Trenton Times
A better voting
system Editorial March 12, 2002 Last Tuesday, the
voters in San Francisco made their city the largest in the country
to adopt instant runoff voting (IRV), an efficient, sensible,
democratic way to pick winners in elections in which more than two
candidates compete. On the same day, voters in towns throughout
Vermont approved nonbinding resolutions calling on their state
legislature to implement instant runoffs. Alaska will hold a
statewide referendum on IRV this fall. Ireland and Australia, among
other places, have used IRV for years, and the momentum clearly is
building for it in the United States. It's long past time for New
Jersey to give serious consideration to adopting the system as well.
The biggest drawback to a changeover is technological; IRV won't
work with old-fashioned lever machines, such as those used in Mercer
County, and even adapting it to the new optical-scan and
touch-screen equipment that's coming into use elsewhere poses some
problems. Still, as more and more U.S. jurisdictions embrace the
system, the technological solutions will follow. IRV's advantages
are manifest. It ensures that no candidate is elected with less than
a majority of the total vote -- and it does this without the
necessity of pitting the two top vote-getters against each other in
a runoff that's expensive and typically draws a relatively low
turnout. It allows third-party and independent candidates -- Ralph
Nader and Pat Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election come to
mind -- to run without the stigma of being "spoilers," and allows
citizens to vote for such candidates without the guilty feeling that
they are helping elect the person they least want to see in office.
With IRV, voters list the candidates in the order of their
preference. In the first round of counting, if any contender
receives a majority of votes, that candidate is declared the winner
outright. If not, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes
is eliminated, and the votes of all the people who voted for him or
her are distributed to their second choice. If still no candidate
has a majority, the count continues. The candidate with the next
fewest votes is eliminated, and all the people who voted for that
person have their votes distributed to their next choice. This time,
it's conceivable that some voters' first and second choices will
have bitten the dust. Their votes then will go to their third
choice. The process continues until one candidate has more than half
the votes. IRV would work well in elections like Trenton's upcoming
City Council competition, which is likely to attract numerous
candidates in some of the ward races and an even greater number for
the three seats that will be filled by at-large voting. But it also
would be a blessing in New Jersey statewide elections that draw
crowded fields and do not provide for a runoff, e.g. gubernatorial
and U.S. Senate primaries. Here the possibility exists of a winner
emerging with less than a majority -- perhaps someone favored by a
small but dedicated fringe of the electorate. Democracy is not well
served in such situations.Some argue that IRV is too complicated for
voters to understand. That's an insult to the voters; besides,
compared to a Florida butterfly ballot, the system is simplicity
itself. Instant runoff voting equals better elections. |