The November 18 issue of the Oakland Tribune, the leading newspaper of California’s East Bay region, has this op-ed calling on California election officials to let Oakland and Berkeley implement Instant Runoff Voting for their own city elections. Voters in both cities voted for IRV years ago, but the Secretary of State has delayed approving vote-counting machines that can handle IRV.
Closely related to this, there is are extensive rebuttals to various critics of IRV, including mayoral candidate Don Perata, in this blog thread.
IRV does not help third parties. It helps maintain 2 party dominance whereever it has been used extensively. (which isn’t many place).
Why not promote something that is proven to strengthen third parties, like Fusion Voting?
It actually works, as seen in New York where it gets some use.
Oregon just adopted Fusion voting.
The good thing about Fusion besides that it really does help third parties it that it is not dependent on more complex and less transparent technology. And you can’t hurt your preferred candidate by voting for them.
IRV is very complex, is not additive and cannot be tallied at the polling places. It also cuts down on debate.
Just google Fusion Voting.
Thanks.
IRV and STV (which is just IRV in multi-winner elections) do help minor parties. IRV caused the Progressive Party of Vermont to win the last Mayoralty election in Burlington, Vermont. STV caused the American Labor Party, the Communist Party, and the City Fusion Party, to elect their own members to the New York city council when it was used 1937-1945. IRV, if it had existed in Florida in 2000 for the presidential election, would have prevented the terrible angst and hostility directed toward the Green Party.
IRV ignores most of the data in a Place Votes Table.
2 examples — the *middle* is split or almost gone.
34 H—W—S
33 S—W—H
16 W—H—S
16 W—S—H
99
H 34—16—49
S 33—16—50
W 32—67—0
—————
49 H—W—S
49 S—W—H
1 W—H—S
99
H 49—1—49
S 49—0—49
W 1—98—0
Who wins with Approval Voting ???
Who wins head to head Condorcet Voting ???
Who wins by adding 1st and 2nd place votes (Bucklin method) ???
ONE guess.
H Hitler clone
S Stalin clone
W Washington, George clone — the *moderate* of the group
The IRV fanatic math MORONS have set back REAL election reforms about 6,000 years.
IF and when a Hitler or Stalin clone gets elected using IRV, then NO *REAL* election reforms may be possible for the indefinite future — assuming that any future elections will be possible in a New Age computerized TYRANT regime.
********
P.R. and nonpartisan A.V. — regardless of ALL math MORONS and pre-school juveniles in diapers on this list.
Richard:
“IRV caused the Progressive Party of Vermont to win the last Mayoralty election ” There’s correlation and causation. IRV didn’t cause this.
Burlington elected a Democratic Socialist under the old system as well.
Election reform is needed. Remember when Congress was suppposed to represent at least 30,000 people? If this were the case now, our House would have 10,000 members. But we could increase the size of the House to about 1,000. Each state would get at least an extra seat.
The op-ed references a study in San Francisco based on the 2005 election, which neglected the fact that November 2005 was a statewide special election considering several initiatives backed by Governor Schwarzenegger, and which was the main driver for turnout.
In 2009, turnout in San Francsisco was 1/3 of that in 2005, and barely above the 2001 runoff which triggered use of IRV in the first place.
I support fusion too, but it is no designed to encourage multiple candidacies, but multiple party labels.
For a discussion of IRV that addresses some of Joyce McCloy’s concerns.
http://www.fairvote.org/blog/2009/10/single-winner-reform-and-why-fairvote-supports-instant-runoff-voting/
As to turnout, the point for Jim is that December runoff turnout is generally going to be much lower than the November election. By avoiding December runoffs, IRV boosts turnout in the decisive round.
The last conventional mayoral runoff in San Francisco (in 2003) had substantially higher turnout than the general election (252,000 vs. 208,000)
Rob Richie has in fact cited the turnout for the 2005 special statewide election, ignoring the fact that 15% of voters in San Francisco did not vote in the top of the ballot local IRV race, and 24% skipped the contested treasurer race. That election has also been cited as demonstrating that IRV was even more substantially beneficial to turnout in minority communities, but the turnout was likely driven by the statewide issues, in which Democrats were trying to inflict an electoral defeat on the Governor.
Turnout for the November 2001 San Francisco election was about 24% less than the the November 2009 San Francisco, despite widespread adoption of permanent vote-by-mail (in 2001, 28% of votes were by mail, while in 2009 it was 70%).
It was a historical anomaly that a runoff was required in 2001, one that could have been avoided had a reasonable reform been adopted in 1972. Before that time, SF had used plurality elections. It was proposed to go to a Top 2 primary system for all the executive/administrative offices. But to deal with the problem of two elections in Year MOD 4 = 1 years, it was proposed that Treasurer be made appointive, and City Attorney be moved to even years so that the general election could be in June and the extremely rare runoff could be held in November (the same system that had been used for the Assessor in 2002.
That proposition was defeated and a conventional runoff was then approved for the mayoral race. After the supervisors races were switched to district elections (the first time), runoffs were approved for all offices, but were rarely used for citywide offices other than mayor.
San Francisco would be better off switching all executive/administrative offices to the same year as the mayoral election, and returning to a conventional runoff. The mayor’s race would ordinarily have a runoff, so it wouldn’t matter or not if there was a runoff for the other offices.
In addition, the supervisor races should be moved back to odd year elections so that they aren’t buried under the presidential, gubernatorial, congressional, and legislative races. A conventional runoff would then let voters in districts consider who they wanted to represent them among the two candidates who had the most support.