There is a lot of miss-information
bouncing around on the Internet about instant runoff voting (IRV) in
the guise of "researched analysis" that claims to show it
has serious flaws. By and large, such "analysis" is faulty,
selective, agenda-driven manipulation. We have attempted to gather together
as many of these false claims and myths as we could on this FAQ page
to provide factual information.
Table of Contents
1.1 Is instant runoff voting simple for voters to use?
2.1 Does IRV addresses the "spoiler" problem as well as separate runoff elections do?
2.2 Does IRV favor extremists?
2.3 Is IRV fair to racial minorities?
2.4 Does IRV unfairly favor third parties?
2.5 Does IRV entrench the "duopoly" two-party system?
2.6 Does IRV undermine political
stability by encouraging fringe candidates?
3.1 Does IRV comply with the one-person-one-vote principle?
4.1 Aren't plurality winners okay, even if they don't get a majority?
4.2 Is IRV a proven and accepted voting method ?
4.3 With sequential elimination
of candidates from the bottom, do the supporters of the weakest candidate
get extra clout by getting their second choice counted before the second
choice of other voters?
4.4 Is every voter treated equally under IRV?
4.5 Is IRV better than using traditional separate runoff elections?
4.6 Does IRV elect true majority winners?
4.7 Are any other alternative voting methods better at solving the "spoiler problem" than IRV?
4.8 Does IRV violate important election fairness criteria?
4.9 Is the so-called "winner-turns-loser" or "monotonicity" issue have any real-world significance?
4.10 Will IRV generally elect the "Condorcet winner?"
ADMINISTRATION OF IRV ELECTIONS
5.1 Is IRV too complicated for election administrators to handle?
5.2 Does IRV need to cost more or require buying new voting machines?
5.3 Can IRV elections be counted manually without much additional time or effort?
5.5 Can current voting machines handle IRV ballots without improvements to hardware of software?
5.7 Does IRV require centralized counting of ballots?
5.8 Does IRV mean moving to DRE voting machines?
5.9 Does IRV weaken election integrity?
5.10 Can IRV be manually
audited?
5.11 Does IRV delay announcing
election results?
VOTER EXPERIENCE UNDER IRV
1.1 Is instant runoff voting
is simple for voters to use?
Yes. The voters' task is
very simple. Voters can simply mark their ballots in exactly the
same way as they always have in the past. However, the voter has the
option of ranking alternate choices, in case there is no majority winner
and the voter's favorite candidate doesn't make it into the final runoff
count. Since a vote for a minor candidate won't be wasted, as long as
the voter ranks other choices, the voter can generally avoid the conundrum
of voting for a favorite or a lesser evil. For many voters this makes
voting with IRV easier than under the current plurality method.
U.S. cities that recently adopted IRV have had exit polls to assess voter acceptance of the new system. Without exception, in every city voters have overwhelmingly favored IRV over the old method. Also, studies of the San Francisco and Burlington IRV elections have proven that there was no increase in uncountable ballots (spoiled or skipping the IRV race) with the adoption of IRV. In the Burlington IRV election in 1996, for example, 99.9% of ballots cast in the IRV race for mayor were valid. People had no difficulty voting, and there were almost no "spoiled" ballots.
Two nations with the highest
voter participation rates in the world, Australia and Malta, both use
instant runoff voting. The only "complicated" aspect of instant
runoff voting is the tabulation that occurs if there is no initial majority
winner. But the voters don't need to absorb these details. A voter can
dial a telephone without understanding the intricacies of the internal
electronics or vote for president, without understanding the intricacies
of the Electoral College, which has a provision for election by the
House of Representatives when no candidate has a majority.
There is another side to voting
that makes IRV simpler than other methods, such as Plurality, Approval,
Range, etc. While every voting method is subject to manipulation by
strategic voting in some situations, IRV is uniquely resistant to such
strategy (see James Green-Armytage analysis for more)
Under most voting methods, a potentially beneficial voting strategy
can be recognized by at least some voters (who may gain an advantage
over other voters). Thus, voters may face a dilemma deciding whether
to engage in strategic voting. For example, in a simple plurality election
there is the "lesser-of-two-evils" problem where voters often
realize that voting for their favorite candidate, who is likely to get
very few votes, may deny their second choice candidate enough votes
to beat out that voter's least preferred choice. Such a voter might
find the plurality election decision to be extremely difficult. Under
IRV, this voter's ballot will automatically transfer to that second
choice candidate if the first choice is at the bottom, and the second
choice candidate can win with that transferred vote. This makes the
voter's task much simpler with IRV. The default strategy is always to
honestly rank candidates in the order of choice. Of course, voters may
still face strategic dilemmas with IRV in some rare situations, but
these are far less common than under most other voting methods. For
example, under Range and Approval voting, giving any support to a second
choice may cause that voter's first choice to lose (violation of the
Later-No-Harm Criterion), causing some voters to strategically truncate
their true preferences. IRV complies with the Later-No-Harm Criterion,
and is thus immune to such strategic calculation.
