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Majority rule
Will Minneapolis adopt instant-runoff voting?
Third party candidates, whether from the Green or Constitution parties, are inevitably decried as spoilers. This year's primary pinata in this regard is Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson. If Gov. Tim Pawlenty squeaks out a victory over attorney general Mike Hatch, Democrats will almost certainly blame Hutchinson for costing them the state's top office.
Minneapolis residents will have a chance to vote on a measure this election day that would help eliminate such scapegoating of third-party candidates. Voters will choose whether to adopt instant-runoff voting in municipal elections. Under such a system voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of top choices, the lowest vote getter is eliminated. This process is repeated until one candidate achieves a majority. Thus every elected official would be put into office by more than half of the people voting.
Backers of the initiative point to a couple of other positive impacts that ranked ballots would have on the electoral process. For starters it would allow the city to eliminate low-turnout primary elections, thus reducing costs and focusing voter attention on the general election. Additionally proponents argue that it would create a disincentive for politicians to engage in nasty, divisive campaigns. "They can't win just by going after a narrow base," says Tony Solgard, president of Fair Vote Minnesota, one of the chief backers of the ballot measure. "They have an incentive to reach out to supporters of their rivals."
Previous attempts to introduce IRV in Minnesota have been stymied. In 2004 the Roseville City Council passed a measure that would have allowed ranked ballots to be used in municipal elections. But because Roseville is not a "home rule" city it had to seek permission from the legislature for the change in election rules. The senate passed the measure, but it got scuttled in the house. Many political observers attributed the derailing of the IRV measure to opposition from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state's powerful anti-abortion organization.
In the last decade, however, IRV has slowly been making inroads across the country. Municipalities such as San Francisco and Burlington, Vermont have adopted ranked ballots, while voters in three other cities will weigh in on ballot measures similar to the one in Minneapolis on election day.
Pretty much every elected official in Minneapolis is supporting the measure, from Mayor R.T. Rybak on down to library board members. DFL gubernatorial contender Mike Hatch has also endorsed the ballot initiative. IRV boosters say the biggest impediment to getting the measure passed is ignorance on the part of voters. "Making a change like this is not easy," says Solgard. "There's a lot of people who have never heard of it before."
Posted by Paul Demko at October 19, 2006 12:26 PM
« 10/19 Morning Communiqué | Main | Michele Bachmann: too hot? »
Comments
One has to wonder, just how scared must third party candidates be of spoiling elections, that they'd want to hang themselves in the IRV noose. IRV has produced two-party domination in Australia, Ireland, Malta, and Fiji, the countries where it has been substantially used for many years. Yet the 17 countries that employ traditional runoff voting have managed to break free of this duopoly, giving third parties a chance to lead. And nearly two dozen US cities have implemented IRV in the past (the largest being New York City in 1936), only to have almost entirely reverted to plurality.
An example of IRV's "success" can be seen in the following scenario.
% of Voters -- How They Voted
15% Nader > Gore > Bush
40% Gore > Nader > Bush
45% Bush > Gore > Nader
Under a plurality election, Bush would win with 45% of the votes. But with IRV, Nader is eliminated, and the Nader ballots go to their second choice, Gore, who wins with 55%. It appears that the spoiler effect is eliminated. But what if the third parties get their wish, and become popular enough to win elections in the future? Let's look at this hypothetical scenario.
% of Voters -- How They Voted
29% Nader > Gore > Bush
28% Gore > Nader > Bush
43% Bush > Gore > Nader
Gore goes down first, transferring 28% of the votes to Nader, who beats Bush with 57%. Yet Gore is preferred to Nader by 71% of the voters! In fact if Bush were to drop out, that's exactly the result we'd get from the _same ballots_. This happens because IRV fails to consider that the Bush voters prefer Gore to Nader. So much for the myth that IRV prevents "wasted" votes. Clearly Mr. Demko was wrong when he said, "Thus [with IRV] every elected official would be put into office by more than half of the people voting."
Now imagine what would happen if even a small fraction of the Bush voters were to strategically place Gore first. Gore would beat Nader, and take the win, giving those Bush voters their second choice, instead of their last choice. So much for the myth that IRV prevents strategic voting!
What third parties need is a voting system that eliminates the spoiler problem, and doesn't betray them if they do get enough support to win. That system is Range Voting (rangevoting.org). With Range Voting, voters simply rate any candidate they care to, and the candidate with the highest average rating wins. This system is intuitive, and simple to implement and use. It also completely eliminates the incentive to betray your favorite so that you don't get the lesser of two evils.
Voters need to be skeptical and discriminating when it comes to enacting reform. Not all reform is good reform. Listen to the facts, not the hype. Vote NO on the IRV initiative. Good democracy requires that voters demand better.
Clay Shentrup
Seattle, WA
http://RangeVoting.org/
Posted by: Clay Shentrup at October 19, 2006 10:35 PM