Tweak the Vote

Speaker 1 Radiolab is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Speaker 1 Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com.

Speaker 1 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.

Speaker 2 WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

Speaker 4 It's 1972. A A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 4 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 4 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 4 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 1 Hey, it's Letthiff. Given the approaching American presidential election, we are on week two of our election run.

Speaker 1 So last week, if you'll remember, we had the story about the dramatic changes in how we cover presidential candidates in this country. Next week, we have a brand new episode about

Speaker 1 why and how we count our votes for president. But this week, we have the evolving story of how we cast those votes.

Speaker 1 The episode I'm about to play for you, it's six years old, which I mean, if you think about the long sweep of American political history, that does not feel like a long time.

Speaker 1 And yet, so much has changed. So, when we released this episode, the process we're about to outline for you, like it was pretty obscure.

Speaker 1 It was used, I don't know, in a few places, few cities, few states in the U.S.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 this is big time. What we are describing to you, it's on the upswing.

Speaker 1 This is literally going to help decide who the next president is going to be,

Speaker 1 which I don't know about you. I find that kind of inspiring.
It feels like things can actually change in this country.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, we will play the episode now and then we will do a quick update on the flip side.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so without further ado, here is Tweak the Vote.

Speaker 1 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 1 You're listening

Speaker 1 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 1 Radio Lab. From Rin.

Speaker 7 W-N-Y-C.

Speaker 1 Sing.

Speaker 1 Re-wine.

Speaker 1 This part of it, but I can do that.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I'm Robert Krolich.

Speaker 1 And I'm Letif Nasser. Thank you.

Speaker 1 And today on Radio Lab, Robert, I am going to make you wrestle with your most cherished ideal, American democracy.

Speaker 9 Oh, I see. Okay, great.
Wait, hang on a second. I'm just struggling with the ifn'ts.
Now I have him on. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. And

Speaker 1 I'm going to start things off by introducing you to Yasha.

Speaker 9 Yasha Monk. I'm a lecturer on government at Harvard.

Speaker 1 He studies politics.

Speaker 1 What was I going to say?

Speaker 1 Maybe we could just start with where you grew up.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So I was...

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 I was born in 1982. I grew up in Germany, moved, moved around a bunch of different places within Germany as a kid.
And then went to college in England

Speaker 9 in 2000. And I was kind of studying politics.
I was a history major.

Speaker 1 So Yasha was studying politics, but he was studying it in the past.

Speaker 1 So he was looking at, you know, going all the way back to the cradle of democracy in ancient Greece and then how democracy came to thrive around the world.

Speaker 1 But as he was studying that, he was noticing, you know, in the news, he would see in certain countries like France or Austria, you know, there would be these parties, these far-right, ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant parties that were starting to gain some traction.

Speaker 1 And for Yasha...

Speaker 9 I saw some of this

Speaker 9 because my family has been in the wrong place at the wrong time for about four generations.

Speaker 1 His great-grandparents perished during the Holocaust.

Speaker 9 My grandparents sort of barely survived in the Soviet Union. My parents grew up in Poland and were thrown out of the country in a huge sort of...
anti-Semitic wave in 1968.

Speaker 9 And so the idea that, you know, political systems that seem relatively stable and seem relatively peaceful might suddenly turn fractious and even violent

Speaker 9 was something that I suppose I always had a sort of dim awareness of, even as a kid.

Speaker 9 So I remember being quite worried by this and having friends who were quite worried about it, but we were worried about it as sort of this weird bad thing that's going on.

Speaker 9 But I don't think we actually thought that these people might win.

Speaker 9 Jump to the early 2010s.

Speaker 1 They start winning.

Speaker 10 For the first time, Malien Nerpen will have a seat in parliament, along with seven others from her far-right party.

Speaker 1 These far-right parties in Austria and France start to gain power, and it's not just there.

Speaker 9 But huge swaths of Europe.

Speaker 1 What's happening in Italy is also happening elsewhere in Europe. Similar right-wing parties start rising up in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary.

Speaker 5 An identity crisis for the entire European continent.

Speaker 1 And it's not just Europe. You have India, Turkey, and.

Speaker 9 What started off as, of course, the United States. Unlikely, impossible, is now reality.

Speaker 1 Basically, there's this wave of politicians whose message was, people aren't really listening to you. Your government has failed you.

Speaker 9 Trust me, I really speak for the people. I'm going to fix everything.

Speaker 1 And to Yasha, this was, you know, this was like a wake-up call. And not just because of immigration policy or right and left leanings of certain politicians, but even more deeply than that.

Speaker 9 I was quite worried about the way in which these political movements perhaps pretended to have some allegiance to democratic mechanisms, but actually really were enemies of it.

Speaker 9 Like there was this one guy, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, who glorified the Third Reich in various ways and really harkened back to the country's fascist past in a positive way.

Speaker 9 That wasn't a far-fetched fear, I don't think. I mean, a huge number of the world's dictators have been elected democratically at some point.

Speaker 9 And then they move against democratic institutions in such a way that you can't displace them democratically anymore.

Speaker 1 So, for Yasha, who by this point was a lecturer at Harvard, he

Speaker 1 kept seeing this in country after country after country. He saw these citizens willingly elect these wannabe dictators into power.

Speaker 1 And so, he started wondering,

Speaker 1 what is making these citizens do this?

Speaker 1 Do they feel like their current leaders don't get them?

Speaker 1 Are they riled up about some issue of the day, like refugees or income inequality?

Speaker 1 Or is this a sign that they're upset about something even more foundational?

Speaker 9 The political system itself.

Speaker 1 Like, are they actually angry with democracy itself?

Speaker 9 And so I sat down with a friend and colleague to figure that out.

Speaker 9 And his friend, it turns out, worked on something called the World Values Survey, which is a really ambitious attempt to try and get a public opinion around the world.

Speaker 1 It's basically just a bunch of social scientists who ask a whole bunch of very standard questions to a whole bunch of people all over the world. And they're like, okay,

Speaker 1 let's actually scrutinize what's being said in here about democracy.

Speaker 9 And when we actually looked at the numbers,

Speaker 9 we were honestly flabbergasted by what we saw.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what we saw for this... There's actually three questions in particular that he got interested in.
Okay. Here, so let's start with this one.

Speaker 9 How do you feel about a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections?

Speaker 8 Who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections?

Speaker 1 Correct. Yeah.
Okay. They also asked this of Americans, just instead of doesn't have to bother with parliament, it was doesn't have to bother with Congress.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so in 1995, 24% of all Americans endorsed that kind of strongman leader.

Speaker 8 24. So you mean one out of every four.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but in the last several years, that number has jumped from 24 to 32%.

Speaker 8 So now it's a third almost.

Speaker 1 That's a

Speaker 1 say a strong leader who doesn't have to deal with Congress or elections is either a very good or fairly good thing. Wow.

Speaker 8 Well, that surprises me.

Speaker 1 It's kind of even more striking in Europe.

Speaker 9 So in Germany, one in six people used to like that idea. But now...
It's one in three.

Speaker 8 In Germany, where they

Speaker 8 should know better. Yeah.

Speaker 9 In France and the United Kingdom, it was one in four 20 years ago, and now it's one in two.

Speaker 1 Half. Half.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So every second Brit and Frenchman says, yeah, the idea of a strong ruler who doesn't have to bother with parliament and elections, that's pretty appealing to me.

Speaker 8 It's not appealing to me. That is not appealing to me.

Speaker 8 Who would say that they like to not be involved in a democracy which is about being involved?

Speaker 1 Okay, well, if you think that's crazy, here comes question number two.

Speaker 1 Flat out, simple, straightforward.

Speaker 9 How important is it to you to live in a democracy on a scale of one to ten?

Speaker 9 And when you look at Americans born in the 1930s and 1940s, two-thirds of them give the highest importance to living in a democracy. They say that's really essential.

Speaker 12 I mean, I agree with, well, two-thirds seems a little soft to me.

Speaker 9 Sure, but among Americans born since 1980, it's less than one-third.

Speaker 1 Less than one-third consider it essential to live in a democracy.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Less than a third? Yeah.

Speaker 8 So of 100 people, 100 young people, 32, 30, 30, 25 would say, I love democracy, that's very important. And the rest, what would the rest say?

Speaker 1 It's not the most important thing for them deciding where to live.

Speaker 8 Okay, well, then

Speaker 8 if this is good, where would you like to, like, what would you prefer? Would you like to be living in the world?