Yes. Voters overwhelmingly
prefer IRV to the previous election method, according to every exit
poll conducted in U.S. cities that use IRV. In every case, a substantial
majority of voters preferred IRV compared to those who preferred the
old system or had no opinion. Excluding those who said the methods were
equal or who had no opinion, the gap between those favoring IRV and
those favoring the old system ranged from 71% vs. 29% in the lowest
city to 89% vs. 11%.
[More information and links to the various exit polls]
1.3 Opponents of IRV have cited a survey conducted by the election administrator in Pierce County showing voters didn't like using IRV. Is that valid?
No. Some Internet Bloggers and even news headlines have mistakenly suggested that this survey proved that most voters in Pierce County did not like their first experience with IRV. This was an unscientific survey that did not use random selection, but rather a self-selection method among voters who were mailed ballots. Social scientists agree that the results of such self-selected surveys are essentially meaningless. People who have a complaint are far more likely to seize an opportunity to express themselves than people who are generally satisfied. For example self-selected surveys on the Internet showed that Ron Paul would sweep the Republican primaries in 2008, simply because his supporters were motivated to respond more than others. Likewise with the survey on satisfaction with the ranked voting experience, that minority of voters who lost at the polls in the initial referendum on whether to adopt ranked choice voting, likely viewed the survey as a free way of complaining again, while the vast majority of voters simply discarded the survey. News headlines suggested that 63% of voters were unhappy with the ranked voting method. In fact, only 17% of voters surveyed reported that they were unhappy with it. 8.7% of voters surveyed respond favorably, 1.4% said they were undecided, and 72.8% did not respond at all. We simply have no idea if most of these voters liked it or not. All scientific exit polls in other jurisdictions using IRV showed voters overwhelmingly favored IRV.
More can be found on the Pierce County survey in an analysis by Professor Richard Anderson-Connolly.
IMPACT OF IRV
2.1 Does IRV address the
"spoiler" problem as well as separate runoff
elections do?
Yes, but better. IRV solves
the spoiler problem better than separate runoffs and at least as well
as any alternative voting method. A "spoiler" is
a negative term for a minor candidate with not chance of winning the
election. Under plurality rules such "spoiler" candidacies
can throw an election to a candidate the majority of voters oppose.
IRV tackles the "spoiler problem" in a manner similar to a
traditional two-election runoff, except that, due to its sequential
elimination procedure, it is more effective at eliminating the spoiler
effect. Under a traditional two-election runoff, if there are several
candidates in the first round who have similar policy views, it is possible
for them to split the majority in such a way that none of these similar
candidates reaches the runoff round, while two candidates with substantial
core support but very narrow appeal advance. Under IRV, voters who divided
among these similar candidates will see their votes automatically re-unite
for the strongest candidate in the group, and thus advance to the final
runoff. Some advocates for other alternative voting methods have
claimed that IRV does not solve the "spoiler problem" 100%.
IRV solves the problem as well or better than the alternatives.
[Examples of spoiler scenarios under Plurality, Range, Approval and other
voting methods]
2.2 Does IRV favor extremists?
No. Current plurality voting
is far more likely to elect extremist candidates than is IRV. In
a plurality election with several candidates, a candidate does not need
any support beyond his or her ideological core supporters to get the
"most" votes - even if that is a relatively small percentage
of the voters. With IRV, a candidate must be able to garner both strong
core support and broad appeal in order to win. With over 80 years of
use in Australian elections for the House of Representatives, IRV has
proven that extremists are not benefited by IRV.
At the other extreme from plurality's
bias in favor of extremists, some alternative voting reform proposals
(such as Condorcet, Approval, and others) do not strike IRV's desirable
balance of core and broad support, in the name of favoring "centrist"
candidates. However, these methods do not necessarily favor "centrist"
candidates, but may favor inoffensive and merely unknown candidates.
They also allow a "compromise" candidate to be elected even
if not a single voter considers him or her to be the best choice. These
other methods allow a candidate who would not get a single vote under
the current voting method, to win. For some offices, such as a club
treasurer, this "compromise" bias may be desirable. But in
high-stakes elections of political leaders, these methods may discourage
candidates from revealing their stands on controversial issues, as they
seek to avoid alienating any voters at all.
[More on Australian Elections]
2.3 Is IRV fair to racial
minorities?
