The Republicans are up to their old tricks of kicking people off the voter rolls, and the Democrats are trying their best to deny ballot status to a genuine alternative candidate.

The anti-democratic actions of these two political parties will continue so long as people keep voting for them, or until we have a fair and clean election system.

One reform that will go a long way toward making Hawaii a strong democracy is Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting. IRV is a voting system that ensures a winning candidate will receive a majority of votes rather than a simple plurality.

If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes is eliminated. The second-place votes of the voters for this candidate are then counted as first-place votes for the remaining candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate gets a majority and is declared the winner. There are no ���spoiler��� candidates with an IRV election system.

IRV has been used in Australia and Ireland for many years. San Francisco will use IRV to elect its board of supervisors (equivalent to our County Council) this November. IRV legislation has even been brought before the Hawaii State Legislature as recently as 2001 and 2003.

For more information on IRV, please visit www.fairvote.org.

 

Shaun Stenshol
Green Party Candidate
State Senate District 6
Haiku