SIUSLAW NEWS | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2018 | 9A
act as a spoiler for the presi-
dent. He actually ran in a num-
ber of states, with a big showing
in Utah. Some hoped that he
would win that state and deny
Trump the needed 270 Electoral
College votes to win.
But McMullin had loftier
goals. Since he wasn’t on the
ballot in enough states to win
the 270 electoral votes outright,
his eyes were set on winning
enough votes the ensure neither
Trump nor Clinton could reach
270, which would leave the de-
cision up to the House of Repre-
sentatives.
McMullin failed at being a
spoiler. His highest showing was
in Utah with 21.54 percent of
the vote, compared to Trump’s
45.54 percent.
It’s these kinds of shenanigans
that STAR voting hopes to put
an end to.
“You can vote for Nader if you
want,” Roberts said of STAR.
“Why should you feel like you
STAR from page 8A
The study estimated that 60
percent of Nader voters would
have voted for Gore, thus giving
him in the presidency. If those
estimates are true, Nader being
in the race “spoiled” the election
for Gore.
Nader was a true believer in
his cause and was attempting to
win the election outright. How-
ever, some candidates get into
a race with the express goal of
tearing down another candi-
date. It was thought that then
“Never Trump” Republican Mitt
Romney would run as a spoiler
in 2016, but he felt he could not
fundraise in good conscience to
play spoiler.
Some candidates even attempt
to spoil the entire system, or at
least game it beyond recogni-
tion.
Also in 2016, many hoped
that “Never Trump” Republican
David Evan McMullin would
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can’t express that on a ballot?
You should be able to express,
‘This is my favorite candidate,
period.’ Vote honestly. And if
you have a ballot that doesn’t al-
low voters to vote honestly, you
have to ask yourself ‘Why?’ —
and ‘What can we do to fix it?’”
However, political parties and
their candidates aren’t the only
ones who can engage in gaming
the voting system. STAR vot-
ing is not completely immune
to voters taking part in tactical
voting.
FairVote found that there were
indeed examples of tactical vot-
ing within the system. Follow-
ing an example from FairVote,
the Siuslaw News conducted its
own experiment to see if tactical
voting could be used to manip-
ulate an election’s outcome. The
experiment, which utilized soda
brands, parroted FairVotes con-
cerns.
Imagine a contest where peo-
ple are voting for their favorite
cola soda drink. The four choic-
es are Coke, Pepsi, RC and Shas-
ta Cola. The frontrunners are
Coke and Pepsi, with RC com-
ing in a close third and Shasta
pulling up the rear.
Let’s say the majority of peo-
ple would be happy with Coke or
Pepsi and would rate either soda
a four or a five. They could rate
RC a four or a three, and Shasta
a three or a two. After the initial
election, Coke and Pepsi would
head to the runoff, and Shasta
and RC would be dropped from
the running.
However, some Coke vot-
ers don’t just like their soda of
choice, but they really hate Pep-
si. Not so much the taste of Pep-
si, as they find it pretty palatable.
It’s the brand they hate. They
grew up in a Coke town, but the
majority of restaurants in their
new city only serve Pepsi. It’s
against their hometown values
and they want it out of the pic-
ture completely. So, they decide
to sabotage Pepsi.
They want Coke to win, so
they give it a five. Pepsi gets
a zero, of course. But RC and
Shasta? They get a four rating.
Now, they’ve never actually had
RC and they find Shasta only
palatable. But their goal is to
trounce Pepsi out of the runoff.
By overvaluing their like of RC
and Shasta, and undervaluing
their like of Pepsi, they raise the
probability that either RC or
Shasta will make it to the final
runoff along with Coke, leaving
Pepsi in the dust.
“I don’t think there’s any safe-
ty in using that strategy when
you could elect RC Cola, and
you don’t want that to happen,”
Roberts said. “It would be very
unwise for voters to try and ma-
nipulate the system that way. I
can’t imagine a Republican vot-
ing for (2016 Green Party nom-
inee) Jill Stein just because they
don’t want Hillary to win.”
The voters would be taking a
gamble with this. A large block
of voters, upwards of 30 percent,
would have to tactically vote
together to make that strategy
a sure bet. That’s difficult to do
in mass numbers. But in today’s
social media word, is it that dif-
ficult?
In the 2016 election, it was
postulated that Democrats were
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signing up in Republican prima-
ries to vote for Trump, thinking
that Trump would be an easy tar-
get for Clinton. But so far, there
isn’t any evidence that it actually
happened. A Washington Post
analysis of voting data in March
2016 found that the margin of
Trump’s primary victories, com-
pared to the percentage of Dem-
ocratic voters, showed no sign of
mass strategic voting.