Speaker 1 Okay, well, that's a good segue to the next question. All right.

Speaker 1 Final question.

Speaker 9 Which was about army rule. So do you think that army rule is a good system of government?

Speaker 1 Army rule.

Speaker 8 So, we're not, this is no civilians anymore. Soldiers running the government, soldiers following orders, soldiers giving orders.

Speaker 9 So, 20 years ago,

Speaker 9 about one in 16 Americans thought that was a good system of government.

Speaker 9 In the most recent poll, a couple of years ago, it was one in six.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh.

Speaker 9 And among young and affluent Americans, it's actually gone up from 6%

Speaker 9 to 35%.

Speaker 8 So, it's a nearly six-fold increase in america you have one in three young affluent americans i i a military rule is a wonderful thing that's what you're saying yeah uh exactly yeah that's misguided

Speaker 9 or tragic i don't know which so yasha said something he was like look like i don't think if the colonels took over tomorrow uh one-third of americans would say this is wonderful right i i don't think that's actually true but it does show

Speaker 9 a deep lack of attachment to the current current political system and the sort of sense of, you know what, I mean, let's try something new. How bad could things get?

Speaker 9 I don't think it could be much worse than what we have today.

Speaker 8 Here's the thing that gets to be.

Speaker 8 Let's imagine a well-intentioned but totally authoritarian dictator who takes over, gets used to power, and then, as dictators do, chooses to remain in place forever.

Speaker 8 The adventure of democracy is that it admits that nothing is ever right. We always have to fix it.
And the system has built in it impermanence. Every six years you elect the senator over again.

Speaker 8 Every two years you elect the congressman over again. Every four years you can have the option to switch presidents.
Presidents can't serve beyond a particular point. There will be checks.

Speaker 8 There will be balances. There will be protection.
But the whole thing admits that there's always change and always the ability to change.

Speaker 8 And this survey you just read me says, nah, we don't believe in it anymore. Well, that's dangerous to me, scary to me.

Speaker 8 And I think my response is: if that's the case, and I don't argue that people have these opinions, if that's the case, then let's fix it. Let's not throw it out.
Let's repair it in some way.

Speaker 8 That's what, but that's what it seems like a moment like this calls for.

Speaker 1 That's the speech.

Speaker 1 Basically, you're saying, let's fix it.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, Well,

Speaker 1 I mean, and there's

Speaker 1 a lot to fix, right? Obviously. There's corporate money and special interest lobbyists and gerrymandering and minority groups who don't get a voice and active voter suppression in a lot of places.

Speaker 1 The weirdness of the Electoral College, the two-party system in general, where it seems like they have nothing to do except for hate on each other.

Speaker 1 But I figured, let's just focus on one thing. voting.
Like, is there a way to just tweak this fundamental part of democracy?

Speaker 1 Like, can we change the way we vote so that people don't feel, as many people now do, that they're throwing their vote away, that their vote doesn't count, that their vote

Speaker 1 is wasted?

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 8 what would you suggest?

Speaker 1 So what I got is a, it's kind of an alternate universe. It's, it's, it's a different way of doing elections that could have a profound effect on the way our democracy works.

Speaker 1 And we'll get to that right after a quick break.

Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 1 Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you that Radio Lab is his favorite podcast, too. Aw, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 1 What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital slash bank, capital One NA, member FDIC.

Speaker 3 Radiolab is supported by AT ⁇ T.

Speaker 3 There's nothing better than that feeling like someone has your back and that things are going to get done without you even having to ask, like your friend offering to help you move without even having to offer drinks and pizza first.

Speaker 3 It's a beautiful thing when someone is two steps ahead of you, quietly making your life easier. Staying connected matters.

Speaker 3 That's why in the rare event of a network outage, AT ⁇ T will proactively credit you for a full day of service. That's the AT guarantee.

Speaker 3 Credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more or for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers.

Speaker 3 Must be connected to impacted tower at onset of outage. Restrictions and exclusions apply.
See ATT.com/slash guarantee for full details. AT ⁇ T, connecting changes everything.

Speaker 1 RadioLab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans?

Speaker 1 And that national forests and grasslands cover nearly 10% of the U.S., hosting 150,000 miles of trails and providing habitat for over 3,000 species of plants and animals.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation supports the places where we come alive, keeping the trails, rivers, and forests we love healthy.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and advanced over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide.

Speaker 1 Their work creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for generations to come.

Speaker 1 And when forests struggle, so do we, the water in our taps, the air we breathe, and the trails that connect us all. Learn how you can help at nationalforests.org.

Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolive.

Speaker 13 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robert Ince, and I've sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.
Primarily eels. And what else?

Speaker 14 It was fascinating, though.

Speaker 13 The eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 14 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels?

Speaker 13 Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso C?

Speaker 14 Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Latif Radio Lab, we are back.

Speaker 5 Abe, can you hear me?

Speaker 15 Yes. There we are.

Speaker 1 Oh, good.

Speaker 15 Okay, cool.

Speaker 1 And we're going to start off with producer Simon Adler. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So, in search of democratic inspiration, I called across the ocean to the Emerald Isle to talk to this guy.

Speaker 15 So, my name is A.B.NBOMAN.

Speaker 15 I currently work for Orchie Radio One on the DriveTime program.

Speaker 5 Abe's a radio producer reporter for Ireland's equivalent to the BBC, known as RTE, and he's a self-described election nerd.

Speaker 15 Okay, so to sort of start from the start, the way I would look at this is

Speaker 15 American democracy is one of the oldest democracies in the world. It's kind of like a laptop from 1985.

Speaker 15 And at the time, everybody was like, oh my God, this is incredible. It's so fast.
It's so responsive. You're going to get so much stuff done with this.
And to be fair, you did.

Speaker 15 But you've got to keep updating your operating system.

Speaker 15 Otherwise, pretty soon your democracy is struggling to deal with things like Facebook news feeds and Twitter and leaves itself open to being hacked by Russia.

Speaker 15 Now, in Ireland, we got our democracy a little bit later, the 1920s.

Speaker 15 And at that point, democracy had moved on from the 1770s, 1780s when you guys sort of brought in your democracy. And we adopted this, what was then quite modern, voting system called PRS-TV.

Speaker 5 P-R-S-TV. Exactly.
It sounds a bit like an STD.

Speaker 15 It does sound quite like a sexually transmitted infection. It does, yes.

Speaker 8 Oh, this seems like dead in the water frame. Hello.

Speaker 15 The extended version is multi-sease prs tv that really sounds like an sti it's not one more time say it again multi-seat p r s t v which stands for multi-sease proportional representation by single transferable vote i have no idea what that means

Speaker 7 well

Speaker 5 weird as it might sound this is a system of voting that unlike ours uh can make every voter feel heard

Speaker 5 gets you candidates who best reflect the collective interest of the people and and make sure no one ever feels like they're throwing their vote away.

Speaker 5 I don't believe you.

Speaker 5 You don't have to believe you.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm following. Tell us.
Tell us how this impossible feat, how does this even work?

Speaker 1 I'm walking through the lower part of Dublin Central.

Speaker 5 Well, let's just put this in concrete terms.

Speaker 1 Great.

Speaker 5 Okay, so 2016, there's an election for the national parliament in the Dublin Central District.

Speaker 7 It's blocks of brick row houses punctuated by these brightly coloured pink or purple or yellow doors.

Speaker 5 You can think of it like an election district. In Ireland, it's what's known as a constituency.
A couple adult stores, low-rise white public housing units.

Speaker 16 It's a predominantly working class constituency with a lot of difficulties.

Speaker 5 This is Maureen O'Sullivan, a long-time resident of the constituency with a shock of white hair.

Speaker 16 And I've always been involved with youth clubs, etc., doing voluntary work and then teaching in communities in the area.

Speaker 5 And so back in February of 2016, this area of Dublin, along with the rest of the country, was holding their parliamentary elections, elections for what they call TDs.

Speaker 1 Wait, what are TDs?

Speaker 16 Right, okay. Well, TD is the Irish Sugaelic for Chotedola, which translates into member of parliament.

Speaker 5 At that time, Dublin Central had three of these TD seats, three people representing them in parliament, one of whom

Speaker 16 I was elected in 2009 was Maureen. And I would be, I am independent, not allied with any party.

Speaker 5 And going into that 2016 election, things were looking pretty uncertain for Maureen. First of all, there was a field of 15 candidates running for those three seats.

