Instant runoff voting: Win-win reform gathers
steam
By Steven Hill and Rob Richie
March 29, 2003
Spurred by third party threats to incumbents and
by a desire toavoid expensive runoff contests, instant runoff
voting (IRV)has moved to the top of major parties' reform
agenda in severalstates. At the same time, a growing number of
social changeactivists are coming to support IRV as a means to
bring newideas and energy into electoral politics. IRV is a
perfect "win-win" solution for those who want to work within
the major
parties and those who want to challenge them as
independentsor third parties.
IRV ensures winners have more than half the votes.
Itsimulates a series of traditional "delayed" runoff
elections, butin a single round of voting that corrects the
flaws of delayedrunoffs and plurality voting. At the polls, people
vote for theirfavorite candidate, then indicate their "runoff"
choices byranking candidates first, second, third and so on.
If a candidate receives more than half of first
choices, she orhe wins. If not, the candidates with the fewest
votes areeliminated, and a runoff count occurs. Each ballot
counts forthe top-ranked remaining candidate. Not only are
eliminatedcandidates no longer a "spoiler" because that
candidate'ssupporters can have their vote count for their
runoff choice, butthose candidates in fact may inspire greater voter
participationand boost the chances of the major candidate who
would behelped that greater
participation.
States have the power to immediately implement IRV
for allfederal elections, including the presidential
race.Momentum to do just that in Vermont has grown to
almost afever pitch, with support from ex-governor Howard
Dean, civicgroups like the League of Women Voters, Grange
andAFL-CIO and a grassroots surge that swept through
more than50 town meeting votes last year. The media is full
of storieson the effort to pass it this
year.
In Maine, the leaders of both the senate and house
havesponsored IRV legislation, with the senate
president declaredshe wants it in place by 2004. With a nascent
Green Partyboosted by Maine's public financing of elections,
Democratsare worried about losing control of the Senate due
to split voteswith third party candidates. The organizations
which led theeffort to pass clean elections in 1996 are now
spearheading theIRV effort, seeing it as a natural complement to
the increase incandidacies promoted by public
financing.
In Massachusetts, another clean elections state,
grassrootsactivists have joined with statewide organizations
like CommonCause, Commonwealth Coalition and Mass Vote to
push IRV.They organized a one day conference in Boston that
turned outa packed audience despite a blizzard raging
outside. Last fallFairVote Massachusetts sponsored two
non-bindingreferendums in the Amherst/Northampton area,
polling local
voters about their support for IRV. Both of those
referendumspassed with over 70 percent of the vote.
Currently, activists areworking with Democratic legislators who have
introduced threeIRV-related legislative bills.
Other statewide IRV efforts include: Utah, where
theRepublican Party's use of IRV to nominate Members
ofCongress at conventions has sparked interest in
its use in moreelections; Hawaii, which had a hearing on IRV
legislation onFebruary 10; California, where reformers expect to
see at leastone bill introduced; Washington, where IRV bills
have the
support of four out of six of the Democratic Party
caucusleadership; Florida, where state senate leaders
want to considerIRV as an alternative to traditional runoff
elections that cost thestate millions; and New Mexico, where state senate
leaderRichard Romero has introduced IRV legislation. In
the wake ofthe growth of Jesse Ventura's party in Minnesota
and theGreen Party threat to the Paul Wellstone
candidacy, IRV hasdrawn endorsements from the state's governor and
the
Minneapolis Star Tribune.
To advance IRV, cities are good targets for IRV
campaigns.San Francisco achieved a major victory in March
2002 whenits voters passed IRV for most major local races
despite morethan $100,000 spent by downtown business interests
that wereworried IRV would strengthen the city's
progressive majority.The first IRV election for mayor and other offices
will be inNovember 2003, a tremendous watershed in the
history ofvoting system reform. Charter commissions in
Austin (TX),Kalamazoo (MI) and Albuquerque (NM) have
recommendedusing IRV, and voters in Santa Clara, San Leandro,
and
Oakland (all in California), and Vancouver (WA)
haveapproved ballot measures to make IRV an explicit
option intheir charters.
IRV is a reform that students can work for
directly as well. Inan exciting new movement, students in a number of
majorcolleges have adopted IRV for student government
elections.Duke, University of Maryland, University of
Illinois, Vassar,UC-Davis and Whitman have all recently adopted
IRV, with more on the brink of success. Universities using
IRV for years include Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, Rice and
Stanford.
To achieve truly fair representation for
legislative elections, fullrepresentation remains the Holy Grail. But IRV is
the quickestway to eliminate the spoiler dynamic that
suppressescandidacies -- and the debate and participation
they couldgenerate. If progressives learn one lesson from
Election 2000,let it be that all of our elections should be
conducted underfairer rules. Real democracy needs a rainbow of
choices, notthe dull gray that results in one of the lowest
voter turnouts in
the democratic world.