Yes. IRV is used effectively
by racial minorities, but it neither hinders nor promotes the election
of racial minorities. To generally advance the cause of representation
for racial minorities, forms of proportional representation are needed,
rather than a winner-take-all method such as IRV and nearly all other
elections in the U.S. However, by focusing the decision on a single
election, rather than a two-election runoff process, IRV does tend to
enhance the turnout and success of racial minorities. In a multi-candidate
IRV election, candidates have an interest in appealing to the supporters
of other candidates for second preferences, and there is some risk that
appeals to racism may backfire by alienating potential second preferences.
However, in a head-to-head separate runoffs, demonization of opponents
and appeals to racism are often an effective strategy.
Exit polls by San Francisco
State University and an analysis by the New America Foundation of the
San Francisco IRV elections found that racial minorities used the ranked-ballot
effectively, and preferred it to the former election method.
Studies of the impact of IRV on racial minorities in San Francisco have
found that IRV dramatically increased voter turnout by low-income and
racial minorities. A study of the 2005 election found that IRV increased
turnout in the city’s six most socio-economically diverse neighborhoods
by over 300% compared to separate runoff elections. Scholarly studies
have also found that IRV had the effect of reducing the number of uncounted
ballots (over-votes and under-votes combined), especially in districts
with high percentages of racial minorities.
[More information on IRV and race]
[More information on San Francisco voter turnout and IRV]
2.4 Does IRV unfairly
favor third parties?
No. IRV simply helps level
the playing field so that voters will tend to vote for the candidate
they genuinely prefer without worrying about "spoiler" risks. Some major party advocates have mistakenly suggested that IRV unfairly
benefits minor parties - implying that some quirk of the vote tally
procedure may allow a third party candidate to win merely with second
choices, despite a narrow base of support. This is incorrect. As with
any runoff election, under IRV a candidate must have both substantial
core support and be more popular than the other finalist candidate.
Unlike some other alternative voting methods (such a Borda, range, and
approval voting), under IRV it is impossible for a candidate to win
on the strength of second choices alone, without substantial first preference
support.
2.5 Does IRV entrench the
"duopoly" two-party system?
No more than any other single-winner
election method. Some opponents of the American "two-party
system" have suggested that IRV would simply entrench what they
call "duopoly." IRV neither over-throws, nor entrenches the
current domination of two major parties. IRV does allow minor parties
to exist, contend for office, and possibly eventually supplant one of
the existing major parties without being labeled as "spoilers."
However, since IRV is a majority voting method, third parties that do
not appeal to the majority of an electorate would not generally win.
Only a proportional representation voting method (which IRV is not)
is likely to result in the election of substantial number of candidates
from more than two parties. Like every non-proportional, winner-take-all
voting method (including plurality, approval, range, condorcet, borda,
etc.) "Duverger's law" suggests two parties will tend to predominate in such winner-take-all
electoral environments.
[Return to top]
2.6 Does IRV undermine political stability by encouraging fringe candidates?
No. While fringe candidates
can undermine stability through a "spoiler" effect under plurality
voting, IRV solves that problem, and
Australia's experience with IRV shows broad stability. Rather than
wildly swinging results, depending on whether a minor candidate has
siphoned enough votes to throw an election to a different major party
candidate, IRV allows these fractured majorities to re-combine through
the vote tabulation process. Thus while minor parties may cause wild
swings under current voting methods, that is not the case under IRV.
[More on the Australian experience]
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
3.1 Does IRV comply with
the one-person-one-vote principle?
Yes. Courts have upheld
IRV as complying with the one-person-one-vote standard. Under IRV
each voter is only allowed a single vote for a single candidate to be
counted in each round of counting. Since every voter has an equal right
to rank the candidates, courts in the U.S. have ruled that IRV complies
with the constitutional one-person, one-vote mandate. As a Michigan
court ruled in upholding IRV in Ann Arbor:
"Under the [IRV system], however, no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a "[IRV] System" is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."
Yes. There are no federal
constitutional obstacles to IRV for any federal, state or local office.
Indeed, IRV has been tested in courts on federal constitutional grounds,
and been upheld. Nothing in the federal constitution specifies a particular
voting method to be used for any office. Some state constitutions may
have provisions that would need to be amended to apply IRV to certain
offices. But even those states with constitutional mandates for plurality
winning thresholds may not have constitutional barriers since a candidate
with a majority after an IRV tally, in fact also has a plurality (more
votes than any other candidate). There is a strong argument that an
IRV statute structured such that an IRV process that automatically reduces
the field to two finalists, declaring whichever of these two has the
plurality at this final stage elected, would comply with such plurality
state constitution language, though it has not yet been tested in court.
LOGIC AND FAIRNESS OF IRV
4.1 Aren't plurality winners
okay, even if they don't get a majority?
