Section 5
Areas for Further Study
Due to time constraints, the Commission is not making detailed recommendations in
certain areas that could fall within the scope of our original charge.
While the Commission is familiar with the 1998 instant runoff voting bill, H.665, we
did not delve into the details of its functioning. We recommend it generally, while
leaving the drafting details to the appropriate legislative committees and legislative
counsel.
The Commission is not making any recommendations about how the IRV ballot should be
designed, other than that a balance must be struck between ease for the voter and ease for
the polling officials. The Commission examined numerous ballot designs used around North
America and around the world for both hand counts and machine-read ballots, and concluded
ballot redesign should not be an obstacle to the adoption of IRV. The principles of good
ballot design already exist in Vermont's statutes, which give authority to the
Secretary of State to specify approved designs through rules.
Finally, while the Commission did take some expert
testimony and did give some consideration to the use of preference voting
in the election of legislators, we are not prepared to give a
recommendation in this area. Arguments were made about the desirability
and rejuvenation of our democracy that could result from the adoption of
some form of proportional representation for the election of legislators.
We do believe this is an area worthy of continued examination by the
General Assembly (either by committee or special citizen commission). We
agree with critics of our existing winner-take-all legislative races that
such a voting system tends to under-represent minority voices within the
"people's house" and thus constricts political debate and weakens public
interest in electoral participation. The fact that the U.S. has, by far,
the lowest rate of voter participation of any developed democracy is of
great concern to us. Proportional representation is certainly an option
that should be considered, but is beyond the limits of this report.
