On June 26, Ronald Reagan won AOL’s “Greatest American” online poll, receiving 24% of the vote. Abraham Lincoln received 23.56%, Martin Luther King Jr. won 19.7%, George Washington received 17.7%, and Benjamin Franklin won 14.9% of the vote.Chosen by such a slim margin in a highly fractured field of candidates, Reagan might not reflect the choices of the majority. In fact, 76% of voters chose another candidate than Reagan as their first choice. Next year, AOL should consider using a system of instant runoff voting (IRV), which would require voters to rank as many candidates as they chose, and would produce a consensus candidate with majority support. IRV is currently used by Academy of Motion Pictures to decide nominations for the Oscars.
[See FairVote’s press release]
[How IRV works]
On June 3rd at the 2005 “Take Back America” Conference held in
Washington D.C., Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean
encouraged the adoption of instant runoff voting (IRV) as a way to
assure majority winners and increase voter turnout. Said Dean, “I
think we ought to have instant runoff voting. I think that brings
people in to the polls. If there's a third party, fine.
They get a choice. We get majorities that win, and it brings more
people in.”
On May 26, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Georgia’s only
Congresswoman, introduced the Voter Choice Act (HR 2690). The bill
features a requirement that starting in 2008, all federal elections to
elect a single winner would use instant runoff voting. It also would
assist states with the costs of implementing IRV.