Not if you believe in democracy. While electing a plurality winner who has not received a majority is
not necessarily a disaster, it can be very undemocratic. The candidate
with the most votes (but less than half) in a race with three or more
candidates is often not the candidate preferred by the
majority of voters. In fact, with plurality rules, a candidate that
the majority of voters feel is the worst choice can be elected. The
fact that some of our presidents or good politicians have won without
a majority does not mean the voting method should be maintained. Pointing
to a benevolent king or dictator is likewise not a convincing defense
of monarchy or totalitarianism. A basic principle of democracy is majority
rule, as recognized by Robert's Rules of Order, which does not favor
the plurality threshold for electing officers. Of course, it is also
possible that a winner with only a plurality of the votes may, in fact,
be the majority choice if there had been a runoff, but the failure of
plurality voting to reveal that fact may weaken the elected officials
mandate.
4.2 Is IRV a proven and
accepted voting method?
Yes. It is used by millions
of voters in government elections in the U.S. and around the world,
and is a voting procedure detailed in current editions of Robert's Rules
of Order, called "preferential voting." It has also been adopted by the American Political Science Association
(college professors), who know a thing or two about elections, to elect
their national president. It was originally invented by a professor
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology around 1870, and has been
used by millions of voters in governmental elections around the world
for generations, especially in English-speaking countries, including
Australia, England, and the Republic of Ireland.
[Text of Robert's Rules of Order on IRV]
No. Supporters of the bottom
candidate (who is eliminated first) do not have any additional clout
in an IRV tally. Sequential elimination of bottom candidates in an "exhaustive"
runoff is a standard, and accepted procedure, used by U.S. Congressional
caucuses for electing their leaders, and mandated in various state election
laws such as for party nominations by committee.
Imagine an IRV tally with five
candidates. If eliminating the fifth-place candidate and transferring
those voters' ballots to their second choice gives one of the other
candidates a majority (more than half the votes), that means eliminating
the third or fourth-place candidate first instead could not possibly
give any other candidate a majority. There are not enough votes among
all of the other candidates (together they have less than half the votes)
to allow any other candidate any possibility of winning, regardless
of the order that candidates are eliminated (unless the rules perversely
eliminated one of the top candidates first). In most cases IRV procedures
eliminate all of the bottom vote-getters, with no mathematical chance
of winning, in one bulk elimination. In most cases that would effectively
mean eliminating all but the top two candidates. Another version of
IRV, as used in Cary (NC) immediately eliminates all but the top two
candidates to exactly mimic the logic of a traditional runoff election.
4.4 Is every voter treated
equally under IRV?
Yes. Every voter gets an
equal vote. In every round of counting, every ballot counts as one vote
for the highest-ranked candidate still in the running. If your candidate
is still viable, your vote will continue to count for your favorite
candidate. If your candidate has been eliminated, rather than getting
zero vote, your vote automatically counts for your next favorite candidate.
The misunderstanding that some voters get more votes than others was
the basis for a legal challenge to IRV in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The court
ruled that IRV fully complied with the principle of "one person,
one vote," giving equal weight to each voter. The judge wrote in
his decision:
"Under the [IRV system], however, no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a "M.P.V. System" is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."
4.5 Is IRV better than using
traditional separate runoff elections?
Yes, for many reasons. While more democratic than common plurality elections, two-round runoffs
have distinct disadvantages. A traditional runoff extends the campaign
season and can be met with a collective sigh of "Oh no, here we
go again." IRV increases the likelihood that the ultimate decision
will be made at the election with the greatest level of citizen participation.
Runoffs tend to have a lower voter turnout, though there are, of course,
exceptions. Imagine the turnout for a runoff for a more minor office.
The winner of a runoff may get fewer votes than an opponent got in the
original election, leading to doubts about the "will of the people,"
hobbled legitimacy, and lack of a perceived mandate. Traditional runoffs
are also costly, both to the taxpayer who must pay for the duplicate
election and to the candidates who must resume campaign fund-raising
and prolong the stress on their families and business lives. The cost
of ballot tabulation in the case of IRV is a tiny fraction of the cost
of holding a new election.
[Comparison of IRV and other single winner election methods]
4.6 Does IRV elect true
majority winners?
Yes. IRV elects majority
winners using the exact same logic as a regular runoff election.
The Michigan court decision that upheld the constitutionality of IRV
in Michigan was clear that IRV was a system to determine a majority
winner in a single election. That is why the American Political Science
Association uses IRV to elect their own national president. The judge
in that case wrote in his decision:
"Each voter has the same right at the time he casts his or her ballot. Each voter has his or her ballot counted once in any count that determines whether one candidate has a majority of the votes. . . . Far better to have the People's will expressed more adequately in this fashion, than to wonder what would have been the results of a run-off election not provided for."
