Plurality Voting Pros and Cons

Plurality Voting

aka Choose One Voting and First Past the Post (FPTP)

Plurality Voting Pros

Plurality Voting is Simple

Vote for one candidate, then add up the votes. The candidate with the most votes wins.

We Have Used it for Centuries

Plurality voting is second nature to Americans. It is traditional and easy to use.

Compliance with State Constitutions

Plurality voting complies with state constitutions that require a winning candidate to receive the “highest”, “greatest” or “largest” number of votes, or “a plurality of the votes”. BTR-Score and Ranked Choice Voting also comply.

Plurality Voting Cons

Vote Splitting and Favorite Betrayal

Consider this common occurrence: Your favorite candidate has little hope, but your second choice has a good chance of defeating the third candidate, who is possessed by Satan.

Plurality voting tempts you to betray your favorite candidate. If you do not betray your favorite, you harm the chances of your second choice, which helps the candidate possessed by Satan.

Third Party Abuse

Because voters seldom vote for their favorite third-party candidate, third-party support is always under reported. It is more difficult for third parties to recruit members, raise campaign funds, motivate volunteers, generate publicity, and win elections. By sabotaging third parties and independent candidates, we silence valuable voices and ideas.

Spoilers Abuse Major Party Candidates

Ralph Nader spoiled Al Gore in the 2000 election. In 2024, if Robert Kennedy jr. stayed in the race and took more votes from Trump than Harris in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Donald Trump may have lost the election while winning the popular vote.

Our Voice is Limited

With plurality voting, you can only rank one candidate above the others. Score voting methods allow voters to express opinions on all candidates. You can state your preference for candidate A over candidate B, and by how much you prefer A to B.

Divisive Two-Party Rule

From the Hiveism Substack:^[1]
"Since every voter can vote for only one candidate, votes are a limited resource that candidates compete over. This turns campaigning into a zero-sum game. Candidates with similar political values must compete against each other. They split the votes, which benefits their mutual opponent."

According to Duverger’s Law,^[2] single winner elections with plurality voting favor a two-party system. Voters are reluctant to waste votes on third-party candidates. Fewer third-party candidates run, and when they do, voters ignore them.

The Center Squeeze Effect

Consider this 3-way election: A popular moderate candidate has the strongest support, with conservative and liberal candidates close behind.

Confident that they can hold their bases, the conservative and liberal candidates tailor their campaigns towards moderate voters, squeezing the moderate candidate out of the race. Plurality voting is very susceptible to the Center Squeeze Effect.

Score voting methods do not split support. You score each candidate 0-6, ties are allowed. Score accurately reports support for similar candidates.

Wasted Votes

In election science, a vote that does not help a candidate win is a wasted vote. In single-winner elections with three or more candidates, a majority of votes will probably be wasted. Proportional representation wastes few votes. Your vote will help your party win seats.

Many single-winner voting methods are fairer and more reliable than plurality voting, but they cannot solve the larger problem. Proportional representation is the only way to represent nearly every voter. Each party will win seats based on the number of votes they receive.

Condorcet Winners

The Condorcet criterion holds that voting systems should elect a candidate who beats all others one-on-one (if there is such a candidate).
Consider this three-candidate race: A popular moderate has 30% support, Democrat and Republican candidates both poll close to 35%.

Most Democrats prefer the moderate over the Republican, Republicans prefer the moderate over the Democrat and moderates prefer the moderate over both. The moderate is the “beats all” Condorcet winner but ends up in third place. Plurality voting too often fails to elect the Condorcet winner. BTR-Score is a Condorcet method with important advantages over plurality voting.

Reputation

For the reasons above, voting system experts have a very low regard for Plurality Voting. Only “random choice” and “dictatorship” are worse. Jean-Francois Laslier conducted a poll of specialists in voting procedures. They gave Plurality Voting a big fat zero compared to other voting systems.^[3]

Jameson Quinn, creator of the VSE election simulations, on Plurality Voting:“It often gets “spoiled” results, where a weaker candidate wins due to vote-splitting. It encourages strategy; and it leads to uncompetitive politics, dominated by big parties (and their big donors) who get their votes as much through fear as through hope”.^[4] As you would expect, plurality has low VSE scores.

Us Against Them

Plurality voting locks in two-party rule. It is always us against them. Our elections have devolved into heavily armed food fights. We forbid cooperation and compromise. Officeholders cannot build coalitions for a lack of partners.

Conclusion

As voters, we should have the right to choose which candidates we support or oppose. Plurality voting does not respect this right; we can only support one candidate and oppose the rest.

Some voters are happy to support only one candidate. They will choose the lesser of two evils and call it democracy. They have the right to vote as they choose, but the rest of us suffer under their limit. Should we not have the same right to vote as we choose?

We are even more subversive; we want an election system that puts voters in control of public policy. Therefore, we demand proportional representation and better voting systems for single-winner elections.

Multi Party Election Reform sounds like something we might do in the future, but we need reform now.

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