The Case for Condorcet Voting Is Clear

Yesterday, America chose hard-right over center-left but would have preferred center-right to either.

As I wrote the day before the election, I repeat now the day after: if America used a Condorcet-based electoral system, Nikki Haley and not Donald Trump would be president-elect this morning. This truth is essential for diagnosing correctly the current condition of American democracy and thus also for prescribing the most efficacious remedy.

I have heard already from several cable TV commentators that yesterday’s results demonstrate that a majority of the American electorate wants Trump to be president again after all.  But that is an inaccurate, or at least overly simplistic, analysis of what happened.

Instead, consider this: given the binary choice between hard-right and center-left, America chose hard-right. But the “Top Three” Condorcet-based electoral system that I have advocated would have given America the choice between hard-right, center-right, and center-left, and America would have chosen center-right.

It is not that America wanted Trump over all alternatives. The nation wanted Trump more than Joe Biden’s vice president because of inflation and other reasons for repudiating Biden’s performance as president. If all of the nation’s voters yesterday had been able to choose between Nikki Haley and Biden’s vice president, all available evidence indicates that Nikki Haley would have won by an even greater margin than Trump did.

This point is relevant to this morning’s conversation about whether America is ready to elect a woman as president—and especially a woman of color. In a Top Three Condorcet-based election with Trump, Haley, and Kamala Harris (or Biden, instead of Harris, if Biden hadn’t dropped out), a woman of color would have won: Haley. As Ezra Klein (among others) has observed, Harris should not be faulted for the electoral baggage that Biden left her with. She didn’t lose because she’s a woman, or a woman of color; she lost because she was part of Biden’s administration (indeed, its number two official).

The urgent necessity of Condorcet-based electoral reform was made clear not only by yesterday’s presidential election, but by other races as well. I will give here just one example: Bernie Moreno’s defeat of Sherrod Brown in the race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat. Moreno, a Trump-endorsed MAGA candidate, beat the incumbent Democrat. But Matt Dolan, the moderate Republican whom Moreno defeated in the GOP primary, would have won a Top-Three Condorcet-based election against both Moreno and Brown.

Again, it’s not that Ohio wanted a MAGA senator more than anything else. It’s just that Ohio wanted a MAGA senator more than a Democrat. In a Condorcet-based race with a traditional GOP candidate in the mold of Rob Portman or Mike DeWine, as Matt Dolan is, the traditional Republican would have prevailed over both the MAGA candidate and the Democrat.

It's possible for a state like Ohio to adopt a Condorcet-based electoral system by means of a ballot initiative. But before there’s an effort in any state to undertake a campaign to adopt a Condorcet system by means of a ballot initiative, two crucial points must be recognized.

First, achieving the adoption of this system would require at a minimum a robust coalition of Democrats and non-MAGA current or former Republicans. Enough of these non-MAGA Republicans would need to understand that they would have great success in a Condorcet system and thus should be willing to break from the MAGA-dominated GOP. It’s not enough to have just anti-Trumpers like Liz Cheney on board. The “coalition for Condorcet” needs to include those like Chris Sununu and Nikki Haley herself, who currently aren’t willing to break from Trump but would need to be convinced that they would be in the driver’s seat if a Condorcet system were adopted.

Relatedly, Democrats would need to be on board for a reform that would put traditional Republicans in the driver’s seat, rather than gambling on taking turns at the wheel with MAGA rivals like Bernie Moreno or JD Vance. In a state like Ohio, supporting Condorcet-based reform is the much better bet. Sherrod Brown’s loss yesterday shows how difficult it is for Democrats to win statewide in Ohio. If they are going to lose, better to do so to a moderate Republican like Matt Dolan than to a Trump-supported opponent like Bernie Moreno. For the sake of combatting MAGA authoritarianism, Democrats in Ohio and similar states should do what is their own self-interest anyway and join forces in a broad and strong anti-MAGA coalition with the non-MAGA wing of the GOP that should be willing to break from MAGA out of its own self-interest to support Condorcet-based reform.

Second, and just as important, any campaign for a ballot initiative to adopt Condorcet-based reform must learn from the defeat of electoral reform measures that were on the ballot yesterday. Ranked-choice voting and related proposals lost, unfortunately, in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and (as of 10am ET) perhaps Montana. Ranked-choice voting, right or wrong, is unpopular, but Condorcet voting need not involve ranked-choice ballots. The Top Three system I’ve described previously does not use ranked-choice ballots but instead has voters directly express which candidate of each pair they prefer—a much more straightforward process, both in casting the ballot and especially in understanding the result of the election. While it would be essential to educate the public on the nature and benefits of Condorcet-based voting as part of any ballot measure campaign, that civic education endeavor should be easier than attempting to convince voters to embrace a more complicated system (which doesn’t even provide the representational benefits that a Condorcet system would). In any event, civics education that enables citizens to understand the concept of Condorcet voting—and why it elects candidates who better reflect the preferences of the electorate as a whole—would be an important step in itself towards the revitalization of American democracy.

To be clear, adopting this kind of ballot initiative in a single state like Ohio would not by itself achieve Condorcet voting for presidential elections—although it would for U.S. Senate races in the state, producing more moderate winners than Bernie Moreno and JD Vance. To bring about Condorcet voting for presidential elections, it would be necessary to modify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is attempting to reform presidential elections without a constitutional amendment.  But the results of yesterday’s presidential election reveal the necessity of rethinking NPVIC proposal anyway. NPVIC was proposed to eliminate the so-called “Electoral College inversion”—where the Electoral College winner is different from the winner of the national popular vote. But if Trump’s current lead in the national popular vote holds up, there won’t be an inversion this time. The problem with Trump’s election, from a nonpartisan perspective seeking an electoral system that best represents the preferences of all voters equally and fairly, is not its inconsistency with the national popular vote—it’s that the electoral system eliminates even before November a candidate, like Nikki Haley, whom a majority of voters would prefer to either major-party nominee. It’s necessary to fix this problem by having states that collectively have at least 270 electoral votes agree to adopt a Top Three Condorcet-based electoral system for presidential elections.

            Reaching 270 electoral votes for this modified version of NPVIC will be a challenge, but it’s not impossible. NPVIC itself has already reached 209 electoral votes. NPVIC is 61 electoral votes short because it has been adopted only in blue states, because its version of the interstate compact has been thought to favor Democrats (although yesterday’s election likely will change that perspective). Because a Condorcet-based version of NPVIC would benefit moderate Republicans, it ought to be possible to pick up enough extra states to cross the finish line—as long as Democrats are willing to go along and push the idea.

            It’s not that Democrats would never win presidential elections if a Condorcet-based system were adopted. Given the political complexion of the nation overall, sometimes a center-left Democrat would be able to beat a center-right traditional Republican as well as a far-right MAGA candidate—although obviously not this year. But what adopting a Condorcet-based system for presidential elections would do is make it most likely that either a center-left or center-right candidate would prevail, thus preventing the election of a would-be authoritarian—or even fascist.

            Creating an anti-fascist coalition broad and strong enough to adopt Condorcet voting for presidential elections in states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes should seem an obvious and urgent priority for anyone concerned about the future of American democracy, as they certainly should be today.