Some advocates of alternative
voting reforms point out that, under IRV, if enough voters fail to rank
back-up choices, the ultimate winner may not have over 50% of the ballots
counted in the initial round of counting. Ballots that have no more
rankings are called "exhausted" ballots, and are akin to stay-home
voters in a traditional separate runoff election because such voters
have expressed no preference between the final candidates. The notion
that a traditional runoff election always finds a majority winner uses
the same majority winner logic as IRV. Voters who don't express their
preference in the final runoff are discounted -- as abstainers. In fact,
under traditional separate runoff rules, it frequently happens that,
due to a drop-off in voter turnout, the winner of the runoff receives
fewer votes than the loser received in the first round. That can never
happen with IRV.
4.7 Are any other alternative
voting methods better at solving the "spoiler problem" than
IRV?
No. IRV is just about the
best solution to "spoiler" problems. Some advocates of
other reforms, such as Range or Approval Voting claim that IRV does
not solve the spoiler problem in all situations -- specifically when
the "spoiler" can out-poll one of the major party candidates.
Note that this is incorrect as this situation does not meet the usual
definition of a "spoiler," and is instead an example of the
little-known "center-squeeze" dynamic common to all runoff
methods. It is important to note that these alternative methods suffer
from their own version of the "spoiler problem."
Approval voting is probably
less prone to spoilers than plurality elections, but is not immune.
A key fact to understand is that whether a voter "approves"
(votes for) a particular candidate depends on what other candidates
the voter has to compare the candidate to. Here is a spoiler scenario
under Approval:
If the voter thinks candidate
A is okay, and B is horrible in a two way race, the voter will likely
approve A and not vote for B.
If there are 100 voters and
55 prefer A>B and 45 B>A, this two-way race could end with a total
vote of 55 for A to 45 for B. Thus A is both the de facto majority choice
as well as the Approval winner.
Now comes the spoiler...What
if candidate C decides to run as well? It happens that a significant
portion (let's say 25 out of the 55) of the former A supporters who
care most about issue X view candidate C as a fantastically superior
candidate to A or B (though they still prefer A over B as well). Some
of these voters would feel the need to withdraw their approval of A
so they can indicate how superior C is to A (and worry that maintaining
a vote for A as well may help defeat their new favorite C), while others
would continue to approve A and add an approval vote for C as well.
If more than ten of these former A supporters decide to maximize the
chance of electing C by withdrawing their approval from A, then B can
win instead A=44, B=45, C=11. Thus C has "spoiled" the race
for A. The entry of C caused B to go from a loser to a winner. Because
Approval Voting violates the later-no-harm criterion many voters will
simply "bullet vote" for their favorite, reproducing the same
spoiler dynamics typical of plurality voting.
Because the score assigned
to candidates under Range voting is also dependent on what other candidates
are running, a similar spoiler dynamic can occur under Range voting
as well. In some scenarios Range may relieve the spoiler dynamic, but
not in others. Here is a simple spoiler scenario under Range voting.
If the voter thinks candidate
A is okay, and B is horrible in a two way race, the voter will likely
score A as a 10 and B as a 0.
If there are 100 voters and
55 prefer A>B and 45 B>A, this two-way race could end with a total
score of 550 for A (55 voters giving a 10 and 45 giving a 0) to 450
for B. Thus A is both the de facto majority choice as well as the Range
score winner.
Now comes the spoiler...What
if candidate C decides to run as well? It happens that a significant
portion (let's say 25 out of the 55) of the former A supporters who
care most about issue X view candidate C as a fantastically superior
candidate to A or B (though they still prefer A over B as well). It
seems likely that many of these voters would feel the need to reduce
the score of ten they otherwise would give to A to make room on the
scale so they can indicate how superior C is to A. These 25 voters might
now score the candidates as follows, A=5, B=0, and C=10. In other words,
the score that A now receives from some voters depends on whether C
has entered the race. The B supporters who generally don't care much
about issue X view C as just another version of A, so give this new
candidate a 0 as well. Under this entirely plausible scenario, with
C in the race, now the total scores might be: candidate A now only gets
425 (30 x 10 and 25 x 5), while B still gets 450 (45 x 10) and C gets
250 (25 x 10).
Thus C has "spoiled"
the race for A. The entry of C caused B to go from a loser to a winner.
4.8 Does IRV violate important
election fairness criteria?
No. While every voting method
ever conceived fails some evaluation criteria in some scenarios, IRV
does better than most, and does not violate any of the most important
ones.