Speaker 5 And worse, seats one and two were expected to be snagged quite easily by these two high-profile major party candidates. Yeah.
This again is A.B. Bowman, who actually covered this 2016 election.

Speaker 15 They're not locked down, but these are are people who look like they are going to get elected.

Speaker 5 And what that means is you've got this wide open field of folks all fighting against Maureen for that third and final seat.

Speaker 8 Who's our contenders? Well, right.

Speaker 5 So we're going to focus in on two of them.

Speaker 5 Can I just get you to introduce yourself to me? Of course.

Speaker 17 Yeah, so I'm Mary Fitzpatrick.

Speaker 5 First, we've got Mary Fitzpatrick.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 On the spectrum of American politics, do you know where you fall?

Speaker 17 But you just have two parties.

Speaker 5 She's pretty liberal, been around Irish politics for a while.

Speaker 18 Are you interviewing me already? Okay.

Speaker 1 We're on.

Speaker 15 And second, Gary Gannon, who's a young community worker.

Speaker 5 This brash guy with red stubble on his face.

Speaker 15 Quite interesting, quite authentic. And he's sort of an interesting one to watch.

Speaker 5 Because he's representing this brand new political party.

Speaker 18 A plucky upstart. I think that's what they call it in the West Wing.

Speaker 1 I remember that, yeah.

Speaker 5 And did you have a slogan or anything?

Speaker 1 Like...

Speaker 18 Yes, no, it had an amazing slogan. It was very simple.
And it was just the one word.

Speaker 5 If.

Speaker 18 I stole it completely from an old fable about when the Macedonian army was marching on Sparta.

Speaker 18 And they sent Sparta a message saying that if we win, we will burn Sparta to the ground. We will enslave your women and kill your children.
And Sparta sent back one word message just saying,

Speaker 1 if.

Speaker 18 If.

Speaker 1 Like I said, brash.

Speaker 15 And then you've got other voices who are left-wing or environmentalist or others.

Speaker 5 So that's our field. All right.

Speaker 1 And now here's how things actually work over in Ireland.

Speaker 19 Voting is underway in the Republic of Ireland as the country elects 157 new members of its parliament.

Speaker 5 So day of the election comes,

Speaker 5 as an Irish citizen, you walk into the voting booth and it's a very, very long ballot because it has all of the candidates, all 15 of them, their photo, their name, and then a line next to them. Okay.

Speaker 5 And this ballot is a key component of that updated Irish laptop of democracy.

Speaker 15 Because instead of just filling in the circle next to one of those 15, you say, my number one choice is this guy, my number two choice is this lady, my number three choice is this person, and you can go all the way down the ballot giving preferences to as many different people as you like.

Speaker 5 You write in a number next to each candidate.

Speaker 8 How about one man, one vote?

Speaker 5 Got it. Well, it's still one man, one vote.

Speaker 1 No, it can't be.

Speaker 5 No, it is. It is.
It is. It is.
At the end of the day, your vote will only have counted for one person. However, in the voting process...

Speaker 15 You're not just measuring what everyone's first choice is. Like, you might have a favorite choice, but you're not totally equal about the other three choices.

Speaker 15 And what this system allows us to do is to reflect that.

Speaker 5 It allows you to say how you feel about the rest of the candidates.

Speaker 5 And if your first choice doesn't make it, if he or she is way down the list and out of the running, then your vote lives on in the form of your second choice.

Speaker 15 So for as long as there's a viable candidate with your number on it, your vote will stay alive in the system.

Speaker 8 Is this too early for me to raise a warning flag or shine?

Speaker 5 You can wave. I may ignore it, but let's see it or hear it.

Speaker 8 The commitment that people make to voting is slight. Most of us are into lunch, sports, work.
And then maybe on the day of a vote, they have their best friend, so you got to vote for Sally.

Speaker 1 Like they know one, they're not even going to know seven. Yeah.

Speaker 8 So the first smell of this is it would take us more time than we want, and we might walk away from this exercise because we don't feel prepared.

Speaker 5 You can engage with this on whatever level you'd like, Robert. If you only know one candidate's name, you can just put your one next to that person and hand in your ballot, and you're done.

Speaker 5 Or let's say there's a candidate on there you really, really don't like.

Speaker 15 You can leave them off the ballot entirely.

Speaker 5 You're ranking your preferences.

Speaker 8 It's very simple. Fairly good answer.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 So let me walk you through how this plays out.

Speaker 5 So polls close at 10 p.m. on Friday, February 26th.
And then...

Speaker 18 Dan all hell broke

Speaker 20 General election 2016 on RTE Radio 1 with Rachel English and Sean Army the real action begins it's going to be a day of drama shocks and surprises so so what happens is we vote on the Friday and on Saturday morning the votes actually get counted so for Dublin Central Dublin Central gets counted in one central location which is the RDS let's go first to Ireland's largest count centre, the RDS.

Speaker 15 The Royal Dublin Society.

Speaker 21 Sean, thank you very much. Welcome indeed to the RDS where we're standing.

Speaker 5 Barn-like building with big vaulted ceilings. Big big hall.

Speaker 15 Huge amount of noise.

Speaker 1 Firstly, welcome to the constant you're here at the show.

Speaker 18 Okay, well I didn't realise we were going to go through the post-traumatic drama of the whole thing. I've kind of blacked it out.
No, I'm joking. Actually, it was lovely.

Speaker 12 The doors open at nine o'clock and I arrived.

Speaker 12 There's the throng arriving. This is Mel.
Mel Mokyuboon.

Speaker 5 He's a campaign worker for our endangered incumbent Maureen.

Speaker 12 Maureen O'Sullivan.

Speaker 5 And on the morning of the count, as he pushed his way through these heavy wooden doors, what he would have seen was this cavernous hall filled with people milling about.

Speaker 18 Everybody's got clipboards.

Speaker 12 There's people with tons of sandwiches made.

Speaker 18 Tea and coffee in abundance, and everybody's really excited.

Speaker 5 And so, shortly after nine o'clock, all the boxes come in. These giant metal boxes of ballots.

Speaker 15 So the boxes are opened.

Speaker 12 Literally, they're lifted up, and there is

Speaker 12 a cascade and a spilling of all this paper.

Speaker 15 Because it's all done by paper voting.

Speaker 1 Wait, what?

Speaker 15 Yeah. We tried electronic voting in this country and we didn't like it because it was very fast.

Speaker 15 And I think we realized that the drama of an election and also the ritual of democracy gets everybody engaged and gets people watching. It's like watching a big sports game.

Speaker 15 You don't want it to be over in five minutes.

Speaker 1 There are.

Speaker 1 And so.

Speaker 20 time now for our live update. I have to warn, as we always do at this time on this day, we're talking tallies first of all, which obviously can skew the results.

Speaker 5 Not just at the RDS and not just for Dublin Central, but all across the country.

Speaker 15 Vote counters are dumping boxes of votes and going through them and putting them into stacks.

Speaker 20 First, in Kilkenny is Justin McCarthy.

Speaker 12 Rough bundles, in no particular order.

Speaker 22 75% of the boxes have been tallied here, and they include so early on here.

Speaker 5 The counters are just trying to get a handle on how many first choice votes each candidate is getting.

Speaker 20 From Kavan Audrey Carville.

Speaker 22 100% of the boxes are open and affected.

Speaker 5 And while the ballot counters are doing this official count, there's another group of people standing next to them

Speaker 5 doing their own unofficial calculations.

Speaker 18 Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1 The tallymen.

Speaker 21 88% of boxes opened and tallied.

Speaker 20 Cork North Central.

Speaker 22 All boxes opened, all sheets tallied.

Speaker 5 These tallymen, there are several of them put forward by each candidate, and they're just looking over the railings, waiting for you to turn that ballot. Brash upstart Gary Gannon again.

Speaker 18 So they can shout out the name of the person that got the number one preference.

Speaker 18 You're like Gannon number one.

Speaker 1 Gannon, Burke, Gallado. And they're just counting them up.
And what they're counting is number one.

Speaker 5 Yes, they're shouting out and tallying the first choice labeled on each ballot.

Speaker 18 So you have an understanding whether you're at the races or not.

Speaker 5 Which it seemed like Gary was.

Speaker 22 We have a 98% tally and there is a growing belief here that the third seat will be between Gary Gannon and he was getting a lot of first preferences.

Speaker 18 So I walked in, I got pulled over by one of our national newspapers to do an interview.

