AGAINST by Ben D.
Hi comrades, my name is Ben Davis, and I am writing to urge comrades to vote NO on the endorsement of Initiative 83, the ranked-choice voting ballot initiative. I oppose a chapter endorsement of this because our chapter needs to invest our resources in campaigns that build our power. We’re an organization that has little money. Our only resource is our organized people. We must be very strategic about how we use our resources: only for things that strengthen DSA and the working class movement more than the effort we put in.
Instant-Runoff Voting and the Left
While I appreciate the spirit of I83 as a long-time supporter of electoral reform, I think there’s little evidence this will help the left, damage the two-party system, or make DC more democratic.
Firstly, ranked-choice voting does not in itself mean anything very clear about how an election system works. Two major kinds of ranked-choice voting are used in state-run elections: instant-runoff voting (IRV) and single transferable vote (STV). The outcome difference is massive, as IRV produces a single winner in a given district, while STV uses ranked-choice voting to create proportional results. Proportional results mean each group is represented in a legislature at around their level of support from the voters in the election. Proportionality is a very good way to measure how democratic elections are. While STV does a lot to create space for more political perspectives and parties, IRV produces less proportional results than our current system. I83 creates an IRV system for DC outside of the specific cases of the at-large race and the presidential primary.
While IRV will allow other parties to gain a higher percentage of the first preference vote, in many cases, it actually makes it less likely for third parties to win the election. In Australia, the only country that uses IRV in elections, the House of Representatives is actually more dominated by the two largest parties than comparable Westminster Systems like Canada, India, or the UK. While I83 may raise the percentages of left parties like the Statehood Greens or a hypothetical Democratic Socialist party, it does not break the two-party system or make it more likely for those parties to gain actual government representation.
This is also true within Democratic primaries. Our current strategy and election system allow us to win Democratic primaries, tantamount to election in DC, by just turning out our motivated base. In seats with multiple candidates, we can stake out a strong socialist stance and win with just a plurality of the vote. For an organization that relies on highly motivated organizers and activists without the funding to contact all voters as easily as our wealthy opponents, this is the easiest way to win and build a governing Council majority in the District. I83, instead, will diminish the power of the left-wing base and raise the power of the median voter, who, under the new system of open primaries, will be further to the right politically than they are now.
I83 would also further box us out from the at-large council race. In 2020, running Ed Lazere, we nearly won one of these seats again with just our base. Under a two-winner STV system, the combined redistributed votes of Democratic voters and the combined votes of the more conservative candidates like Vincent Orange and Marcus Goodwin would have boxed us out of having any chance to compete for one of these seats.
All of this together means it will help the governing center in DC and empower the right-wing who are currently unable to effect elections meaningfully. This initiative causes us significantly more labor and money to win a governing majority. The bourgeois state is always tilted against us - we are waging an electoral guerrilla war, maximizing the strengths of our core group and using flaws in the system, and we need to support the rules that help us the most rather than what would be most fair in an ideal system. The flaws in the current first-past-the-post system give us opportunities: a faster and more efficient path to working class power.
Progressive and left-wing activists have fought for and won IRV in several jurisdictions, sinking time and effort into reforms that have seen no benefit to the working class. Most DSA electoral organizers in these jurisdictions have found it to be neutral to actively harmful to our cause. In Minneapolis in 2023, a DSA candidate and abolitionist victim of police violence, Soren Stevenson, lost in the instant runoff against the conservative City Council President, a race he would have won under first-past-the-post. This also happened with socialist Ginger Jentzen in 2017. This system has cost DSA seats in Minneapolis: instead of the current 4 seats, we could have 5-6 out of 13, enough to flip the balance of power and pass the abolitionist reforms that came out of the George Floyd Movement.
I83 as a Campaign
Because it’s unclear whether this is a good campaign for the left, it’s not something we should endorse, even if most of our members will personally vote for it. Our endorsements aren’t just a stamp saying most members support something in theory. They mean we are committing resources at a high level to win for the working class. We should only endorse campaigns that help with our goals: class formation and building a worker’s party for power.
For that reason, I83 doesn’t meet the standards of an endorsed campaign. It does not further and may harm our democratically decided priorities: public power, tenants’ rights, police abolition, labor organizing, and winning electoral majorities. We don’t do paper endorsements, and I83 would remove resources from winning our priorities for the working class. This year, we must focus our electoral efforts on protecting Janeese Lewis George and our campaigns that build power for DSA and the working class.
While electoral reform is a noble goal, and there are ways of reforming DC’s elections to further democracy and build working class power, I83 is not the reform that accomplishes those goals. I urge comrades to vote NO on endorsing I83.