Voters in three California cities, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro, approved use if Instant-Runoff Voting in certain city elections, some time ago. However, IRV has not yet been used in those cities because the vote-counting systems haven’t been ready for it. All three cities are in Alameda County, which uses electronic vote-counting equipment made by Sequoia Voting Systems.
According to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, Sequoia expects to have the machines ready in time to use IRV in city elections in the spring of 2008.
Instant Runoff Voting cannot be performed on ordinary plurality voting machines. This problem could have been solved had voters chosen to instead use the vastly superior Range Voting – score all the candidates and elect the one with the highest average. This could be done with ordinary plurality voting machines, and would have saved these cities a LOT of money, as well as eliminated spoilers (which IRV does NOT) and helping third parties have a chance (IRV leads to two-party domination).
Clay Shentrup
Seattle, WA
206.203.6619