Speaker 21 Let's bring Gary Gannon in. How are you, Gary? It's too early to be saying you're over the line, but you're going well in Dublin.

Speaker 22 Oh, God, it's far too early.

Speaker 18 I think it's good. All the radio researchers are coming over, grabbing me, bringing me over to speak on the radio.

Speaker 21 There's a bunch of you I've done 9% as well, so we could be in for another dogfight there.

Speaker 22 Absolutely. Yeah, I've cancelled my weekend plans.

Speaker 1 I think I'll be here for a while.

Speaker 18 It was genuine, like a real nice sense of excitement, but not for everyone.

Speaker 16 So that morning, I was at home doing different things.

Speaker 5 Again, this is incumbent Maurino Sullivan. What did you do? Did you make breakfast?

Speaker 1 Did you go for a walk? I did.

Speaker 16 I had my breakfast. I probably walked the dog.

Speaker 16 What type of dog? A white, fluffy dog.

Speaker 1 What's his name?

Speaker 16 His name is Bailey. So I brought him for a walk.

Speaker 5 Are you listening to the radio?

Speaker 5 You're totally disconnected.

Speaker 8 Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 16 I let my campaigners go over to be part of the tally.

Speaker 5 Campaigners.

Speaker 12 It's starting to kind of include Mel. So

Speaker 12 within the first hour from some of the tallies that we were seeing,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 12 like Maury isn't picking up enough votes. I would say, oh, I hope this is not going to be an early day where there's no need for you to hang around because nobody's in the race any longer.

Speaker 16 And then I think I was driving when I got the first call from

Speaker 16 my campaigners over in the count saying it's not looking good.

Speaker 21 Rachel, thank you very much. A first count imminent, we believe, here in Dublin Central.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile,

Speaker 5 the counters take all those ballots now officially sorted by first preference and they pick up the stack for each candidate on the table and walk that stack back to this wooden shelving unit again Mary Fitzpatrick behind the tables at a little bit of a distance in the in the center this giant sort of cubby pigeonholes just like light flimsy wooden boxes and this is the sacred shrine of irish democracy on this day

Speaker 24 the cubby absolutely because

Speaker 15 because when they've counted all of the first preference votes they placed them all in their respective cubbies there's a hush in that part of of the arena and the returning officer stands up on a stage with a microphone and goes,

Speaker 22 following is the result of count one.

Speaker 15 Here is the first count for the constituency of Dublin Central.

Speaker 9 68, 6, 6.

Speaker 15 And they read out every candidate, how many number one votes did they get? 2021, 2-0.

Speaker 15 And first off the bat...

Speaker 5 At the end of the first count, first and second are pretty much locked down with the two people everybody expected to win.

Speaker 5 But then in third place, unexpectedly, is Mary Fitzpatrick.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I mean, I was very pleased to be in third position on the first first count.

Speaker 5 Now, with our system of voting, at this point,

Speaker 1 you're done.

Speaker 5 The election's over. The two front-runner candidates would have each won a seat, and then Mary Fitzpatrick would have won a seat.
Gary and Maureen, they'd be out.

Speaker 1 Done.

Speaker 15 But in Ireland, not so.

Speaker 5 In Ireland, they're just getting started. So, back to the race.
And remember, at this moment, Mary Fitzpatrick is in third, Gary is in fifth, and in seventh.

Speaker 16 At that stage, I was listening to the radio, and i knew what they were saying about dublin central is incumbent maureen o'sullivan and what were they saying that um

Speaker 16 it appears almost certain that joe costolo and maureen o' sullivan are set to lose out myself and joe costolo you're out i had some why what did you like because of the numbers i think the feeling was i was too far down that first preference to come back up but i've been looking at the early results coming in from around the country but like i said it's not over yet so the way the vote progresses is the sheriff or the presiding officer starts to eliminate candidates.

Speaker 15 The first elimination is the bottom three candidates. Those candidacies are gone and in the bin.

Speaker 5 Since Gary's in fifth and Maureen's in seventh, they're safe for now. But the bottom three candidates, they're gone.
Why three?

Speaker 5 Because they are so far out that mathematically they could never come back. Between the three of them, they've only got like 150 votes.

Speaker 15 So we get rid of all three of them.

Speaker 5 And redistribute those ballots.

Speaker 15 So if you voted for those people.

Speaker 5 They just go, okay, who did you vote for as your second choice?

Speaker 15 And the point is, your vote is still live and is still part of this election.

Speaker 5 And so those 150 votes, those 150 ballots, they begin to do this sort of ballet.

Speaker 17 The ballots are all in these pigeonholes. Everything is visible.

Speaker 5 The vote counters walk back to that shrine, to that cubby.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 And pull the ballot from the cubby hole for those three candidates. Then march these ballots back to the front table.

Speaker 17 And sort them then into bundles of second preference on the ballot.

Speaker 5 So now you've got stacks for every candidate that was listed as a second choice.

Speaker 15 And we distribute them.

Speaker 5 They take them back to the cubby where they are then added to the remaining candidates' first preferences.

Speaker 17 And that becomes the second count.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 Okay, so what they want is everybody who voted to the degree that it is possible should maybe be participating in electing somebody to the legislature. Exactly.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 8 So, excuse me, what time is it now?

Speaker 5 We're probably middle of the afternoon at this point.

Speaker 8 And when do we start?

Speaker 5 We started at nine in the morning. Okay.

Speaker 8 Point taken. People are having

Speaker 1 a good time.

Speaker 5 No, no, no. What do you mean?

Speaker 8 I am now watching this program for five hours.

Speaker 1 That's a long time.

Speaker 5 I will challenge your statement that just because a competition unfolds slowly, that it is without drama or suspense.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 8 I'm sorry that we're making this so hard for you. That's fine.
But you are not making it easy for us.

Speaker 8 Anyway, back to the scene.

Speaker 20 Dublin Central is reduced to three seats.

Speaker 15 So I'm looking at this going, okay, Mary Fitzpatrick.

Speaker 15 2,500 votes. Gary Gannon, currently in fifth, he's only 200 votes behind her.
And my instinct is he's going to be more transfer-friendly.

Speaker 5 He's going to get more second-choice votes than her.

Speaker 15 I think he could overtake her. And I start watching where the transfers are going.
And I start to be proven right.

Speaker 25 Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats did very well on transfers.

Speaker 15 So count two, Gary Gannon is getting 20 votes and Mary Fitzpatrick's only getting two. Count three.

Speaker 5 The whole process repeats. Knock somebody out, do the ballot ballet, redistribute those transfers.

Speaker 15 Gary Gannon picks up 60 votes and Mary Fitzpatrick only picks up seven. So he's gaining on her already.

Speaker 18 They're talking about me. They're asking who is this guy? Where is he coming from? All of these things.
And then I was getting a phone call.

Speaker 5 Mary's stock is falling. Well, Gary's family.

Speaker 15 Mary's stock is staying static.

Speaker 17 You know, we were struggling for transfers.

Speaker 15 That was the issue. She's not going up much and the others are gaining on her.

Speaker 17 So yeah, it's painful. It's not pleasant.

Speaker 15 And bear in mind, you've still got other people picking up votes there.

Speaker 1 We're seeing little pickups for Maureen.

Speaker 15 Maureen picked up 49.

Speaker 12 But not a lot. We're moving ahead slowly.

Speaker 21 Okay, we have a Dublin central count coming in. Count four.

Speaker 5 Again, eliminate the bottom candidate, redistribute those votes. This time around, really not much changes.
Then count five.

Speaker 15 The next person going out has got 800 votes. 31 of them go to Mary Fitzpatrick, but also 190 of them go to Gary Gannon.

Speaker 22 Gary Gannon has surprised a lot of people in his ability to pick up transfers from...

Speaker 15 And Gary Gannon has just jumped into fourth place.

Speaker 22 We've got quite a fight now in our hands. The standings as they are.

Speaker 15 So at the places are Mary Fitzpatrick in third place.

Speaker 5 She's just barely holding on in fourth. Hot on her heels is Gary Gannon.
And then way at the back of the pack, still in seventh, is incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan.

Speaker 15 That's the state of play at count five. Count number six.
Oh, here we go.

Speaker 26 Continuing coverage.

Speaker 1 Micah Gallagher is here.

Speaker 26 Guys, hello, we're back.

Speaker 15 This is where two big things happen.

Speaker 6 Everybody's having their own conversations, obviously. One.

Speaker 23 Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Fein and Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Fein.

