Short PLACE voting explanation

Problem 1: gerrymandering has weaponized wasted votes.

Solution 1: Use a voting method that minimizes wasted votes. That’s the idea behind #PropRep (proportional representation) methods. In particular, transferable vote methods such as STV or PLACE eliminate candidates and transfer votes until each winner has the same number of votes, and there are fewer wasted votes than it would take to have one more winner. (Note: there are plenty of videos explaining the STV vote-transfer process, which is largely the same for PLACE. For instance, this Scottish one.)

Problem 2: PropRep methods that countries use now have flaws such as complex ballots, or lack of individual accountability for politicians (as opposed to parties). In particular, they’d be slow to implement in the US, requiring new machines and newly-drawn larger districts.

Solution 2: Use a PropRep method that doesn’t have these problems such as PLACE voting. (PLACE stands for “Proportional, locally-accountable, candidate endorsement”.) PLACE uses the same districts and voting machines we have today. Here’s the basics of PLACE works and why.

• As a voter, you should be as free as possible to vote for any candidate. But you don’t want the ballot to list all the dozens of candidates statewide. So on the PLACE ballot, you can either choose a candidate running in your district from the list on the ballot, or write in one from somewhere else. If you like a party but not the local candidate for that party, and you don’t want to bother writing in another candidate from somewhere else, you can simply vote for the party without the local candidate. Here’s a sample ballot:

• Winners should have at least some degree of broad-based appeal in their home district. In PLACE, that’s ensured by eliminating any candidate who gets less than 25% locally. (Of course, in the unlikely case that there’s no candidate with 25% in some district, the top one is not eliminated.)
• If your chosen candidate cannot use your full vote — either because they clearly don’t have enough votes to win, or because they have more than enough and so each of those ballot still has some leftover voting strength after the first candidate wins—then you probably want your vote to still have an impact. So PLACE transfers your vote. Where? Well, most voters would probably want their vote to transfer first to the most similar candidates in the same party; then to those candidates in the same party who aren’t especially similar; then to the closest allies from other parties. So in PLACE, your ballot passes through those 3 groups, where “similar” is defined by the official endorsements your chosen candidate made publicly before the election. Within each of those groups, your ballot transfers in order of direct vote total.
• In order to win, a candidate needs to get almost a full district worth of votes. For instance, in a state with 19 districts, they’d need 95% of an average district, which is 5% of the state as a whole, leaving under 5% of wasted votes. Until a full set of winners gets such a “quota” each, you eliminate the weakest candidates (the ones furthest behind the strongest candidate in their district) and transfer votes.
• When one candidate wins in a district, all the other candidates from that district are immediately eliminated. That ensures that there will be one winner per district.
• But if you voted against the winner in your district, they’re not a good representative for you. To ensure that you’ll still have a rep, your district will be assigned as “extra territory” to one winner from each party except the party that won locally.

That’s it.

For a more detailed, legalistic version of the process, you can look at the PLACE voting FAQ. There, you can also find a list of the various advantages of PLACE, and responses to the common questions or concerns people bring up.