Local activists and candidates for school board are often confronted by the shortcomings of our winner-takes-all, plurality voting system. From toxic polarization to the dreaded “spoiler” effect, school boards and the communities they serve suffer from the shortcomings of our election system – but if the legislature takes action, ranked-choice voting may soon provide some much needed relief. 

The Problems With School Board Elections In NJ

Vote Splitting & The "Seesaw Effect"

Let’s say you have three slates of candidates running for school board - two are pretty similar, and one is more extreme. If the first two slates of candidates each get 33% of the vote, that means 66% of voters (despite their marginal differences) favor pretty similar outcomes; but if the third slate of candidates gets 34% of the vote (just 1% more than each of the others), that slate of candidates will win. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? That’s the reality of a “plurality” voting system - whoever gets the largest share of votes wins, even if the majority of voters do not support those candidates.

Because of the vote splitting that is common in school board elections, and because our voting system generally elects one slate of candidates, small changes in public opinion can dramatically change the composition of the school board. 

Bad Slate Strategy

In NJ, school board elections are most commonly:

• Three, separate plurality elections for each candidate.
  • Slates are incentivized to awkwardly clump in to groups of the three, even if they don't agree.
  • If you like two candidates in different slates that are running in the same election, you can't support both of them.
• (More Common) One plurality election where voters are instructed to select up to three candidates. 
  • Voters can strategically vote for only one or two candidates to make their vote artificially powerful (often called "bullet voting").

Plurality Example

Let's walk through an example election, first using the classic “plurality rules” election system and then showing the impact of proportional RCV. In most school board elections in New Jersey, voters are instructed to pick three candidates, and the candidates with the most votes win.

In this sample election, "More Tests" is the most popular slate of candidates, and so all of their candidates are elected. However, there are two problems with this method.

• The majority of voters didn't vote for "More Tests" and have no voice on the school board.
• If public sentiment shifted by just a few percent - an entirely new slate of school board officials would have been elected.

Ranked-Choice Voting Can Help

That’s where ranked-choice voting (RCV) can save the day.  Here’s a quick recap on RCV and how it works.

With ranked-choice voting, voters are empowered to rank as many candidates as they’d like, in order of preference. Your vote only counts for one person. Your rankings are used as a "backup" if your favorite candidate is no longer in the race (ex: your favorite has the least amount of voters or [only in multi-seat races] your favorite was already elected).

• When electing one person, this process ensures the winner receives the majority of the vote. This means that voters can worry less whether their favorite candidate is "electable"; the ballot does that work for you.
• Ranked-choice voting ballots also lets us elect a group of people proportionally. Proportional elections are more fair because they make the ballots of more voters count. Rather than electing three people that represent 50% of the population, we can elect three people who each represent 25%* of voters (representing the views of at least 75% of voters). 

Proportional Ranked-Choice Voting Example

Why do the votes look different? In the previous election, voters who liked Casey the most were also able to vote for Kamuela and Ben.

1. Casey had more than enough votes to be elected. All of her voters put Kamuela second, so any votes above the 25%* threshold flowed to Kamuela**.
2. April also had enough votes to be elected.
3. Ben had the least amount of votes. All of his voters put Kamuela second, so their votes flowed to Kamuela.
4. Amelia now has the least amount of votes. All of her voters put Andrew second, so their votes flowed to Andrew.
5. Sandy now has the least amount of votes. Her voters were split between Kamuela and Andrew, so their votes flowed to their next favorite candidate.
6. Andrew has enough votes to be elected.

In this election, far more voters are represented. "More Tests" voices were able to get a candidates elected because they had significant support from the electorate. "Arts is Education" also had a strong share of the vote, but they also had the support of most "Step Up Our Sports" voters. As a result, a majority of voters wanted them in office and they were rewarded with two seats on the board. This change also means that an eight percent change in public opinion would change the outcome of just one seat on the school board, not three.

Summary

The NJ Legislature now has a chance to mend some flaws in our school board and town council election to make them more fair. The Municipal and School Board Voting Options Act (RCV) bill (S1622) can give us those improvements. Take action now by telling the NJ legislature it needs to pass RCV enabling legislation HERE.

* The way to calculate the number of voters needed to win an RCV election is 1/(NUMBER OF WINNERS + 1)  +1.

In an election with one winner it is 1/(1 + 1) + 1 = 50% + 1.

In an election with three winners it is 1(3 + 1) + 1 = 25% + 1.

** NJ will use the weighted-average method for deciding where extra votes are transferred.

If Casey gets 100 more votes than she needed to win, and 75% of her voters put Kamuela next and 25% put Ben next, 75 votes would be given to Kamuela and 25 would be given to Ben.