A large number of criteria
have been proposed to evaluate voting methods. However, many of these
are mutually exclusive -- that is, any voting method that satisfies
criterion A must of necessity, fail criterion B. There is no perfect
voting method, since no voting method satisfies all of these criteria,
so it is a matter of weighing the relative severity of a potential "pathological"
outcome, and the likelihood of such a scenario occurring in real-world
public elections. Many political scientists have concluded that IRV
is the best and fairest single-winner election method because it satisfies
more of the crucial criteria than other methods, and its potential failings
are relatively minor and unlikely to occur.
Some of the crucial criteria
that IRV satisfies and that other methods, such as Plurality, Approval,
Borda, Range fail include the Later-No-Harm Criterion, the Mutual-Majority
Criterion, and Resistance to Strategic Voting.
[More on these and
other criteria]
4.9 Is the so-called "winner-turns-loser"
or "monotonicity" issue have any real-world significance?
No. The "monotonicity
criterion" has received an inordinate amount of attention by IRV
opponents on the Internet. This is an arcane criterion with almost no
real-world significance. As with traditional two-round runoff elections,
it is conceivable in certain unique scenarios, that if enough (but not
too many) voters were to switch their first preference from their favorite
candidate to their least favorite candidate, that this least favorite
candidate could be changed from a winner into a loser, and their favorite
choice could go from loser to winner. However, simply adding new first-preferences
for a candidate can never cause the candidate to lose -- IRV is monotonic
as far as additional votes are concerned. It is not the additional vote
in favor of a candidate that can cause the candidate to lose, but rather
the change in relative support among the other candidates resulting
from a vote switch. It is the switch away from another candidate, whether
that switch be to the current winner, or some other candidate, that
changes which candidates make it into the runoff and can cause a winner
to turn loser. IRV advocates argue that it is unlikely that the monotonicity
"winner turn loser" dynamic will ever occur in any real-world
elections. Election method experts such as Austan-Smith and Banks have
argued that "monotonicity/nonmonotonicity in electoral systems
is a nonissue."
Because voters need accurate information on how other voters are likely to vote in order to utilize this theoretical strategy, combined with its counter-intuitive nature and great risk of back-firing, make its significance questionable. There is no evidence that this non-monotonicity dynamic has ever occurred in any of the thousands of public IRV elections. Exploiting this non-monotonicity possibility is somewhat more plausible in a traditional two-election runoff system. In runoffs with two rounds of voting, this is a relatively safe strategy because you can move your vote back to your favorite in the final round. It is much more difficult in an instant runoff with a single ballot where insincere votes will stay with the competitor, and thus can back-fire.
Also, it is important to understand that any voting method that satisfies the monotonicity criterion in every situation must also fail the later-no-harm criterion (where ranking an alternate choice may cause your favorite candidate to lose), which most political scientists consider to be of much greater importance. The later-no-harm criterion has been shown to have a dramatic impact on actual voter behavior, with voters "bullet-voting" for a favorite rather than risk hurting this candidate by indicating a second choice. As with all evaluation criterion, it is always a trade-off.
[More on monotonicity]
4.10 Will IRV generally elect the "Condorcet winner?"
Yes, unless that candidate has very little core support. Ironically, IRV may elect Condorcet winners more consistently than supposedly Condorcet voting methods, due to the incentive for such voting strategies as "burying" and "bullet-voting" under Condorcet voting that are absent under IRV.
Some advocates of other voting methods point out that IRV does not necessarily elect the "Condorcet winner." This is a reference to one of dozens of voting method criteria used to compare voting methods. In the 18 th century, the Count de Condorcet of France proposed a way of finding a winner in a multi-candidate race. He proposed that all the candidates be compared in a series of one-on-one races. If there is one candidate who would win every match up, that person is called the "Condorcet winner." Note that the majorities for the Condorcet candidate in different match-ups may be made up of mostly different and oppositional segments of the electorate, rather than a clear single majority. In some scenarios there isn't any such winner, because of a cycle where candidate A would beat, B, B would beat C, but C would beat A (think of the Rock Paper Scissors game). A Condorcet winner need not be a "strong" candidate, but merely a non-alienating or compromise candidate. In other words, a candidate with no strong or "core" support, who would get zero votes in a typical American election, could still be every voter's second choice, and turn out to be the "Condorcet winner." Under IRV a candidate needs to have a substantial amount of first preferences, or core support, in order to advance to the final runoff round, and thus such a "weak" Condorcet winner would not win under IRV. Advocates of IRV argue that IRV strikes a desirable balance between first-preference core support and broad support, and its failure to always elect the Condorcet winner is desirable, rather than a fault.