Speaker 5 One of the front runners expected to take a seat.

Speaker 15 Gets over the line.

Speaker 15 And also.

Speaker 18 I'm walking around with Hogan people.

Speaker 15 Gary Gannon now jumps into third place.

Speaker 18 It was invigorating.

Speaker 5 Pushing Mary Fitzpatrick out of a winning spot.

Speaker 17 Like that, it was on the transfers that got caught. And that's it.

Speaker 5 She never recaptured it. So the woman who under our system would have won off the bat, she lost out.
That is it.

Speaker 17 You know?

Speaker 5 Still hanging on in second to last, but also disheartened, is our incumbent Maureen O'Sullivan, who's expecting to lose.

Speaker 16 And I suppose maybe seven o'clock, people started to arrive.

Speaker 5 She actually invited her campaign staff and volunteers back to her place for a concession party.

Speaker 16 And I said when people came in, I don't want to know anything about the elections. I'll catch up tomorrow.

Speaker 16 Unknown to me, because I was busy with the tea and the drinks and the food, some of them in the house were still in contact with those over in the RDS.

Speaker 23 To the Dublin central constituency and to our reporter, Damien O'Mara. Damien, you have a development report.

Speaker 5 One of those guys still over in the RDS was Mel.

Speaker 12 I did have a sense looking at the numbers and saying, well, okay,

Speaker 1 but if,

Speaker 1 and,

Speaker 12 then maybe

Speaker 12 there's a chance.

Speaker 12 There's a chance in this.

Speaker 5 Well, was that a crazy thought to have, or a very smart thought to have?

Speaker 1 It was just a thought to have.

Speaker 5 Because despite the fact that all day the media had been saying that Maureen was out,

Speaker 25 outgoing TD Maureen O'Sullivan.

Speaker 22 Maureen O'Sullivan might be eliminated.

Speaker 5 Count seven, something starts to happen.

Speaker 15 Coming around the band, Gary Gannon looks like he's in pole position.

Speaker 18 All of a sudden we weren't reallocating people's second preferences or their third preferences. We'd got to the stage where we were reallocating people's fourth, fifth and sixth preferences.

Speaker 5 Because keep in mind, most people's votes are still sloshing around the system. And at this point, not only has their top choice been knocked out, but their second and third as well.

Speaker 5 So their vote is now being cast for their fourth, fifth, or sixth place choice. And a lot of those, they start going to Maureen.

Speaker 18 She's known people for years, been elected twice previous to that. So even people who weren't voting for her, number one, number two, number three,

Speaker 18 their votes were still carrying past the fours and the fives and just mauled me on those transfers.

Speaker 15 So we go to count eight.

Speaker 9 Beginning to make a bit of ground into the straight.

Speaker 5 Maureen makes this massive jump, vaulting her ahead of two opponents into fourth place. Now, just a couple hundred votes behind Gary.

Speaker 16 Did you have any sense this morning? No, no, no, because I didn't have the television on. And they decided not to tell me.

Speaker 16 Not to raise my hopes.

Speaker 22 On the ninth count at the moment.

Speaker 5 So, the ninth count. The situation is that another candidate is axed.
They redistribute her votes.

Speaker 12 It's coming down. It's coming down to it.

Speaker 5 When they count up those transfers.

Speaker 23 Does that mean then that Gary Gannon is likely to be elected?

Speaker 10 Or what's the situation there, Michael Gallagher?

Speaker 5 Maureen gets some 300 more transfers than Gary. Meaning suddenly.

Speaker 1 Gary Gannon is precisely eight votes ahead of Maureen O'Sullivan.

Speaker 15 Oh my god, I did not see that coming.

Speaker 5 She's within eight votes of him.

Speaker 16 Around quarter to ten.

Speaker 5 But Maureen, meanwhile, is still convinced she's going to lose. She's actually heading down to the count centre to concede the race.

Speaker 16 I said to myself, I should go over and concede. So I came out into the car.
And as I'm driving over to concede, I was just at the traffic lights. I can picture it.

Speaker 16 And at that stage, the phone call comes.

Speaker 5 She looks at her phone and it's one of her campaign staff calling.

Speaker 16 I thought, why are they ringing me? Is it to hurry me up to get over or whatever?

Speaker 5 But in fact, they were calling because. In Dublin Central.

Speaker 23 But Brian Darling, you've been...

Speaker 23 Just as I mentioned your name, Brian, we're going to Dublin Central.

Speaker 22 And they are Maureen O'Sullivan.

Speaker 5 In her car, Maureen did eventually pick up.

Speaker 16 And then it was, where are you? You're about to be elected.

Speaker 16 You're going to be elected.

Speaker 5 She put down the phone, drove to the count centre, and when she arrived.

Speaker 16 Great applause, great hugs, great kisses. So it was just a lovely explosion of feeling, warm feelings towards me from everybody.

Speaker 21 Maureen O'Sullivan, congratulations.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much.

Speaker 21 You're a very relieved woman.

Speaker 27 I'm a stunned woman. I was at home reconciled to a new life outside of politics and then suddenly I'm back in the frame.
We had thought that we were too far behind to...

Speaker 16 So I just said, look, I know what Lazarus felt like.

Speaker 16 It was that kind of moment.

Speaker 5 So is this a story of

Speaker 5 multi-seat proportional representation by single transferable vote working out exactly as it's meant to? Or is this sort of a perversion of the system?

Speaker 18 No, it absolutely is. It worked.
That day worked out exactly as single transferable votes was meant to do.

Speaker 5 One last time, the gracious Gary Gannon.

Speaker 18 Everybody got their say, and everybody got their vote. And don't get me wrong when I say, like, it did hurt, but I mean, I was 28, 29 then.
Like, there was a huge sense of, like, we'll show you.

Speaker 18 We'll be back. So, single transferable vote on that day worked against me.
But, you know, I think it worked out perfectly.

Speaker 1 Perfectly.

Speaker 8 I mean, let me just see if I get this right. There's this woman, Maureen,

Speaker 8 who hardly anybody loves. She scores almost no votes as the favorite.
She's just everybody's, yeah. You know, a fourth, fifth, sixth, I'll choose Maureen.

Speaker 8 And yet, because the votes keep getting shuffled and shoveled and shuffled, it's Miss Meh.

Speaker 1 who becomes the winner.

Speaker 8 Like she's she's chosen because a lot of people don't hate her.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, so

Speaker 1 here's what it makes me think of, right?

Speaker 1 And I had this moment where I was just imagining if we had been using this at various crucial moments in our very recent history, things could have gone an entirely different way.

Speaker 1 Take the American presidential election of 2016. Okay.
Between Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, but also Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

Speaker 8 Yeah, but nobody voted for them.

Speaker 1 Well, no, but hardly anybody, that number of hardly anybody is,

Speaker 1 that's a sizable enough number that they could have swung the election one way or the other. If you look at really key states, the deciding states,

Speaker 1 if you presume Gary Johnson's votes were split, and if you presume all of Jill Stein's votes went to Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton would have won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the whole kit and caboodle.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's interesting. Now, the weird thing is, you can just keep playing this game and it'll drive you crazy, but you can keep playing it.

Speaker 1 So, if you go back to the 2016 Republican primaries where Donald Trump emerged victorious, right?

Speaker 8 Over 10 people or something like that.

Speaker 1 Over 10 people, right? But there was a sizable number of people in those primaries who were never Trumpers.

Speaker 1 If those people

Speaker 1 had been able to block their votes together, they might have been able to rally behind a candidate who was not Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 And then rewind even further back to the 2000 election, where the number of votes that Ralph Nader got in Florida were more than the difference between Bush got and Gore got.

Speaker 8 Now, elect a Republican, can you?

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 go back to Ross Perot, right? George H.W. Bush was running against Bill Clinton in 1992.
Oh, that's true.

Speaker 1 Ross Perot, it's very controversial whether he really was a spoiler in that election, but I mean, if you ask the Bush people, they say he definitely was.

Speaker 1 And so if the Peroers went to Bush, then like Bill Clinton would have just been a historical footnote. He wouldn't have been the president.

Speaker 1 Like, it's like a huge, huge seismic difference in world history.

Speaker 1 So when we come back, we're not going to be looking at my own imaginative math.

Speaker 1 We're going to look at what does ranked choice actually look like if it was in the United States, because it is in the United States. It's about to happen.

Speaker 8 Yeah. When we come back.

