Election Reflection: Another Round of Politicians Elected Without Majority Support
By Volunteer Rochelle Kaplan
One Month ago, Pennsylvania had another municipal election cycle where voters remain unsatisfied with their choices and their results.
In the Lehigh County and Northwestern school district where I reside, voters were asked to pick four out of eight school board candidates, and three out of six judicial candidates. I came away frustrated and disappointed in the election results in which not a single winner came away with a majority of votes.
In the school board race, 18% of voters wrote in different candidates’ names altogether. The top vote-getter received just 18.27% of the votes, with the next three winners receiving 17.74%, 15.89%, and 15.30% respectively. That is hardly a rousing vote of confidence in a crucial election that will determine the future direction of our school board for the next several years. Voters would have more confidence in their school board if the elected members had actually garnered a higher percentage of the votes. Likewise in the Lehigh County judicial race, the top three vote-getters garnered 18.10%, 16.93%, and 16.68% of the vote respectively.
We also saw similar results in other areas of Pennsylvania, notably in Harrisburg. According to FairVote, the Harrisburg mayoral election resulted in one of the lowest plurality wins in the country. Just 29% of voters voted for the winning candidate, with 71% voting for another candidate.
I watched the results with sadness knowing that in Pennsylvania the dysfunction at our state level has crept into the local level because of our first-past-the-post voting system. This winner-take-all system adds to the divisiveness and partisanship in government and certainly has no place in our judiciary or our school boards. Municipal officials should be problem solvers, not politicians. Their focus should be on community needs, not a partisan agenda dictated by the party.
Ranked choice voting (RCV) will create more competitive elections in which the winner(s) actually represent the majority of voters. More than any other alternative voting system, RCV has been shown to ensure majority consensus. It allows voters to vote with their true preferences, and not have to worry about voting strategically. The best strategy is to vote with your true preferences, and the result is a candidate that the most people are satisfied with.
Sources:
https://www.livevoterturnout.com/lehighpa/LiveResults/en/Index_1.html
https://medium.com/@FairVoteAction/elected-without-a-majority-plurality-wins-in-2021-a6242880e839