4.11 Is ranking candidates in order of preference a more valid procedure than making up "scores" as in Range Voting?
Yes. Research in the field of psychology has shown that people are far more accurate, consistent and reliable when ranking choices (ordinal numbers) than when assigning scores (cardinal numbers). A person will consistently rank A over B if that is their preference, but may give them wildly different scores depending on circumstances (such as what other candidates are being considered, current mood, etc.) Most election methods experts, including Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow, dismiss cardinal scoring methods, such as range voting, as invalid means of aggregating group preferences. Of course, there are other failings of Range Voting as well. In fact, one of the world's foremost experts on voting methods, Prof. Nicolaus Tideman, wrote in his recent book, Collective Decisions and Voting, that Range Voting is one of six unsupportable methods because they "have defects that are so serious as to disqualify them from consideration,"
[More on this topic]
ADMINISTRATION OF IRV ELECTIONS
5.1 Is IRV too complicated
for election administrators to handle?
No. Administering an IRV
election can save a significant amount of time and money on the part
of election administrators compared to running two separate elections
in a traditional two-round runoff system. Even in jurisdictions which
have switched to IRV, replacing single-round plurality elections (Takoma
Park, for example), have found the change to be quite manageable. Whenever
new systems are used, there is a transition learning curve, however,
every jurisdiction in the U.S. that has switched to IRV has made the
transition without significant problems. San Francisco, has faced challenges in some recent elections as a result
of problems with their voting machines unrelated to the use of IRV (optical
scanners not detecting certain ink colors).
While the voter's task is extremely
simple, the election administrator's task is somewhat more involved.
The tally procedure takes some explaining but is fundamentally simple
in concept, following the logic of a series of runoffs.
[More on San Francisco and election integrity]
5.2 Does IRV need to cost
more or require buying new voting machines?
Not necessarily. Some jurisdiction
in the U.S. have switched to IRV and purchased new voting machines,
and some have figured out how to conduct the IRV election using existing
voting machines. Those which have purchased new machines, have still
saved money compared to their former system using separate runoff elections.
Some jurisdictions, which did not buy new machines were able to upgrade
software at a nominal cost, while others have organized a "workaround."
the typical workaround involves counting first choices using existing
machines and software, and then conducting a hand-count in the event
that an IRV tally is needed.
5.3 Can IRV elections be
counted manually without much additional time or effort?
Yes. Tallying an IRV election
by hand does not typically involve significantly more effort than conducting
a traditional plurality election hand re-count. This is because
the ballots first get sorted by first choice, and most ballots never
need to be handled again, because the vast majority of ballots typically
are in stacks of the two leading candidates. It is only the small number
of ballots that are in the stacks of eliminated candidates that need
to be looked at again, and sorted into the stacks of the continuing
candidates. However, if there are numerous IRV races on a ballot, the
procedure would need to be repeated for each race, so data-entry of
ballot rankings, or optical scanning of ballots is faster.
No. The assumptions underlying
that fiscal note do not apply to any other jurisdiction, nor even to
Maryland any more. Some opponents of IRV taut the fiscal note attached
to the 2006 IRV bill in Maryland as proof of a very high cost for implementation.
According to Donna Duncan, of the Maryland Election Management Division,
who provided the cost estimates to the legislative staff, those estimates
were based on an extremely tight three-month implementation timeline
based on the bills effective date. All of those cost estimates were
removed from the fiscal note for the 2008 IRV bill. Jurisdictions that
have actually gone through the IRV implementation process have seen
dramatically lower costs than the Maryland estimate. Both Burlington (VT) and Cary (NC) estimate the incremental costs of implementing IRV to be around $10,000, which includes voter education, and substantially less than the cost of holding an entirely separate runoff election. The costs of the Cary (NC) IRV election are discussed in an article by the chair and Secretary of the County Elections board here.
5.5 Can current voting machines
handle IRV ballots without improvements to hardware of software?
This depends on the specific
jurisdiction and machines in use. The
three primary election machine vendors in the United States have
produced optical scan voting machines that have been used for
ranked-choice elections in the United States. Although these systems
are not ideal (some have a practical limit of three rankings per race,
for example), they can be used. It is desirable to have these vendors
upgrade their systems. Since ranked-ballot elections are rapidly
becoming more common in the U.S. voting machine vendors will likely
soon be selling fully compatible machines. There are also "work-around"
options, such as those used in Cary (NC), in which only first choices
were counted by existing voting machines, with a hand tally of
alternate rankings only if there was no initial majority winner.
A report discussing work-arounds for implementing statewide IRV elections that avoid the need to purchase updated voting equipment can be found here.
No. Federal certification
is voluntary under federal law. There are no federal rules applying
to local elections and that federal voting machine guidelines even for
state elections are voluntary, although many states have piggy-backed
onto these guidelines. As of 2008 there was a substantial bottleneck
for getting systems tested by the federally certified independent labs,
though this can be expected to ease over time.
5.7 Does IRV require centralized
counting of ballots?
