What do DUers think of instant runoff?

StarTribune.com

Last update: May 30, 2006 – 8:54 PM

Minneapolis may get to weigh instant-runoff voting

Rochelle Olson, Star Tribune
Voting may become as easy as one, two, three for Minneapolis residents.

The city's voters will likely have a chance to decide this fall if they want to replace conventional elections with instant-runoff balloting.

With instant-runoff voting there would be no primaries, which traditionally have low voter turnout. Instead, there would be one election day and one ballot. Voters would rank three candidates in order of preference.

If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the least number of first-place votes is eliminated. But those ballots are then counted for their second choices, which are added to the vote totals. A candidate wins when he or she receives at least 50 percent of the vote.

(snip)

No Minnesota city has instant-runoff voting, although some, including Hopkins and Roseville, have considered it. Burlington, Vt., became the first city to elect a mayor using instant-runoff voting in March. San Francisco has elected members to the Board of Supervisors using the system.

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/463589.html

In Orange County, CA, a race for a county supervisor is going to a runoff and this after more than $3 millions were spent by the two leading candidates, most of it personal loans by the candidates themselves.

it allows people to vote for who they really want without being bullied into believing they are throwing their votes away. I think it strengthens democracy and that is definately a plus in my book.

PB

have a downside?

IRV is inferior to just about every election method out there; it bears the dubious distinction of being the only common system that's actually mathematically worse than our current system. IRV only works in cases where the third party doesn't have a broad enough base of support to actually win elections... which is what it's designed to avoid.

Borda count and Condorcet are both vastly superior to IRV.

:hi: I believe wholeheartedly in IRV

from the same story:

Green Party Council Member Cam Gordon has been an active supporter since 1997. "One of the big things that it does is it helps people to vote their first choice or their heart," he said. Gordon admitted that it might make a bigger difference statewide. The governor's race, for example, has been split three ways in recent years with the winner capturing less than 50 percent of the vote.

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They may have the shadow of Jesse Ventura hanging over them, and some wonder whether this may go straight to court. I have no legal knowledge but have to wonder on what grounds such a plan can be challenged.

and pubic, equal, financing of candidates, we might just get our democracy back.

arguing about it. But they used the standard term, not the MSM salespitch term. You get a bunch of poli sci and engineering grad students arguing about this for months, it gets detailed and arcane quickly, and your brain starts to rot by the third week.

It depends on the details, exactly what flavor of preference balloting is enacted. Some require ranking all the candidates; I think this is foolish, and a serious strike against most varieties of preference voting. Some varieties don't require ranking all the candidates, just the top two, say; this can result in a high rate of vote falsification. Requiring only the top choice be ranked, and allowing others to rank their alternate choices can plausibly result in some really quirky results that hardly nobody would like, mostly at the really local level.

Personally, I would probably find that amusing. But I have a quirky sense of humor, and in the time or two I've been subject to preference balloting, I've had no qualms about falsifying all choices except my first. That's a big no-no. Preference balloting requires that nearly all voters actually reason through and indicate their *real* preferences.

It's cheaper, if a city frequently has runoffs; and can make for more stable budgeting, if the runoffs are infrequent.

I find the argument that it guarantees the winner has at least 50% of the vote to be a vacuous statement; of course, by definition, the winner will get >50% of the vote. But the winner could easily be the first choice of a small minority; in other words, not somebody that actually got votes on his/her own, but who only got the job because the electoral system *compelled* second (and third and fourth) choices to be indicated for a ballot to be valid.

All in all, I have no strong preference.