Election law professor Ned B. Foley has written this column, saying that not only is instant runoff voting desirable in presidential elections, it is the single most important election law reform that should be made. He discusses the 2016 presidential election at length, with reference to Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Foley is at Moritz College of Law in Ohio, which has a special emphasis on election law. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This is an excellent proposal. Professor Foley describes how both Instant Runoff and Condorcet voting can be used simultaneously to insure that a candidate always gets a majority vote in any election.
The best thing about this proposal is that any state can adopt it for Presidential voting by itself at any time. It wouldn’t require a constitutional amendment, or an interstate compact, like the National Popular Vote proposal.
Agreed. Good stuff.
This proposal greatly complicates the implementation the National Popular Vote compact, if NPV is ever adopted by enough states to make it go into effect. For the purpose of determining the NPV winner, how would the results in the IRV state or states be treated? By looking at first choices only? By looking at the final round between the two strongest candidates? (The meaning of the second possibility is unclear in the case of a Condorcet count.) The language of the NPV compact doesn’t contemplate the possibility of any vote counting rule other than plurality.
@ Bob Richard:
I would think that if NPV is adopted, then the count would be based on the final, certified result from a given state. This would enhance the atractiveness of IRV because it would boost any state’s contribution to the final vote total for a candidate, encourage more states to adopt it, and more likely assure that the winner of the Presidential election has a MAJORITY of the national popular vote as well.
Walt, I understand your general point. But in an IRV election, what constitutes the “final, certified result”. Same question about a Condorcet election (where I think it’s even harder to answer). Unless the answers are spelled out in the terms of the compact itself (and currently they are not), these questions would become highly politicized and divisive.
I do not favor abolishing the Electoral College, but I like this proposal. The authors make an excellent point about Trump getting all of Michigan’s EVs even though a majority of the voters in that state didn’t support him. In response to this, I’ve advocated WTA only for a candidate who gets a majority of a state’s EVs, and a proportional allocation otherwise, but I could support this as well.
States could hold a conventional runoff.
Alternatively, each candidate could have additional electors associated with them that would meet to determine the final set of electors.
For example, Texas has 150 House of Representative districts. Each presidential candidate would name one state elector for each House District. The state electors would be entitled to vote the number of popular votes that their presidential candidate received in each district.
When the state electors met, they would cast their share of the popular vote for the presidential candidate they are associated with. The presidential candidates would be eliminated one by one, and state electors associated with the presidential candidate would be free to vote their popular votes for a continuing candidate.
Approval Voting with D’Hondt counting would be far better.