Speaker 1 Radio Lab is supported by Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 1 Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way.
He'd also tell you that Radio Lab is his favorite podcast, too. Aw, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 1 What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com/slash bank, capital One N-A, member, F-D-I-C.

Speaker 3 Radio Lab is supported by ATT.

Speaker 3 There's nothing better than that feeling like someone has your back and that things are going to get done without you even having to ask, like your friend offering to help you move without even having to offer drinks and pizza first.

Speaker 3 It's a beautiful thing when someone is two steps ahead of you, quietly making your life easier. Staying connected matters.

Speaker 3 That's why in the rare event of a network outage, ATT will proactively credit you for a full day of service. That's the ATT guarantee.

Speaker 3 Credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more or for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 10 or more towers.

Speaker 3 Must be connected to impacted tower at onset of outage. Restrictions and exclusions apply.
See ATT.com/slash guarantee for full details. ATT, connecting changes everything.

Speaker 2 WNYC Studios is supported by Apple TV.

Speaker 4 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 4 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 4 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive. Hosted by me, Becky Milligan.
Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 4 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 13 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robin Ince and I've sat next to Brian Cox who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.
Primarily eels. And what else?

Speaker 14 It was fascinating though.

Speaker 13 The eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 14 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels?

Speaker 13 Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso C?

Speaker 14 Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Welcome back. I'm Robert Krulwich.
I'm Latif Nasser, and this is Radiolab.

Speaker 8 And we're trying to fix democracy.

Speaker 8 In little bits and pieces.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so let me just back up for a second we have been talking about this and thinking about this around the office for for a little while.

Speaker 1 And at some point as we were as we were kind of meditating on this dwindling faith in democracy, one of our fellow producers at our sister show, More Perfect,

Speaker 1 Sara Kari, she just took me and Simon

Speaker 1 and just dragged us into a studio.

Speaker 28 Okay, so

Speaker 28 we've been having this conversation about

Speaker 28 whether our democracy is broken for like a few months now. And like every meeting that we've had, I've been the one in the room being like, guys, our democracy is fine.

Speaker 28 Like, have you seen other places? This is crazy. Like, who are these people that think like

Speaker 28 our democracy is broken? Like, they don't know what they're talking about.

Speaker 1 And do you know why? Like, where, where, where's that feeling coming from?

Speaker 1 Well, uh, okay, can you tell me your name? Uh, Uzma.

Speaker 28 And who are you?

Speaker 1 Probably because of this woman. Oh, I'm Uzma.

Speaker 1 I'm Uzma.

Speaker 1 Who are you in relation to me? Oh, I'm your mom.

Speaker 28 My mom, both of my parents actually grew up in Pakistan.

Speaker 29 That is the beginning 25 years of my life where I spent, and I feel.

Speaker 28 Which is a pretty young country, and it's just struggled so much to keep its democracy alive and healthy.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 29 I saw

Speaker 29 the consequences of not getting the full democracy there in Pakistan.

Speaker 29 So that then after living 25 years of next 25 years of my life in America, I really found out the value of democracy as an individual and as a group also. So I can differentiate now very well.
between

Speaker 29 those two.

Speaker 28 So that's kind of how I've always understood our democracy.

Speaker 28 But then, Simon, I listened to your Ireland story with all of this ranked choice voting stuff, and that's the first moment when I was like,

Speaker 28 oh, like maybe

Speaker 28 our way of doing things is broken. Like, maybe we do need an update.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 And why?

Speaker 5 What about it?

Speaker 5 Made you switch teams?

Speaker 28 Because

Speaker 28 it made made me suddenly aware of the fact that in our system, candidates don't actually need a majority of the votes to win.

Speaker 28 So you have candidates who then make that calculation where they say, I only really have to win the votes of people who are in my base.

Speaker 28 And if that's if those if my base is bigger than everybody else's base, then like screw everyone else. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It it seems like in a democracy, most people should vote for the person who wins, not just that the person who wins is going to have the biggest base, like a bigger base than everybody else.

Speaker 1 Like it should be that most people are in some way, in some preference, supporting the person who comes to power. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 28 And it's funny, like when I heard about ranked choice voting, I was like, oh, like this system is so cool because it, it's, I feel like it addresses that exact problem.

Speaker 28 And so I totally got sucked into it and I started looking around and it turns out there are a bunch of people who think that this could be used here in the US.

Speaker 28 And not only that, it already is. And when I asked around,

Speaker 28 a number of people pointed to this moment in 2000 with the election when Bush loses the popular election, but he wins. because he wins in Florida.

Speaker 28 And so people look at the results in Florida and see that a bunch of votes that might have gone to Al Gore, they go instead to Ralph Nader, who then becomes, you know, sort of notorious as this spoiler that maybe ruined the election for Al Gore.

Speaker 28 And after 2000, at that point, you do see some cities that start to adopt ranked choice voting at the local level. And so what I did is...

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm putting my phone on airplane mode.

Speaker 28 I grabbed Letif and we kind of did this like cross-country ranked choice voting tour.

Speaker 28 And the first place we're going to start with.

Speaker 1 Hello, San Francisco. Yes, San Francisco is here.

Speaker 28 Is San Francisco? Is this Dominic?

Speaker 17 Yes, this is.

Speaker 28 Oh, hey, Dominic, what's up?

Speaker 1 Hi, what's up?

Speaker 28 So, this is Dominic for Casa.

Speaker 30 Check, check, check, yeah.

Speaker 28 He used to do radio.

Speaker 1 You got the pipes for it, Dominic.

Speaker 30 Hey, let me know if you need any ad spots so we can get right to it, you know?

Speaker 1 Okay, cool.

Speaker 28 But he, uh, now he's a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Speaker 1 I'm a city hall reporter for the Chronicle.

Speaker 30 Yeah, so the very first ranked choice election in San Francisco happened in 2004.

Speaker 30 Uh, but it was actually a ranked choice voting became, uh, I guess, the city's method or the city's system, if you will, uh, back in 2002, where there was a ballot initiative that was passed by voters

Speaker 30 that said, like, look, this is going to be the system that we're going to implement going forward. So, the vast majority of local elected offices are chosen with ranked choice contests.

Speaker 1 So city council, the board of supervisors, the school board, our like assessor recorder.

Speaker 28 And in one very specific election.

Speaker 30 The case in the mayor's race.

Speaker 28 The case in the mayor's race.

Speaker 30 Okay, great. I can't believe this was just a few months ago.

Speaker 30 It seems like a long time ago at this point.

Speaker 28 Okay, so early 2018, the San Francisco mayor's race kicked off.

Speaker 30 And when it really kicked into gear, there were three leading candidates.

Speaker 30 You had

Speaker 30 London Breed.

Speaker 30 And

Speaker 1 you had

Speaker 30 former San Francisco supervisor Mark Leno.

Speaker 1 And you had

Speaker 30 a current supervisor, Jane Kim. And these aren't, these are all Democrats.

Speaker 1 The field of candidates is set now.

Speaker 1 KPIX5, Joe Vasquez is set up.

Speaker 28 Okay, so out of the gate.

Speaker 31 New frontrunner in the San Francisco mayor's race and it's London Breed.

Speaker 1 This campaign is a winning campaign.

Speaker 28 She was the more moderate, more established candidate.

Speaker 30 She's getting one heck of a bounce in the polls. And she had a fairly strong lead and a lot of wind in her sales.

Speaker 31 A two to one leap over her two closest rivals, Mark Gleno and Jane Kim.

Speaker 28 And as the campaign made its way to election day, things were going pretty well.

Speaker 1 We are winners!

Speaker 28 It was almost like, sure, there are three names on the ballot.

Speaker 30 But at the end of the day, it was more like London Breed, London Breed, and London Breed.

Speaker 33 The favorite in the recent polls heading into Tuesday's election.

Speaker 28 But then,

Speaker 28 right before the election,

Speaker 28 something happened that you basically never see in American politics.

Speaker 34 We are proud to stand together to say that we are united in our belief that we need fundamental change here in the city and county of San Francisco.

Speaker 28 In the very last few weeks before Election Day, the two underdogs, Jane Kim and Mark Leno, they held a press conference on the steps of City Hall.

Speaker 24 Mark and I are opponents, as everyone knows.

Speaker 24 They stood outside City Hall, literally joined hands and said, And I'm proud to be the first set of candidates to truly take advantage of the ranked choice voting system and encourage our supporters to vote for both of us.

Speaker 1 Wait a second.

