While the nation's pundit-class waits in suspense to see the final
outcome in the final three U.S. Senate races, the so-called "spoiler"
problem is rearing its ugly head again. In all three races, independent
and third-party candidates earned enough support to deny the final
winners a majority of the vote. But this November, Memphis (TN)
addressed this problem by overwhelmingly passing instant runoff voting
(IRV) by 70% for city races. Telluride also approved IRV handily and will be heading towards implementation.Meanwhile, Pierce County (WA) and San Francisco (CA) held successful elections using IRV. In Pierce County, the reform is already changing political dynamics, with newspapers endorsing first choice and second choice candidates, and parties running more than one candidate for office without fear of dividing their vote.
[Website for the successful Memphis IRV Campaign]
[San Francisco election results]
[Pierce County Election results]
New Zealand continues to show leadership in providing its voters with
fair representation and meaningful ballot choices. After a three-week
postal voting campaign, on September 27th the city of Wellington (the
nation's capital and its second largest city) announced that a majority
voted to keep the choice voting method of proportional representation for
city council elections and instant runoff voting for its mayoral
elections. Proponents won based on such arguments as choice voting
leading to the election of more women and young candidates to
office.
On August 22, 2008, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law SB 439, allowing all municipalities to adopt ranked ballots for overseas voters by ordinance when a primary occurs close to the general election. Overseas voters are often disenfranchised when this happens, because election officials do not have sufficient time to print and mail ballots. Under the Illinois law, however, military and other overseas voters will rank candidates in the primary election, and their ranked ballots can then be used to determine their vote in the general election. Springfield (IL) adopted this practice via ballot measure with an affirmative vote of 91% last year. Ranked choice ballots are already in use for overseas voters in Arkansas, Louisiana and South Carolina. A similar Bill is also currently being considered in California.
