The
latest turn in the
Mexican election drama only confirms that it's too soon to tell who will lead the country into the next decade. But barring a demonstration of truly massive fraud, it's safe to say that Mexico will be led by a man who little more than a third of Mexican voters marked on their ballots on Sunday. The next President of Mexico will be the winner of what was ultimately a contest between Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Felope Calderon, a contest which a third of Mexico's voters gave up the chance to weigh in on when they chose to vote for one of the three other candidates instead.
Some here will no doubt respond that democratic elections are full of tough choices, and it's on each voter to weigh whether it's more important to pull the result towards one of the two foreseeable results (the first face of power, if you will), or to shift the sense of the politically feasible (the second face). But it's worth asking whether that sort of calculation, scintillating as it may be - the same sort of calculation many Connecticut Democrats will have to make if faced with a three-way ticket come November - is good for democracy in the broader sense of how much control individuals have over the decisions that determine the conditions of their lives (a greater problem, by that standard - David Held's - is the
long shadow global capital casts over contests like this week's).
Because it isn't necessary that that sort of calculation be necessary.
Mexicans have far less cause than Americans to worry about throwing their votes away in congressional elections because Mexico has proportional representation. Both countries could take a further step towards reducing the centrality of cynical calculation from presidential voting by implementing instant run-off voting.
Instant run-off voting essentially allows each voter to rank their preferences among several candidates. In the first round, every voter's vote is counted towards his/her first choice. The candidate receiving the lowest votes is eliminated, and in the second round, everyone who voted for him/her has their vote counted for their second choice. The process continues, eliminating one candidate each round and counting each voter's vote for their preferred candidate of those remaining each round, until only two candidates remain, and the one of the two who's preferred by the majority of the voters wins.
For a refresher on instant run-off voting works, let's recall another election spectacle: California's Gubernatorial recall. As the Times reported at the time:
There was the 100-year-old woman from Long Beach who was sponsored by the 99-cent store chain; the busty pornographic film star; the cross-dresser in pink; the soul food restaurateur; the angry car salesman; the techno geek; the student too young for whiskers; and the structural engineer worried about earthquakes.
Let's say, for example, that the eight candidates above are the only ones on the ballot, and my preferences are:
1st: Cross-dresser in pink
2nd: Soul food restaurateur
3rd: 100-year-old woman from Long Beach
4th: Student too young for whiskers
5th: Busty pornographic film star
6th: Structural engineer worried about earthquakes
7th: Techno geek
8th: Angry car salesman
In the first round, my vote is counted towards the cross-dresser, and the angry car salesman who was the first preference of the fewest voters (sorry guys), is eliminated. In the second and third rounds, my vote is still counted for the cross-dresser, and the student too young for whiskers and the 100 year-old woman are eliminated for being the favorite (out of the remaining candidates) of the fewest voters in the second and third rounds respectively. In the fourth round, the votes that had been going to the angry car salesman (in the 1st round), the student too young for whiskers (in the 2nd), and/or the 100 year-old woman (in the 3rd), spread mostly between the structural engineer, the techno geek, and the busty pornographic film star, and the soul food restaurateur has a strong base because of his outstanding corn bread, but the cross-dresser, who automatically receives my vote as long as he's in the race, is the preference of the fewest voters and is eliminated. In the fifth round, my vote goes automatically to the soul food restaurateur because he was my second choice, and the techno geek receives the fewest votes and is eliminated. The sixth round thus pits the soul food restaurateur, the busty pornographic film star, and the structural engineer against each other. Most of the voters whose votes had been going to the techno geek had marked the porn star as their next choice (thought it would be the structural engineer, didn't you?), and the soul food restaurateur has a strong enough base to come in second, eliminating the structural engineer, who one hopes will find some other satisfying outlet for his political and/or engineering energy. In the last round, thus, every voter's vote is counted either towards the restaurateur or towards the porn star. Someone who rated the restaurateur 7th and the porn star 6th, for example, is now automatically voting for the porn star. In this final round, while my vote goes to the unreconstructed liberal restaurateur, more people are drawn to the, well, platform of the busty pornographic film star, and she emerges the winner of the gubernatorial race.
The advantages of this system are clear, even if that example isn't. It demonstrates the actual level of support for various candidates by allowing everyone to rank them based purely on how much they'd like to see them in office. It eliminates the fear of hurting your second - (or maybe eleventh-) choice candidate's chances by supporting your first-choice. It forces politicians to pitch themselves as ideal elected officials if they hope to be viewed in victory as something other than everyone's second choice. And in elections like the one in Connecticut, and the one in Mexico, where critical, ideological choices are laid out more starkly than we ususally get to see them, it facilitates voters following Paul Wellstone's imperative to vote for what you believe in - and observers judging better from the results what kind of leadership those voters want.