Speaker 8 So what you say is vote for me, definitely vote for me, but also vote for this guy who I'm running against.

Speaker 30 Yeah, exactly. Vote for me first, but vote for Jane second, or vote for me first and vote for Mark second.

Speaker 28 So like if one of us were to come in last, like let's say Mark comes in last, if all the people who voted for him ranked Jane as their second choice, then all of those votes would go to her and vice versa.

Speaker 28 That way, they actually have a better chance of beating the frontrunner.

Speaker 1 London Reed.

Speaker 30 And that made a lot of sense. They were both quote unquote more progressive candidates and you know saw each other,

Speaker 30 at least the rhetoric goes, as the person that they'd like to see as mayor, if not themselves.

Speaker 1 Was that a surprise move to you as you were covering it? Did you see that coming?

Speaker 30 I didn't see it coming. No, I think that was a surprise to a lot of people.

Speaker 10 I almost had to do a double take when I saw these new campaign posters supporting both Jane Kim and Mark Leno for mayor.

Speaker 30 After that press conference, Mark Leno and Jane Kim started appearing in campaign ads together.

Speaker 3 I'm Jane Kim.

Speaker 7 And I'm Mark Leno.

Speaker 28 Campaigning for one another.

Speaker 3 Mark and I are opponents.

Speaker 9 But Jane and I agree.

Speaker 3 You should pick our next mayor.

Speaker 7 Not the billionaires.

Speaker 28 And so basically the whole campaign is like, if you don't vote for me first, then at least vote for me second.

Speaker 5 Let's stand together.

Speaker 3 Vote for me and Mark Leno.

Speaker 5 Vote for me and Jane Kim.

Speaker 10 KPI X5's Joe Vasquez is with the London Breed campaign where just moments ago, Breed addressed the crowd. Joe?

Speaker 28 So on election night, London Breed has a pretty commanding lead as the polls are coming to a close. And basically she's trying to get up to this marker of 50% of the votes plus one vote.

Speaker 28 That's a majority.

Speaker 28 And if she can get to that, then she wins. There's no rank choice runoff.
There's no vote swapping.

Speaker 28 And as the night goes on.

Speaker 32 She is not yet declaring victory, but this crowd is celebrating.

Speaker 28 She's got like a double-digit lead. Like things are looking pretty good.

Speaker 32 They are celebrating the person they believe could be the next mayor of San Francisco.

Speaker 30 Holy smoke, she's beating Mark Leno by 10 percentage points, and she's beating Jane Kim by more than that. So we're getting to midnight.

Speaker 30 I'm completely bleary-eyed, staring at my laptop, refreshing the Department of Elections website every few seconds. When 12:30 at night,

Speaker 28 it happens.

Speaker 33 In the early returns, returns, London Breed had a sizable lead, but she didn't reach 50%.

Speaker 28 She came in just shy of 50%.

Speaker 33 So the ranked choice voting system kicked in.

Speaker 30 And all of a sudden, this entire race has changed.

Speaker 28 Okay, so the rankings had been London Breed number one, Mark Leno number two.

Speaker 35 Jane Kim, who was in third place, was now eliminated in that ranked choice system.

Speaker 31 But when Kim got eliminated, a huge chunk of her voters, about three out of four, went to Leno because Leno was their second choice.

Speaker 33 And now, by a raised or thin margin, Mark Leno is leading the race.

Speaker 28 The Kim Leno strategy had come to fruition.

Speaker 1 He's up.84%,

Speaker 30 the slimmest of leads.

Speaker 31 The mayor's race is still too close to call.

Speaker 28 The race would actually drag on for days.

Speaker 31 As more ballots got counted, tens of thousands of outstanding ballots.

Speaker 30 We didn't have a mayor chosen until, I think, eight days later.

Speaker 28 When

Speaker 28 in a gymnasium packed with screaming supporters, outwalked the new mayor of San Francisco,

Speaker 1 London Breed.

Speaker 9 Yes, I'm your mayor.

Speaker 28 Mark Leno came up just short.

Speaker 30 He came within 1.1% or a little over 2,500 votes.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 30 So, I mean, okay, it didn't work in that he didn't win, but you can't say that it was completely ineffective.

Speaker 28 And so, so, ultimately, what did people think of this whole like Mark Leno, Jane Kim coming together?

Speaker 30 People saw the dual endorsement strategy as gaming the system, as saying, look, they are doing this in order to keep London Breed from winning.

Speaker 1 And that was your paper, right?

Speaker 28 That was the editorial.

Speaker 30 Yeah, our editorial board

Speaker 30 said as much.

Speaker 30 And I think that's not just the Ed Board. I mean, people do feel that way, that it was this strategy, especially London Breed supporters who

Speaker 30 saw a teaming up, a piling on.

Speaker 30 And in this, this, I mean, just to kind of just very quickly just zoom out all the way, I think people just find that weird in a country in which politics ends up being a zero-sum game oftentimes, in which you are, you know, relentlessly attacking your opponent, beating them down.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 30 But at the same time, that's very much,

Speaker 30 you know, there might be some people at my own newspaper that disagree with me, but I think that's very much in the spirit of what ranked choice voting invites, coalition building.

Speaker 28 Now, Dominic wanted to be clear that in the case of the mayor's race, this coming together of opponents.

Speaker 30 I don't want to make it sound like it was just some kind of kumbaya thing, you know, because that wasn't the case.

Speaker 28 But at the very next stop on our tour,

Speaker 28 we actually found that case.

Speaker 28 The kumbaya case.

Speaker 1 Hey, Curtis, are you there? Yeah, I am.

Speaker 28 Which also on the line, we have Lutthev.

Speaker 1 Hi, how you doing? Hey, what's up?

Speaker 28 We heard about from this guy.

Speaker 36 Curtis Gilbert, and I'm a reporter at American Public Media, but I used to be a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio.

Speaker 28 So Curtis told us in Minneapolis, they actually started using ranked choice voting in 2009.

Speaker 36 But it's gotten much more interesting since then. So in

Speaker 36 2013 was the first time Minneapolis actually had like a competitive mayor's race under ranked choice voting.

Speaker 6 There's a record-breaking number of candidates vying to succeed Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback, who's stepping down at the end of this year.

Speaker 36 35 candidates signed up to run to replace him.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Oh.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Curtis Gilbert covers Minneapolis politics. He joins me in studio.
Boy, you're going to be busy.

Speaker 36 Yeah, you betcha. I mean, there were so many, I mean, 35 candidates is a lot.

Speaker 28 Unlike the race in San Francisco, the mayoral race in Minneapolis.

Speaker 9 People say, aren't you the Republican?

Speaker 28 Did have more diverse candidates.

Speaker 9 And I say, sure, I've done some work in the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 And I also stand fiercely for marriage equality, always have.

Speaker 28 There was a Republican, an Independent, a bunch of Democrats.

Speaker 36 It was a wide, open, free-for-all race. And it was really, it was really interesting that despite all that, they were

Speaker 36 very,

Speaker 36 very civil.

Speaker 37 Thank you very much. It's nice to see you're not utterly infallible.
I always thought you were

Speaker 36 very, very

Speaker 36 gentle to each other.

Speaker 25 We won't be rude with each other because it doesn't benefit us to be rude with each other.

Speaker 36 And this is one thing that, you know, the advocates of ranked choice voting sort of look at as a positive. You know, voters don't, voters are turned off by negative campaigning.

Speaker 36 And there's a theory that goes that if you're hoping to get like second and third choice votes, you'll be much nicer to your opponent. So you don't alienate their supporters.

Speaker 36 So maybe you get a second or third choice vote. And it did seem like there was an element of that playing out

Speaker 36 in the race.

Speaker 38 I will talk more about the issues because I think I've run out of time.

Speaker 25 Thank you.

Speaker 28 So at worst, there was like some light ribbing.

Speaker 38 They said we could finish our sentences if we run out of time, but I think that was a run-on sentence.

Speaker 28 There were polite stage logistics.

Speaker 25 Getting out of that chair is a little challenging, so we may want to pass the microphone around.

Speaker 28 And thank you.

Speaker 28 Thank you, Jackie. Plenty of thank yous.

Speaker 36 I mean, the most remarkable one of all was the final debate.

Speaker 1 Don Samson.

Speaker 36 I was there, and it was in a church. I think it was in downtown Minneapolis.
I can't remember what the church was.

Speaker 36 And at the end of the debate, the candidates, and I think there were eight of them, all kind of put their arms around each other. And one of them suggested that they all sing

Speaker 1 in my high school.

