Houston Can Win With IRV

The city of Houston is being urged to replace its troubled system of runoffs with instant runoff voting. As recent city elections demonstrated, the current system undermines the legitimacy of the entire election process. A democracy cannot claim to be of the people by the people when only 4% of the city’s registered voters took part in the cumbersome December 10th runoff for an at-large city council seat.

In an Op.-Ed. to the Houston Chronicle, political science professor Mark Jones details just how the city would benefit upon adoption of an IRV system. The idea of ensuring the will of the majority through the use of candidate ranking is a concept that has taken hold in many other cities around the nation, most notably in San Francisco where IRV is now preferred by a large majority of the electorate. The city of Houston stands to save millions of taxpayer dollars that are desperately needed for essential public services by eliminating the cost of holding runoff elections.

[ Read Mark Jones' Op-Ed. in The Houston Chronicle ]

Citizens task force looks to IRV to improve elections

The San Diego City Council unanimously approved creating a citizens task force to look at ways to make it easier to vote in the city. The 10-member panel will investigate the use of IRV, among other reforms. The task force comes after a divisive mayor's race in 2004 when a write-in candidate split the electorate and gave the city a winner with only 35% of the vote.

In contrast, San Francisco has had positive elections of late, effectively using IRV to elect its Board of Supervisors. A recent study by FairVote pointed to a near tripling of voter turnout under the new, highly-preferred election system, over projections based on the previous runoff system.

[ Read about it in the San Diego Union Tribune ]
[ Study on Voter Turnout in San Francisco ]

Across the Globe, '06 Presidential Elections
Turn to Majority Runoffs

Majority requirements the norm in modern democracies

The principle that the majority should rule is widespread and well established internationally, accomplished by proportional voting in legislative elections and majority voting in presidential elections.

Chile elected its first female president on January 15th after Michelle Bachelet triumphed over a rival in a second round of counting. Finland also entered a runoff on January 30th after the vote fragmented across three major lines during the first election.

On a more dramatic note, thousands of Haitians took to the streets of Port au-Prince after the February 7th elections, when frontrunner Rene Preval appeared to just miss the majority threshold. Later recounts narrowly avoided a runoff.

[ More on these 2006 presidential elections ]
[ Comparison: Which countries use majority runoffs? ]
[ IRV vs the runoff ]