Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"OK, how about no primary? Lawyer pushes instant runoff election"
By Neil Modie
July 26, 2004

If Jerry Cronk's political dream were reality, Al Gore would probably be running for re-election as president, and Slade Gorton would probably still be a U.S. senator.

Not that Cronk voted for either. In 2000, he supported Green Party nominee Ralph Nader for president and Maria Cantwell, the Democrat who unseated Republican Gorton, for the Senate.

But while Washington voters might have to navigate three different primary election systems in three consecutive years now that the state's popular "blanket primary" has been invalidated, Cronk is promoting a fourth option: no primary.

The 72-year-old Shoreline lawyer, whose clients include the Green Party of Washington, is pushing an "instant runoff voting," or IRV, system. It would eliminate primaries altogether, have all candidates run in the general election, and guarantee that nobody wins an election with less than a majority of the vote.

"I'm often told that if IRV had been in place, Slade Gorton would still be a U.S. senator," Cronk said. Many believe Cantwell won the 2000 election -- with less than a majority of the vote -- only because Libertarian candidate Jeff Jared siphoned off so many votes that otherwise would have gone mostly to Gorton.

Similarly, many believe that Gore, the Democratic nominee, lost because Nader took enough votes from him in Florida and New Hampshire to narrowly hand those states, and hence the presidency, to George W. Bush.

With IRV, a voter in the general election ranks all candidates for an office in order of preference, 1, 2, 3 and so on. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of first choices, the weakest candidates are eliminated, and their supporters' votes are counted for their runoff choices based on their rankings until one candidate has a majority.

An assortment of minor political parties -- from the left-leaning Green and Progressive parties to the right-leaning Libertarian and American Heritage parties -- are promoting IRV as an initiative to the Washington Legislature. A long shot, I-318 is being run out of Cronk's law office. He is the campaign treasurer.

Its supporters need at least 197,734 voters' signatures by Dec. 31 to put I-318 before the 2005 Legislature and, if lawmakers reject it, to the voters the following November.

Nowadays an initiative campaign rarely succeeds without paid signature gatherers and several hundred thousand dollars to pay them. I-318's supporters are relying on volunteers, a skimpy budget and lots of idealism.

Few outside observers expect the measure to qualify for the ballot, let alone win adoption by lawmakers or the electorate, especially with both major political parties opposed to it.

IRV's advocates say it's the only election system that makes everyone's vote count and prevents people from casting "spoiler" votes that help candidates other than those whom the voter has chosen.

Political party leaders didn't like the state's blanket primary that, until this year, allowed a primary election voter to choose a Democrat for one office and a Republican for another. So they sued, got it declared unconstitutional and got it replaced, starting this fall, with a primary that requires each voter to pick a single party's primary ballot.

Populists don't like that system. The Washington State Grange qualified an initiative for the November ballot to establish a "top two" primary, starting next year, which would send the two highest primary vote getters -- regardless of party -- to the general election.

But small political parties like the Greens and the Libertarians feel shut out by that scheme, believing their candidates would never make it into the general election. Hence, I-318.

Bills with various permutations of IRV have been introduced in the Legislature each of the past four sessions, but none has passed. A measure sponsored by Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, would have allowed instant runoff voting in Vancouver municipal elections on a trial basis. It passed the House this year but died in the Senate.

Republican and Democratic leaders hate IRV.

"We believe in the basic American idea that whoever gets the most votes should win, and in instant runoff voting you could have candidates who are people's second choices winning under this bizarre system," said state GOP Chairman Chris Vance.

He said IRV's supporters "belong to fringe, looney-tune parties" who think it will make them "instantly competitive."

Its backers believe that IRV would enable the lesser parties to influence major-party candidates who would seek the second-choice votes of minor-party supporters.

Under the existing system, a Green Party candidate, for example, might siphon votes from a Democrat. But with IRV, Green supporters might be persuaded to give their second-choice votes to a Democratic candidate who embraces Green positions on some issues.

"It gives them the ability to show major-party candidates how much of their support might be dependent on minor-party candidates," said Todd Donovan, a Western Washington University political scientist. He co-authored a book on electoral reform and has studied instant runoff voting.

However, Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state's chief elections officer, believes IRV "is on the surface quite confusing."

In a presidential election year like 2004, when voters must decide races for the U.S. Senate and Congress, 10 statewide offices, judgeships, legislative seats, some local offices and ballot measures, then "we'd be telling them, 'We not only want you to cast votes in all these races, but we want you to rank them all,' " Reed said.

"It's not too complicated for people in Australia," Cronk retorted. "They've done IRV for years."

Ireland's president and London's mayor also are elected by instant runoff. San Francisco voters in 2002 adopted IRV for city elections and will use it for the first time this fall.

Donovan thinks instant runoff is "a pretty good system" if used properly, at least for elections for executive offices like president or governor.

"It can reflect a broader set of people's preferences (than the existing system) ... You have a majority winner, but you have all sorts of minority views represented in the process of picking a winner."

He would prefer, however, to combine a primary similar to what Washington will have this fall with an instant-runoff general election.

"In a lot of our (general election) races, we've got more than two candidates," the political scientist noted. "It's not at all unusual. We haven't had a president elected since 1988 with a majority of the vote. When fewer and fewer people identify with the major parties, increasingly fewer candidates end up with a majority."

An instant runoff in the general election instead of the primary would be OK with Cronk, who has drafted several different versions of IRV legislation -- including an instant-runoff general election -- over the past several years. He isn't easily discouraged.

"IRV is going to come eventually," he said. "It's a coming thing, and if we don't make it this time, we'll just keep coming back until we get our message across."