On January 3, the Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Florida turned in 3,225 signatures to put an initiative on the Sarasota city ballot, to use IRV for city elections. Currently, the city (which has non-partisan elections) holds an “old-fashioned” run-off if no one gets 50% the first time, which usually costs about $37,000.
The initiative was used because the Sarasota City Commission refuses to vote for the idea.
Thank you for advertising our campaign. 🙂
IRV campaigns went three for three in 2006, in jurisdictions averaging half a million people. See more about what it takes to win at http://www.fairvote.org/irv
Thanks Richard for tracking this and so many other imporant democracy issues.
It is quite plausible that replacing ordinary top-2 runoff (T2R) by “instant” runoff (IRV) is NOT an improvement, and also does NOT save money. One way it definitely is not an improvement is, IRV leads to massive 2-party domination
(in every country IRV tried) whereas T2R breaks 2-party domination (in 23 of 27 countries tried). One way it
definitely fails to save money is, IRV cannot be run on
old fashioned voting machines, while T2R can. IRV cannot be counted in precincts while T2R can. The cost of new voting machines can easily be in the $multimillions, dwarfing any so called “savings.”
To learn about simpler and superior voting systems –
range voting and approval voting – which can be counted
in precincts, with old fashioned machines, and which
do not require 2 rounds (thus saving more money than
either T2R or IRV), see http://rangevoting.org
which also has numerous subpages about IRV and its many flaws.