The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear the case on whether Instant Runoff Voting is consistent with the State Constitution on May 13. The lower court had ruled that there is no conflict between Minneapolis’ IRV law and the State Constitution. The State Supreme Court expedited this case so that the city will have an opportunity to use IRV this year if the city wins in court again.
Is there any jurisdiction in the U.S. that uses approval voting?
Arthur,
I don’t think so, but there’s a great page about approval voting here:
http://scorevoting.net/Approval.html
It’s unfortunate that IRV is gaining ground instead of approval voting, when AV is so far superior and strategy-resistant — and SIMPLER.
AV is NOT strategy-resistant at all! Under normal strategy, AV reverts to typical plurality-win rules, which we know suck.
Both IRV and approval voting would be improvements over the current system for third party candidates who are trying to get their message out there. Instead of wasting our energy fighting one another, we should be working together for any system that acheives this end.
The Minnesota issue goes back several decades ago where some alternative voting method was being used and the state court voided the law. I am blanking on the case, but it was before most of us were born.
So, the anti-IRV crowd is trying to argue that it is similar enough to his old case, to get it voided. This is largely because the more conservative groups fear that if the INP or Greens are less likely to be a spoiler, more Democrats will win.
“The Minnesota issue goes back several decades ago where some alternative voting method was being used and the state court voided the law. I am blanking on the case, but it was before most of us were born.”
Indeed. The case was from 1915, and it dealt with Bucklin voting. I’m also drawing a blank on the name of the case.
Wikipedia says the case was _Brown v. Smallwood_, 130 Minn. 492, 153 N.W. 953 (Google confirms the date of 1915). FWIW, the reason for the decision, according to Wikipedia, was that — if there was no majority on the first round of Bucklin voting — the system in effect gave people who expressed multiple preferences more votes than people who expressed only one preference . . . which violated the state Constitution.
I’m with Erik that reformers should stop shooting at each other and focus on the deficient status quo, but given that IRV is relentlessly attacked by advocates of other reforms that aren’t gaining any traction, note that Brown v. Smallwood suggests that approval voting is more likely to run into constitutional issues in that state than IRV. IRV of course is a system where a voter only has one vote that counts in any round of counting.
And, just to be factual, one of the few private associations with approval voting has been the Dartmouth Alumni elections, but there’s currently an election taking place where alumni voters are deciding whether to repeal it based on a belief that strategic voting has been a problem. The Dartmouth student paper editorialized for its repeal this month, saying: “When the alumni electorate fails to take advantage of the approval voting process, the three required Alumni Council candidates tend to split the majority vote, giving petition candidates an advantage. By reducing the number of Alumni Council candidates, and instituting a more traditional one-person, one-vote system, trustee elections will become more democratic  and will more accurately reflect the desires of our alumni base.”
Meanwhile, IRV is used for dozens and dozens of major student and private association elections in addition to major governmental elections and these kinds of tactical voting concerns just don’t come up. See
http://fairvote.org/?page=1964
Clearly, if election law reform advocates can not work together, find common ground, build coalitions and act like adults, little will get done.
IRV is probably easier to sell to Democrats and Republicans then proportional representation, even through I know many people who loath the former and adore the later.