Those who have hung around "voting reform" advocates for any period of time will have surely heard nearly every group brag that the particular procedure they are pushing has the most wondrous merit of reducing (maybe even eliminating!) wasted votes. This is claimed to be a big deal because the wasting of votes exhibited by the most common voting method around the world, First-Past-The-Post (or "FPTP," the procedure where a bunch of people or things run against each other, and whichever person or thing gets the most votes wins) is said to be particularly profligate. Lots and lots of votes are claimed to be wasted with FPTP. Maybe all of those cast for losers; even, maybe, a lot of those cast for the winner too if he, she, or it won by a landslide!
One of the great virtues often claimed for non-FPTP voting methods is that each (brilliant) procedure being proposed is said to cut down tremendously on FPTP vote wastage, which, to its eternal disgrace, rivals that of the tonnage of food still thrown away by wealthy nations--even in our era of widespread inexpensive refrigeration.
A problem with this brag is that there are several widely diverging understandings of just what a wasted vote is. The old-fashioned and perhaps still the most common understanding, one that elicited several papers in the scholarly press in the 70s and 80s to the effect that no vote is ever entirely wasted (and the one with which Ralph Nader and other third party supporters have to deal pretty regularly) is this:
(1) A wasted vote is any vote cast for a candidate or question that has no legitimate chance of winning the election in which the vote is cast.
It's easy to see why people have claimed that this definition is vague, and that rather than being clarified, it should just be dropped altogether. First, what's a "legitimate chance"? Furthermore, people vote for lots of reasons besides obtaining a winner, and many will deny that a vote they have made as a protest or to improve a party's future or just to piss off a neighbor has been "wasted." But whether or not (1) is a good definition, it may well still be the most common understanding around. And there's little doubt that the fighting over whether somebody has or hasn't absolutely wrecked everything by wasting their vote (as so understood) is likely to continue.
Perhaps because Definition (1) has caused so much ill-will over the years, a newer and arguably less contentious one has gained prominence. If one looks up "wasted vote" in Wikipedia (as, of course, anyone with a question about anything always does these days), one will find this new, (and maybe improved?) version:
"In electoral systems, a wasted vote is any vote that does not receive representation in the final election outcome."
Of course, one might ask, just which votes in an election do "receive representation"? Always happy to help, the Wiki author(s) of this entry have supplied the following answer:
There are two different types of wasted votes:
- Excess votes are votes that a candidate receives above and beyond what was needed.
- Lost votes are votes that were not enough to make an impact by winning a seat.
Sometimes the term "wasted vote" is used by those referring only to "lost votes," while others use the term to refer to the sum of the lost votes and the excess votes.
Here, it seems, is where the idea comes from that lots (maybe almost all!) votes are wasted in nearly every election, regardless of the sort of procedure being used. I'll put the definition this way:
(2) A wasted vote is any vote that was not needed for the winning candidate or question to have won. If the person who cast such a vote had stayed home, it would have made no difference to to the eventual results.
I must say that, whether or not (2) is less contentious and/or ambiguous than (1), I have no idea what it means. I take it that in a FPTP election, it takes only one vote more than those cast for anybody or anything else to make a winner. So, under this definition, only one vote in any election having a winner will be unwasted. But...which one? Who knows?
It is quite possible that the weirdness of both (1) and (2) has played a significant role in leading to the creation of a third version that can be found around the voting method advocacy water bubblers. FairVote, a large organization pushing Ranked Choice as the way to go defines "wasted votes" as follows:
Wasted votes occur when a candidate's name appears on the ballot after they have dropped out of the race. Early and mail-in voters often fill out ballots a week or more ahead of Election Day, before they know which candidates will be active when their state holds its primary.
While I haven't exactly searched high and low regarding this matter, if I'm honest, I have the sneaking suspicion that FairVote might like this extremely restrictive definition of what a wasted vote is because if you use it, ranked choice looks good. I'm not entirely making this up, incidentally: I get it from this additional remark of theirs:
Early voting isn't the problem; our "choose one" voting method is to blame for wasted votes. Ranked choice voting ensures every vote is counted, and every voice is heard when choosing presidential nominees. It empowers voters....If their favorite candidate has dropped out, their ballots are still valid.
Certainly, if "wasted votes" mean what FairVote says it does, we can presume that any system that allows you to vote for a bunch of candidates (this would include Approval Voting too, btw) is much less likely to produce waste. In any case, here is my rendering of this definition:
(3) A wasted vote is any vote cast for a person who is on a ballot in spite of dropping out of that race prior to Election Day.
This one has the virtue of being clear and understandable, but even if its sole purpose was not to make ranked choice look good compared to its most popular competitor, nobody prior to this FairVote concoction (and nobody else since as far as I know), has ever put forward such a restrictive understanding of what it is to waste a vote. I mean, it's one way for sure but....aren't there many others?
My point in all this is just to suggest that the next time you use the term "wasted vote," maybe think about what you mean by it. Is it one of the three concepts described above? Something else? And the next time you hear anybody else use it, maybe ask them what they mean.
Alternatively, maybe switch to "squander"! Because it's now election season here in the U.S.A., folks, and it may be the last time we get to freely squander anything! Fare thee well, my poor fellow Americans! {As you can see, I've rolled back under my bed now.}
