John Russo Op-Ed Advocating Instant Runoff Voting

JOHN RUSSO: Instant runoff voting is right way to go for Oakland

By Oakland City Attorney John Russo

July 24, 2006

The Oakland City Council had the wisdom and foresight to realize instant runoff voting is an essential first step on the road back to a healthy democracy.

IN LAST month's primary election, California suffered its lowest voter turnout in 25 years. Less than 30 percent of the eligible voting population made decisions for all of California.

State voters are tired of going to the polls, and they are tired of negative campaigns. In just four years Californians have cast ballots in seven elections. Interest groups with partisan axes to grind in both parties spent wildly and shamelessly to distort the records and slander the character of those candidates they opposed.

Luckily, the Oakland City Council has decided to support a simple yet revolutionary voting practice that would help remedy the ills of voter disgust and apathy - instant runoff voting. This is a voting method used to select a single winner from a list of two or more candidates. Instant runoff voting would let voters register their first choice and then rank the other candidates. Voters could, in effect, hedge their bets and maintain influence even when their first choice doesn't win.

By collecting more meaningful information from voters, it gives them a greater power of choice and measures their will more accurately. This process was invented in the United States and has been used effectively in Australia and Ireland for many decades.

In many ways, instant runoff voting is an antidote to the disease of negative campaigning. Under the system, candidates would be less likely to engage in malicious campaigning because such tactics would risk alienating the voters who support "attacked" candidates.

Candidates would have incentives to focus on the substantive issues in a race and gain higher rankings from those voters who might also be choosing another candidate. Voters would hear more about a candidate's positions and get less junk mail assassinating the opposing candidates' character. Ultimately, successful politicians would win by building coalitions and finding common ground, not tearing their opponents down - the same skills leaders must use to govern wisely and get things done.

Opponents argue that instant runoff voting is confusing and would disenfranchise minority populations. This is blatant elitism. Instant runoff voting is as easy as 1-2-3. Literally, the voter chooses her first, second and third choices.

Some argue the ranking system is difficult for voters to determine how their ranked votes are to be counted. Those folks have obviously never been in a neighborhood bar during Week 15 of the NFL season when patrons of seemingly average intelligence are discussing possible playoff scenarios. Most assuredly anyone who can understand the complexities of potential "wild card" match-ups will find instant runoff voting calculations a snap.

Instant runoff voting would also stimulate more participation for candidates outside the predominant two-party system. Third-party candidates could run without being labeled spoilers. Competition, economists say, eventually brings the greatest benefits to consumers.

Yet Republican and Democratic functionaries don't want free-market rivalries extended to politics. Apologists for the status quo believe that offering the "lesser of two evils" is the best we can do in our democratic process. Instant runoff voting would allow voters a greater range of choices and representation.

We may say voting is sacred to our democratic process but we treat it as a boring and outdated irrelevance unworthy of real resources or innovation. Limited choices and negative campaigning is killing democracy. The Oakland City Council had the wisdom and foresight to realize instant runoff voting is an essential first step on the road back to a healthy democracy.

John Russo is Oakland's city attorney.

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