Speaker 1 Kumbaya.

Speaker 36 Kumbaya.

Speaker 1 Baya, my lord.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 After the debate?

Speaker 36 After the debate.

Speaker 1 Oh Lord.

Speaker 1 That's going on in Korea.

Speaker 1 So it's like, I mean, it's almost like a cartoon, right? Like the Kumbaya, it's really funny, right? But it's also, it's, it's also, I think for a lot of people right now, that feels like a relief.

Speaker 1 It feels like a relief to hear politicians not biting each other's heads off. And that's, that's something that comes from ranked choice voting.

Speaker 1 You find consensus, you find coalition, you find commonalities instead of differences.

Speaker 1 But that also flattens everyone out. if if everyone ends up running to the middle and then you just have kind of a a bland consensus where no one's saying bold things and everybody is just kind of

Speaker 8 middle so in a way when you make this choice you're choosing for

Speaker 8 do this carefully right do this carefully now i wondered about that because i was thinking maybe don't do this carefully maybe have a country that can be dynamic although right now i'm not so sure so

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 But that is in deep, in a deep way, that's what's being asked here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, what do we, what do we actually want? Like, do we want a system where, you know, you are lined up behind your alpha dog who's going to, who's going to argue for all of the things you want and

Speaker 1 maybe you're going to get them, but maybe you're also going to lose them all? Or, or do you want to, you know, be in a system where, you know, you're, we're all kind of

Speaker 1 sort sort of begrudgingly bought into uh our second place person who we can kind of get behind but like it definitely wasn't our you know it's not our ideal and i think that's a question that's like a soul searching kind of a question like what do you want and what do we want this country to be right and for that reason i i like i don't know how i feel about it so nothing's going to be perfect i i think what's really interesting is what seems sort of mechanical and um

Speaker 8 technical it does affect the tone of your country and of history. So the world we've got is the function of how we vote now.
Change the system of how we vote, you might get a very different world.

Speaker 8 How different, what different, where different, which kind of different, scary different, good different? You don't know.

Speaker 28 Well, we might actually know soon because I actually have one more stop on our cross-country ranked choice voting tour.

Speaker 1 Grand state of Maine.

Speaker 28 The great state of Maine.

Speaker 1 Proudly we sing.

Speaker 28 Super politically diverse, fiercely independent, like a lot of independent voters. Maine, Maine, Maine.

Speaker 28 And in fact, in 2016, there was this coalition of independents and Democrats that managed to get this ballot initiative that would change all statewide elections to ranked choice voting.

Speaker 1 Statewide?

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 11 And ranked choice voting was adopted in 2016.

Speaker 28 According to Maine public radio reporter Steve Missler, it passed.

Speaker 11 It passed, however, with a major flaw.

Speaker 1 It's a scam.

Speaker 9 It undermines the integrity of our election process.

Speaker 25 It was put forward by a group of people.

Speaker 11 The state senate, which was under Republican control at the time, picked up on this constitutional conflict within a conflict within the state constitution.

Speaker 9 The reality is we're not happy with it. Blatantly opposed to it.

Speaker 25 Very unconstitutional.

Speaker 28 The Maine Constitution literally says you have to use a plurality vote.

Speaker 11 The word plurality is actually written in the Constitution.

Speaker 28 As opposed to a majority.

Speaker 11 Correct. And ultimately, the Maine legislature passed a law that delayed implementing ranked choice voting.

Speaker 5 This is one more example of where

Speaker 9 politicians are standing against the will of the people.

Speaker 28 And it set off this whole fight where people rallied against the state legislature and held another vote.

Speaker 1 In June.

Speaker 28 Literally this past June.

Speaker 5 People gathered at the state house this morning to get around the delay.

Speaker 11 That passed by almost the exact same margin, if not slightly more, than when it passed originally in 2016.

Speaker 28 At some point, the Maine Supreme Court gets involved. And really, the details of this are all kind of a mess.
But what it boils down to is this.

Speaker 28 In the upcoming elections, like the midterms that are happening now, Maine will use ranked choice voting for its congressional races.

Speaker 11 We have three of them this year. We have a first congressional district race.
It'll be used in that contest.

Speaker 28 And also in Maine's second congressional district.

Speaker 11 Which is a swing seat, one of, you know, a dozen or so nationally.

Speaker 28 AKA, one of the districts that everybody's going to be watching in the midterms. And on top of that, they're going to use ranked choice voting for the Senate.

Speaker 11 The U.S. Senate campaign, it'll be used in that contest.

Speaker 1 Do you know, is this the first time it's going to be used

Speaker 1 for a position in the federal government?

Speaker 28 Yeah, no other state has ever done it.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 28 But at the same time, because of their state constitution.

Speaker 11 It's not being used in the gubernatorial race.

Speaker 28 So does the ballot just like look insane? Like part of it is like this ranked choice voting thing and part of it is isn't?

Speaker 11 They're just separate. So there's separate ballots for the federal races and then there's a separate one for the statewide one.
So I haven't actually seen how many many ballots that voters are handed.

Speaker 1 So this is really going to happen now, like this week? Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 11 Two main claims of ranked choice voting are being put to the test

Speaker 11 in the very first, in its very first rollout in Maine.

Speaker 6 Voters in Maine will head to the polls later this month.

Speaker 11 Whether it can work for third-party or independent candidates,

Speaker 11 but it's also a test case about whether or not it does what it promises.

Speaker 36 He just told another big big fib right in front of everybody in me. You're lying about my record.

Speaker 11 Which is reduce

Speaker 11 scorched earth campaign.

Speaker 1 I don't know where you're getting, Tiffany Bond.

Speaker 1 This is why we're getting

Speaker 1 done.

Speaker 1 May go low, we kill.

Speaker 1 Mr. DeSantis lied 21 times.

Speaker 32 You voted as much as you liked.

Speaker 1 Of course, it's good.

Speaker 1 Of course, I stayed. Crazy.
The Democrats, they've gone wacko. You know.

Speaker 1 You may not understand how the House and the Senate work.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 28 I guess I just wonder if

Speaker 28 the people of Maine are going to come out of this election

Speaker 28 feeling

Speaker 28 a little bit more like

Speaker 28 democracy is working for them.

Speaker 8 Wouldn't it be interesting if in Maine, somebody who was, you know, everybody's eighth choice gets elected to Congress?

Speaker 1 It could happen.

Speaker 1 I don't know, we'll see.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, of course, since we first aired this in 2018, that election in Maine did happen. And while no, everyone's eighth place choice was not elected.

Speaker 1 In the second congressional race, something interesting did happen. Jared Golden, a Democrat, was losing after the first count to the Republican incumbent Bruce Poliquin.

Speaker 1 but ended up winning after the transfers were allocated. So the person who would have lost in the

Speaker 1 count ended up winning.

Speaker 1 Outside of Maine, ranked choice is now being used in municipal elections all over the country, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, where they elect their mayor, city council, and judges with it, to now New York City, which uses it in mayoral primaries and city council elections.

Speaker 1 But here's the biggest news of all: since 2022, Alaska has been using it to elect its governor, its state legislature, its representatives in the House and the Senate, and will even be using it in the presidential election this year.

Speaker 1 So keep your eyes out. By the time we replay this episode again, if you are not already, it is very possible you two will be ranking your choices.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week with a brand new election episode. Until then.

Speaker 8 This Radio Lab was reported by Luttef Nasser, Simon Adler, Susie Lectenberg, Sarakari, Tracy Hunt. Produced by Simon Adler, Matt Kilty, Sarakari, and Susie Lectenberg.

Speaker 8 Our story on PRS-TV was produced with support from RTE's DriveTime. Huge thank you to them and to AB for making that possible.

Speaker 1 Also, thanks to Rob Ritchie at Fair Vote, Don Sari, Diana Lagerman.

Speaker 1 Thank you to Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden, as well as Carolyn Tolbert, Bobby Agy, and Edward Still. I'm Robert Kolwich.

Speaker 1 And I'm Lettev Nasser. And thanks for listening.
And go vote. What the hell? Right? Yes.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm David, and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrag and is edited by Soren Wheeler.
Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 1 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 1 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Shindu Nyanam Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Rebecca Lacks, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 1 Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 39 Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio.

Speaker 39 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 39 Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Speaker 1 Radio Lab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 1 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans? And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 1 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 1 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide. Learn more at nationalforests.org/slash radiolive.