo! In a gymnasium packed with screaming supporters, out walked the new mayor of San Francisco, M- London Breed. Yes, I'm your mayor. Whoooooooo! Mark Leno came up just short. London Breed. Yes, I'm your mayor.

Mark Leno came up just short. He came within 1.1% or a little over 2500 votes. Oh man. So, I mean, okay, it didn't work in that he didn't win, but you can't say that it was completely ineffective. And so, ultimately, what did people think of this whole, like, Mark, Leno, Jane, Kim coming together? People saw the dual endorsement strategy as gaming the system. As saying, look, they are doing this in order to keep London Breed from winning.

And that was at your paper, right? That was the editorial board? Yeah, our editorial board said as much. And I think that's not just the Ed board. People do feel that way, that it was this strategy, especially London Breed supporters, who saw a teaming up, a piling on. And in this, just to kind of, just very quickly just zoom out all the way, I think people just find that weird in a country in which politics ends up being a zero-sum game, oftentimes, in which you are, you know, relentlessly attacking your opponent,

beating them down. Exactly, exactly. But at the same time, that's very much, um... You know, there might be some people at my own newspaper that disagree with me, but I think that's very much in the spirit of what ranked choice voting invites. Coalition building. Now, Dominic wanted to be clear that in the case of the mayor's race, this coming together of opponents...

I don't want to make it sound like it was just some kind of kumbaya thing, you know, because that wasn't the case. But at the very next stop on our tour, we actually found that case. Ahem. The Kumbaya case. Hey Curtis, are you there? Yeah, I am. Which, also on the line we have Luthif. Hi, how you doing? Hey, what's up?

We heard about from this guy. Curtis Gilbert, and I'm a reporter at American Public Media, but I used to be a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio. So, Curtis told us in Minneapolis, they actually started using rank choice voting in 2009. But it's gotten much more interesting since then. So in 2013 was the first time Minneapolis actually had like a competitive mayor's race under rank choice voting. There is a record breaking number of candidates vying to succeed Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak,

who's stepping down at the end of this year. 35 candidates signed up to run to replace him. Wow. Yeah. Curtis Gilbert covers Minneapolis politics. He joins me in studio. Boy, you're going to be busy. Yeah, you betcha.

I mean, there were so many, I mean, 35 candidates is a lot. Unlike the race in San Francisco, the mayoral race in Minneapolis... People say, aren't you the Republican? ...did have more diverse candidates. And I say, sure, I've done some work in the Republican Party, and I also stand fiercely

for marriage equality, always have. There was a Republican, an Independent, a bunch of Democrats. It was a wide open, free for-all race and it was really interesting. That despite all that... They were very, very civil. Thank you very much. It's nice to see you're not utterly infallible. I always thought you were... Very, very gentle to each other.

We won't be rude with each other because it doesn't benefit us to be rude with each other. And this is one thing that, you know, the advocates of ranked choice voting sort of look at as a positive. You know, voters are turned off by negative campaigning. And there's a theory that goes that if you're hoping to get like second and third choice votes, you'll be much nicer to your opponent so you don't alienate their supporters so maybe you get a second or third choice vote. And it did seem like there was an element of that playing out in the race. I will talk more about the issues because I think I've run out of time.

Thank you. So at worst there was like some light ribbing. They said we could finish our sentences if we've run out of time, but I think that was a run on sentence. There were polite stage logistics. Getting out of that chair is a little challenging, so we may want to pass the microphone around. And... Thank you. Thank you, Jackie. Plenty of thank yous.

I mean, the most remarkable one of all was the final debate. Downsand Singers. The most remarkable one of all was the final debate. The Don Sam singers. Ready? It was there and it was in a church. I think it was in downtown Minneapolis. I can't remember what the church was. And at the end of the debate, the candidates, and I think there were eight of them, all kind of put their arms around each other.

And one of them suggested that they all sing. One, two, three. their arms around each other and one of them suggested that they all sing anywhere but I was crazy in my high school after the debate after the debate. Oh Lord, Kumbaya. That's going on Instagram. Yeah. That's the farewell tour. Right there. ["The Kumbaya Song"]

So it's like, I mean, it's almost like a cartoon, right? Like the kumbaya, it's really funny, right? But it's also, it's also, I think for a lot of people right now, that feels like a relief. It feels like a relief to hear politicians not biting each other's heads off. And that's something that comes from ranked choice voting. You find consensus, you find coalition, you find commonalities instead of differences. But that also flattens everyone out. If everyone ends up running to the middle

and then you just have kind of a bland consensus where no one's saying bold things and everybody is just kind of middle. So in a way when you make this choice, you're choosing for do this carefully. Do this carefully. I wondered about that because I was thinking maybe don't do this carefully. Maybe have a country that can be dynamic. Although right now I'm not so sure.