But such a thing is not un-
heard of.
Tactical Voting
One of the greatest examples
of tactical voting is in the 2000
election, again with Nader.
In that election, even many
of Nader’s supporters didn’t feel
he had a chance to win. Instead,
their goal was to have Nader get
5 percent of the popular vote,
allowing the Green Party to re-
ceive federal funding in the 2004
election.
But Nader supporters didn’t
want Bush to win.
To fix this problem, Gore
supporters in solid Republican
states that had no chance of hav-
ing their candidate win electoral
votes would swap votes with Na-
der supporters in swing states. A
Nader supporter in swing-state
Michigan would vote for Gore,
with the express promise from a
red-state Gore supporter in Tex-
as would vote for Nader. Gore
would get a vote in a swing state
in a bid to win electoral votes,
and Nader would get a vote in
a red state that would give him
a chance to get the needed five
percent popular vote.
People organized. The inter-
net, which was just coming into
its own, saw trading sites begin
to pop up, putting red-state and
swing-state voters together. Ac-
cording to a 2000 article in Slate,
one website got 90,000 visits in
one day.
But there were problems. In
California, vote trading was
deemed illegal and a popular site
was shut down.
The public wasn’t as tech savvy
as it is today, either. This was be-
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fore Facebook and Twitter, and
people were still learning how
to navigate the world wide web.
Many had to go actively search-
ing for these sites or hope for an
email chain to get involved, far
from the ease of a Facebook post
today that can potentially reach
5,000 people with the click of a
button.
And time wasn’t on their side.
These websites only became
prevalent just one month before
the election.
The Nader Trader experiment
ended in failure, with Nader
only receiving 2.74 percent of
the vote, well below the five per-
cent threshold needed to obtain
federal funding. But with more
planning and a better social me-
dia, it’s possible a larger popu-
lation could have taken up the
cause.
A more recent example of tac-
tical voting took place in the Il-
linois Third Congressional Dis-
trict race, held last March.
In that primary race, the Re-
publicans only had one candi-
date, Arthur Jones. The Brook-
ings Institute, which ran a report
on the race results on April 18,
described Jones as a Holocaust
denier.
The Democrats had two can-
didates, incumbent Dan Lipins-
ki and newcomer Marie New-
man.
It was a hard-fought battle for
the Democrats. While is it gen-
erally difficult to unseat an in-
cumbent, Lipinski was unusual
in his party. He was anti-abor-
tion and had differing views
on healthcare and funding for
Planned Parenthood.
Newman, on the other hand,
supported universal health in-
surance and keeping abortion
legal, and considered herself a
progressive like Bernie Sanders.
Polls had Newman leading the
race in December by five points.
But by March, she was down by
two. She ended up losing the
election by 2,000 votes. The like-
ly reason? People who voted for
Trump, according to Brookings.
One in five Lipinski voters
stated that they had voted for
the president in 2016, compared
to one in 20 for Newman voters.
Brookings postulated that be-
cause many Republican voters
found their candidate so un-
electable, they jumped ship over
to the Democratic primary and
voted for the more conservative
choice, essentially choking out
the progressive candidate for
the general election, leaving a
Republican and a centrist in the
final election.
Brookings does point out that
there could have been other
reasons for the change, includ-
ing the possibility that they just
liked Lipinski. But the numbers
hinted at a substantial popula-
tion taking part in tactical vot-
ing.
It is these types of examples
that proponents of STAR voting
see their system actually help-
ing.
For the Illinois race, getting
rid of primaries, having all three
candidates on the ballot, and
having a more robust system
allowing voters to express their
opinions on a candidate would
eliminate the need for tactical
voting.
Of course, one way to fix the
system would be for each person
to simply vote for who they want
to win and leave out the “poli-
tics” of politics.
While many Democrats were
concerned with their perceived
notion of electability in the
2016 primaries as they decided
between Sanders and Clinton,
Republicans went full steam
ahead and voted for a change
with nominating Trump, who
bucked the norm. They brought
substantial change to the system
without implementing a new
voting system like STAR.
“I think that’s a fair assess-
ment, and it will always be based
on the exact players,” Roberts
said.
Of course, as seen with ex-
amples like Romney’s potential
spoiler bid, not every Repub-
lican was happy with Trump.
Both Clinton and Trump’s ap-
proval ratings were historically
low prior to the election, with
Clinton holding a 52 percent
unfavorable rating compared to
Trump’s 61 percent.
See STAR page 9A