By Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff
Published December 19th 2002
To: Whom It May Concern
From: Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff
Re: Instant Runoff Voting
Date: 12/19/2002
The Republcan Party of Utah believes in majority rule. That's why we adopted instant runoff voting for party elections and U.S. Congressional nominations. We are also looking to adopt IRV for state elections. Whenever there are more than two candidates in a race, there is a risk that the majority of voters will split among two or more appealing candidates, leaving a candidate with only narrow support as the "top vote getter." The old "plurality winner" rules simply do not assure fair and representative winners. We took the advice of Robert's Rules of ORder, which recommends instant runoff voting (called "preferential voting"), and have been very satisfied with the result. Some people expressed concern that it sounded complicated, but we discovered that voters had no difficulty with the rank-order ballots. Not only does it appear to be fair and accurate, but saves substantial time from the old multiple ballot system, where delegates would leave between successive ballots.
From: Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff
Re: Instant Runoff Voting
Date: 12/19/2002
The Republcan Party of Utah believes in majority rule. That's why we adopted instant runoff voting for party elections and U.S. Congressional nominations. We are also looking to adopt IRV for state elections. Whenever there are more than two candidates in a race, there is a risk that the majority of voters will split among two or more appealing candidates, leaving a candidate with only narrow support as the "top vote getter." The old "plurality winner" rules simply do not assure fair and representative winners. We took the advice of Robert's Rules of ORder, which recommends instant runoff voting (called "preferential voting"), and have been very satisfied with the result. Some people expressed concern that it sounded complicated, but we discovered that voters had no difficulty with the rank-order ballots. Not only does it appear to be fair and accurate, but saves substantial time from the old multiple ballot system, where delegates would leave between successive ballots.