So I... Too dynamic. Yeah. have a country that can be dynamic, although right now I'm not so sure. So I, yeah, but that is in deep, in a deep way, that's what's being asked here. Yeah. Like what do we, what do we actually want? Like, do we want a system where, you know, you are lined up behind your alpha dog who's gonna, who's gonna argue for all of the things you want and, and, and maybe you're going to get them, but maybe you're also gonna lose them all or or do you want to you know be in a system where you know you're we're all kind of sort of begrudgingly bought into

our second place person who we can kind of get behind but like it definitely wasn't our you know it's not our ideal and I think that's a question that's like a soul-searching kind of a question. Like, what do you want and what do we want this country to be? And for that reason, I don't know how I feel about it. Well, nothing's going to be perfect. I think what's really interesting is what seems sort of mechanical and technical, it does affect the tone of your country and of history. So the world

we've got is the function of how we vote now, change the system of how we vote, you might get a very different world. How different? What different? Where different? Which kind of difference? Scary different? Good different? You don't know. Well, we might actually know soon because I actually have one more stop on our cross-country rank choice voting tour. The great state of Maine. Super politically diverse, fiercely independent, like a lot of independent voters. And in fact, in 2016, there was this coalition of independents and Democrats that managed

to get this ballot initiative that would change all statewide elections to rank choice voting. Statewide? Yeah. And rank choice voting was adopted in 2016. According to Maine public radio reporter Steve Missler, it passed. It passed, however, with a major flaw. It's a scam. It undermines the integrity of our election process. The state Senate, which was under Republican control at the time,

picked up on this constitutional conflict within the state constitution. The reality is we're not happy with it. Blightly opposed to it, very unconstitutional. The main constitution literally says you have to use a plurality vote. The word plurality is actually written in the constitution. As opposed to a majority. Correct. And ultimately the main legislature passed a law that delayed implementing rank choice voting. This is one more example of where politicians are standing against the will of the people. And it set off this whole fight where people rallied against the state legislature and

held another vote. In June. Literally this past June. The people gathered at the state house this June, to get around the delay. That passed. By almost the exact same margin, if not slightly more than when it passed originally in 2016. At some point the main Supreme Court gets involved,

and really the details of this are all kind of a mess, but what it boils down to is this. In the upcoming elections, like the midterms that are happening now, Maine will use rank choice voting for its congressional races. We have three of them this year. We have a first congressional district race.

It'll be used in that contest. And also in Maine's second congressional district Which is a swing seat one of you know a dozen or so nationally aka one of the districts that everybody's gonna be watching in the midterms and On top of that they're gonna use rank-choice voting for the Senate the US Senate Campaign it'll be used in that contest. Do you know is this the first time it's gonna be used? For a position in the federal government? Yeah, no other state has ever done it.

Oh, wow. But at the same time, because of their state constitution, it's not being used in the gubernatorial race. So does a ballot just like look insane? Like part of it is like this ranked choice voting thing and, and part of it is, isn't like it. They're just separate. So there's separate ballots for the federal races and then there's a separate one for the statewide one. So I haven't actually seen how many ballots that

voters are handed. So this is really going to happen now, like like this week. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Two main claims of ranked choice voting are being put to the test in its very first rollout in Maine. Voters in Maine will head to the polls later this month. Whether it can work for third party or independent candidates. But it's also a test case about whether or not it does what it promises. He just told another big fib right in front of everybody. You're lying about my... Which is reduce scorched earth campaigns.

Jared, I don't know what you're getting. Tiffany Bond, you got a problem with the truth? This is why we're getting nothing back. Liar! Liar! When they go low, we kill them. The U.S. citizen lied 21 times. You voted as much as you lied. Of course I support this. Of course I support this. Crazy. But But also, I guess I just wonder if the people of Maine are going to come out of this election feeling a little bit more like democracy is working for them.

Wouldn't it be interesting if in Maine somebody who was, you know, everybody's eighth choice gets elected to Congress? It could happen. I don't know, we'll see. Now, of course, since we first aired this in 2018, that election in Maine did happen. And while no, everyone's eighth place choice was not elected In the second congressional race something interesting did happen Jared Golden a Democrat was losing after the first count to the Republican incumbent Bruce Poliquin

But ended up winning after the transfers were allocated. So the person who would have lost in the traditional count Ended up winning. Outside of Maine, rank choice is now being used in municipal elections all over the country, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, where they elect their mayor, city council and judges with it to now New York City, which uses it in mayoral primaries and city council elections. But here's the biggest news of all. Since 2022, Alaska has been using it to elect its governor, its state legislature, its representatives in the House and the Senate, and will even be using it in the presidential election this year.

So keep your eyes out. By the time we replay this episode again. If you are not already, it is very possible you two will be ranking your choices. We'll be back next week with a brand new election episode. Until then. This Radiolab was reported by Lutif Nasser, Simon Adler, Susie Lektenberg, Sara Kari, Tracy Hunt, produced by Simon Adler, Matt Kilty, Sara Kari, and Susie Lektenberg. Our story on PRS-TV was produced with support from RTE's Drive Time. Huge thank you to them and to AB for making that possible. Also thanks to Rob Richie at Fairvote, Don Sari, Diana Lagerman.

Thank you to Anna Lermann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden, as well as Carolyn Tolbert, Bobby Agee, and Edward Still. I'm Robert Kowich. And I'm Lethiv Nasser. And thanks for listening. And go vote! What the hell, right? Yes, yes.

Yeah. Hi, I'm David and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable,

Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nianam Sambandhan, Hi, this is Emily. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignment Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.