No. IRV tallies are often
done in local counting centers, but the count must be centrally coordinated.
Some opponents have suggested that all ballots would need to be brought
to a central location, in order to conduct an IRV tally. This is not
the case whether a hand count, or computer aided tally is done. For
example, in Ireland each counting location simply reports their initial
tally to a central election authority, which in turn provides guidance
about which candidate is to be eliminated and have his or her ballots
redistributed with a hand count. Other jurisdictions keep the optical
scan ballots secure in the customary manner, and simply centralize the
ballot data to conduct the IRV tally. It is recommended in such situations
that a random sample of voting machines be had audited to assure the
ballot data conforms with the paper ballots.
5.8 Does IRV mean moving
to DRE voting machines?
Absolutely not. No jurisdiction
in the U.S. has switched to DRE machines as a result of adopting IRV,
or even considered it. Nearly all IRV elections are conducted using
optical scan paper ballots. The key national organization promoting
IRV, FairVote, advocates against the use of DRE machines, and favors
the heightened security and election integrity provided by optical scan
ballots using both paper ballots and a redundant computer record.
[FairVote's position on voting machines and election integrity]
5.9 Does IRV weaken election
integrity?
No. In fact, it can enhance
election integrity. A couple of election integrity activists have
made the erroneous assertion that IRV elections would be difficult to
monitor for integrity. In fact, because ranked ballot optical scanners
capture individual ballot records (rather than just running totals),
they can add a higher level of security and fraud detection than paper-only
elections. It is the redundancy of ballot records (both paper and computer),
made possible by the new generation of optical scanners, that makes
fraud so much more difficult to accomplish and easy to detect (the perpetrator
needs to utilize two distinctly different strategies using different
kinds of resources and overcoming different kinds of security measures
to change BOTH records, to get away with it.)
[More about enhanced
election integrity made possible by IRV]
5.10 Can IRV be manually audited?
Yes. The procedure for manually
auditing a ranked-choice ballot election is a little more involved than
a typical plurality election. There are two elements to such an
audit: confirming that the machine record of ballot rankings matches
the rankings marked on the paper ballots, and confirming that the IRV
vote tallying procedure was properly done. To audit the ballot rankings,
a random sample of voting machines are selected. San Francisco compares
the total number of each ranking reported by the machine to the total
number of each ranking manually counted on the same sample of paper
ballots. A better method is to print a list of each ranking combination
(such as 23 ballots ranked the candidates in order: candidate B, candidate
A, candidate D, candidate C) and then looking at each ballot in the
sample and checking off each corresponding ballot type on the list,
until every ballot has been looked at and every ballot ranking on the
list is checked off. There are several ways too confirm the IRV tallying
algorithm. San Francisco runs the software again for the sample of ballots
only, while also doing a manual IRV tally with the paper ballots, to
confirm the results match. A better procedure is to run an IRV tally
of all ballot data using different means (such as independent software,
or just a basic spreadsheet program). Cities such as Burlington (VT)
and San Francisco (CA) post all of the ballot records on the Internet
so that anybody who wishes can double check the tally on their own as
well. This creates greater integrity than is typical of any customary
election audit.
[More on IRV auditing procedures]
5.11 Does IRV delay announcing
election results?
Not necessarily. As with typical plurality elections, unofficial results can usually be announced quickly. And as with typical plurality elections, there is always some chance that the final official results could be different. With IRV, all precincts must report before it can be determined if a candidate has an immediate majority, and if not, which candidates need to be eliminated in the next round of the count. However, it is certainly possible to immediately provide unofficial results by running the tally software on partial returns (recognizing that, as with any unofficial results, there remains a possibility that the outcome may change when all provisional ballots or absentee ballots are included). As an example, when Burlington (VT) held its first IRV election for mayor in 2006, the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. and the IRV tally was done and the final results were announced just over an hour and a half later, at 8:37 p.m. If a jurisdiction does not use voting machine hardware or software that can automate the tally, the final election results may well be delayed for a day or two, while a hand count is done. Nearly all such jurisdictions can at least immediately release first-choice results, which may reveal a majority winner, or indicate which one or two candidates are likely to win the instant runoff when it is completed.
5.12 Opponents of IRV have asserted that using IRV in Pierce County cost over four dollars
per registered voter. Can that be true?
No. To come up with
that number required some creative accounting tricks. When a jurisdiction
purchases new voting equipment or software, that will last for many
years, is it appropriate to count that investment as an expense for
a single election, or to spread that cost out over the life of the software?
Clearly the latter. And of course, these opponents fail to mention the
savings achieved through IRV that can be achieved by eliminating the
need for a separate election in either the pick-a-party primary or a
possible top-two primary system being discussed as the alternative,
which can result in a net savings for the county.
