Take Back America
Conference
June 2004
The Center for Voting and Democracy attended the annual "Take
Back America Conference" this year to provide information on fair elections. This year our staff focused on
showcasing Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s proposed "Right to
Vote" amendment and our
July 26 event during the Democratic National Convention and on conducting a
demonstration election to illustrate
the benefits of instant runoff voting (IRV). The IRV
demonstration election asked participants to select a potential
vice-presidential running mate for Sen. John Kerry. The election resulted in a victory for
Sen. John Edwards while revealing noteworthy patterns in voter behavior that deserve further
analysis. Attendees cast 128 legitimate ballots conveying their
preference for the 10 candidates listed, and various write-ins of their
choice. (An additional 45 ballots placing John Edwards first were discarded
because they were cast by the same voter.) Edwards ran well ahead on the first
count with support of 39% of voters, but lacked a majority. When
the field was reduced to two, Edwards defeated Republican senator John
McCain 75% to 25%. The big winner in our IRV demonstration at the Take Back
America convention, Governor Howard Dean, finished third. IRV's
impact is to ensure that the winner has majority support (over 50%), or at least
acceptance. IRV consolidates all potential
runoff elections into a single election through the simple device of allowing
voters to rank candidates. (How
IRV works). Here are a few notes on how to read the
charts we have posted on the results. "Election
Data and Analysis" explains the elimination of the candidates
round-by-round. It shows each candidate's vote increase per round, and
uses that number to determine the "winner by round." By
comparing each candidate's marginal increase rates per round, that individual
candidate's "most successful round" was determined. (Note that John Edwards
reached the 64 vote threshold after Round 6, but we continued the IRV counting
process after Edwards was declared the winner for the sake of obtaining more
information about participants' preferences.). "Candidate Trend Charts" graphs the votes for the
six strongest
candidates by round, demonstrating the trends of vote distribution for each
individual candidate. For example, while Howard Dean and Edward's graphs display
a somewhat steady upward slope, exhibiting voter consistency round to round,
Bill Richardson's and John McCain's slopes plateau in the first few rounds but soar
towards the end, revealing the tendency of some voters to rank these candidates
towards the end of their sequence, but ahead of the other leading candidates. "Second
Choice Data and Analysis" shows the distribution of the second choice
preferences based on a voter's first choice. For example, we see that 12
out of the 50 people who ranked Edwards first, ranked Wesley Clark second. It
also shows that Clark collected the most second choice votes at 20 (16%), and
candidates like Dick Gephardt and John Lewis who received little first choice
support, enjoyed
a significant increase in second choice support. Edwards was the first or second
choice of 52% of voters. IRV is a
well-established voting system that makes sense for a range of elections. It is already used in Australia and Ireland to elect their legislators.
IRV elects the mayor of London, and San Francisco is getting ready to use IRV in
their citywide races in November. IRV is a sensible alternative to the
current plurality voting system; it eliminates the spoiler problem,
ensures that the winner of the election has a majority of the votes and
inspires candidates to campaign to be the second choice of other candidates,
resulting in less negative campaigns that demonstrate that politics can be a
civil sport.
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