By Shaun Stenshol
Published September 26th 2004 in Maui News
The Republicans are up to their old tricks of kicking people off the
voter rolls, and the Democrats are trying their best to deny ballot
status to a genuine alternative candidate.
The anti-democratic actions of these two political parties will continue so long as people keep voting for them, or until we have a fair and clean election system.
One reform that will go a long way toward making Hawaii a strong democracy is Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting. IRV is a voting system that ensures a winning candidate will receive a majority of votes rather than a simple plurality.
If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes is eliminated. The second-place votes of the voters for this candidate are then counted as first-place votes for the remaining candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate gets a majority and is declared the winner. There are no ���spoiler��� candidates with an IRV election system.
IRV has been used in Australia and Ireland for many years. San Francisco will use IRV to elect its board of supervisors (equivalent to our County Council) this November. IRV legislation has even been brought before the Hawaii State Legislature as recently as 2001 and 2003.
For more information on IRV, please visit www.fairvote.org.
Shaun Stenshol
Green Party Candidate
State Senate District 6
Haiku
The anti-democratic actions of these two political parties will continue so long as people keep voting for them, or until we have a fair and clean election system.
One reform that will go a long way toward making Hawaii a strong democracy is Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting. IRV is a voting system that ensures a winning candidate will receive a majority of votes rather than a simple plurality.
If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes is eliminated. The second-place votes of the voters for this candidate are then counted as first-place votes for the remaining candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate gets a majority and is declared the winner. There are no ���spoiler��� candidates with an IRV election system.
IRV has been used in Australia and Ireland for many years. San Francisco will use IRV to elect its board of supervisors (equivalent to our County Council) this November. IRV legislation has even been brought before the Hawaii State Legislature as recently as 2001 and 2003.
For more information on IRV, please visit www.fairvote.org.
Shaun Stenshol
Green Party Candidate
State Senate District 6
Haiku
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.