NAACP Convention
July 2004
At this year's NAACP convention in Philadelphia, The Center for Voting and Democracy held an
IRV demonstration election. Voters were asked to use
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) to select the most important campaign issue
in 2004. A total of 81 votes were cast in our demonstration election. IRV requires that a
candidate win a majority (50% plus one) of votes in order to win the
election. In this case, the threshold was set at 41 votes. This
chart
details the process we used to count votes in this IRV election. Also, here is a summary of each round of ballot counting:
-
Round 1: In the first round of counting, Education had the lead with
28 votes. It was followed by Iraq and the Economy with 8 votes each,
and Criminal Justice with 7 votes. Affordable Housing and Healthcare
both won 6 votes, while Gun Control and Welfare each earned 2. There
were 3 write-ins, 11 ballots that weren't able to be counted and no votes
for the Environment. Because no issue received a clear majority, the issues
that were tied with the least votes (Gun Control and Welfare) were
eliminated and their votes were redistributed.
-
Round 2: With the votes redistributed, Healthcare and
Iraq each gained two votes. At this stage, the standings were 3 write-in
votes, Affordable Housing with 6 votes, Criminal Justice with 7 votes,
Economy and Healthcare with 8 votes each, Iraq with 10 votes, and Education still in the lead
with 28 votes. Because the write-ins were in last place this
round, they were eliminated.
-
Round 3: After the write-ins were eliminated and
their votes redistributed, Healthcare picked up 2 votes and 1 ballot was
exhausted. Education held the lead position with 28 votes and was
followed by Iraq and Healthcare with 10 each, Economy with 8, and Criminal
Justice with 7 votes. With only 6 votes, Affordable Housing was eliminated.
-
Round 4: Affordable Housing backers seemed to also be
concerned with Criminal Justice. After Affordable Housing was eliminated,
Criminal Justice gained 3 votes
and the Economy, Education and Iraq gained 1 vote each. At the end of
this round, Education had 29 votes, Iraq had 11, and Criminal Justice and
Healthcare each had 10. The Economy was eliminated with 9 votes.
-
Round 5: Those who expressed their support for
economic issues tended to rank Iraq as their second-choice. Iraq
picked up 5 of the 9 economy votes with the other 4 votes being pretty
evenly distributed among the other issues. As
the fifth round ended, Education had 31 votes, Iraq had 16, and Criminal
Justice and Healthcare had 11 votes each. Even though the votes
between Criminal Justice and Healthcare were tied, the collective votes
between the two added up to more than the votes for Iraq; therefore we could
only eliminate one issue. We ended up eliminating Healthcare because
it had fewer first choice votes than Criminal Justice.
-
Round 6: Those backing Healthcare heavily favored
Education as their second choice. Education picked up 7 votes,
giving it a total of 38 votes and Iraq gained 3 votes, giving it a total of
19 votes. Criminal Justice was eliminated with 12 votes
-
Round 7: Out of the 12 votes for Criminal Justice,
only 1 went to Iraq, and the other 11 went to Education. Education
ended with 49 total votes which put it over the 41 vote threshold and made
it the winner. Iraq finished second with 20 total votes. 12
ballots were ultimately exhausted or uncountable.
|