Voice of the people
Why Vote Again?


By Dan Johnson-Weinberger
Published March 30th 2003 in Chicago Tribune
I live in one of the few wards that will hold a runoff election for the Chicago City Council on Tuesday. These runoffs will cost the city tens of thousands of dollars.

We should follow the lead of London and Dublin and use instant runoff voting, where voters get to pick their favorite candidate and  their second-choice candidate at the same time.

Instead of holding a separate runoff election, we would just count the second-choice votes of the people who voted for an eliminated candidate. Why pay for two elections when we can get the job done in
one?
IRV Soars in Twin Cities, FairVote Corrects the Pundits on Meaning of Election Night '09
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers.  Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections;  the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.

And as pundits try to make hay out of the national implications of Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, Rob Richie in the Huffington Post concludes that the gubernatorial elections have little bearing on federal elections.

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