Did either party put their best presidential candidate forward in the election? While Democrats may wistfully speculate what might have occurred had Joe Biden been their nominee, it is Republicans who expressed enormous dissatisfaction with the outcome of their primary season, some going so far as to join a "Never Trump" movement.

Their primaries demonstrated a fundamental flaw that occurs whenever a large number of candidates split the vote: because of the way votes were tabulated, it becomes impossible to know if majority rule prevailed.

Since national primaries are run in a series over many months, winners of a plurality in early primaries gain momentum, that is, donor support, name and position recognition, pundit and commentator analysis, and eyeballs viewing the candidate's website. They can then use that momentum in later primaries. In Donald Trump's case, early successes brought valuable television time at no cost to him.

The initial Republican slate consisted of 17 candidates, most of whom were establishment figures with records as governor or senator. Since they offered many of the same positions, their votes were divided among them, leaving their individual totals small. This allowed an outlier candidate like Trump to succeed in the early primaries with only a plurality of the votes cast. Because of the method employed to tabulate votes, candidates who represented mainstream preferences were unable to gain prominence in the outcome. Instead, while the collective total of their shared vote represented powerful support among the electorate, the votes were tabulated in a system that only rewards individual totals.

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING IN PRIMARIES. In principle, the way to avoid such an outcome is with a runoff election. However, due to the expense and time required for a runoff, it is not used for primaries by either political party. Modern technology makes possible "instant runoff voting," or IRV, a computerized tabulation that leads to majority rule. Under IRV, voters cast ballots for their most preferred candidate as well as for their second, third, fourth, etc., choices. When the polls close, these added choices augment first choices; as a result, the eventual winner secures a majority vote before moving on to the next primary.

To illustrate how this works, let's examine a hypothetical Democratic Party primary race with three candidates. Candidates A and B are "progressives" in favor of improving the economic outlook by public investment in infrastructure repairs, and candidate C believes in "austerity," that is, cutting government spending to balance the federal budget. Let's assume that polling data indicate that Democratic Party voters favor the infrastructure initiative over the austerity approach by 60 percent to 40 percent. However, because they are supported by similar voters, candidates A and B split their vote 35 percent to 25 percent and candidate C wins the primary with 40 percent of votes cast, a plurality. Without a runoff, the result frustrates the will of the majority and sends the winner off to the next primary with a boost not supported by the majority of the voters.

IRV voting provides an alternative outcome. Since the voter in this three-way race indicates a first, second and third choice, the computer can allocate the second and third choices of the voters to determine the winner. If one candidate does not initially receive a majority of the votes cast, then the second-choices of those who voted for the third-place finisher are allocated to the first and second-place finishers. In the above example, we would expect that the second choice of those who voted for candidate B would be for candidate A. Accordingly, the majority-vote winner would be candidate A.

THE VALUE OF MAJORITY RULE. IRV is an arithmetic principle that helps further the goal of majority rule, a value we assume both political parties share. In essence, it increases the chances that the winner of a series of primaries has been favored by a majority of the party's voters. This is very important when the primary season must whittle down a large candidate field. It is reasonable to assume that in national primary elections, both parties would benefit from encouraging the participation of a large slate of contenders and the employment of IRV. In so doing, the parties would put forth candidates better suited for the upcoming national election, be it a "change election" in which general election voters desire a new set of values or a "traditional election" in which the voters want to choose from the standard-bearers who best represent the established values of their parties.

William L. Holahan is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Charles O. Kroncke, retired dean of the College of Business at UW-M, is also retired from USF. They are co-authors of "Economics for Voters."