On December 4, the California Secretary of State certified vote-counting equipment that is already being used in Alameda County, California, for the purpose of letting the city of Oakland use Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections. See this story. The voters of Oakland voted to use IRV in 2006, so they have been waiting a long time. There will now be only one round of city elections in Oakland, to be held in November 2010.
Only charter cities in California may use IRV for their own elections. But, Oakland is a charter city.
Hey, this is great! I’d like to see it in Cinncinati, where they have a 9 member at-large council…or anywhere in Ohio.
(Waiting for Demorep to post that IRV=Hitler)
IRV is a scam. Dems are pushing for IRV because they know the traditional run-off favors candidates where voter turn out is low. Oh wow? Conservatives come out in higher rates in small elections. So the more dedicated disciplined voter must be punished. The traditional run-off has been around since the start of the country. Now liberals want to steal elections through IRV. Just put in many other liberal candidates. The conservative choice will always be on the bottom of the Democrat and liberal candidate when ranked. You can get the most votes and still loose. This occurs in IRV. It is a SCAM.
California Screamer doesn’t like IRV because it makes higher turnout elections the decisive ones, but sorry, thinking otherwise is not a “scam.” Conservatives can win high turnout elections — remember George Bush in 2004, winning the most popular votes ever cast in history to that point? Remember Ronald Reagan winning a landslide in 1984?
At the same time, toth major parties can lose races due to split votes, and conservatives just lost a special house race New York in part due to split votes. This is a democracy issue, not a partisan one — standing up for the principle of voters having more choices and the assurance that winners aren’t being elected despite being the candidate most voter oppose.
And holding runoffs cost a bazillion dollars. OR if there is a close election (2008 Minnesota Senatorial) there is a huge legal cost.
No one is forced to vote for more than one preference under IRV though.
#1 You are getting the right idea.
How often will a Stalin clone and a Hitler clone be in the final top 2 IF IRV is used — during rough and tough times — 1860, 1932, 2000, 2004, 2008, etc. — with the Stalin or Hitler clone winner claiming a IRV mighty majority MANDATE — for the party hack extremist agenda involved ???
See the DESTRUCTION of Freedom in Germany due to the MORON / senile Prez Hindenburg APPOINTMENT of Hitler in Jan. 1933 >>>> nazi tyranny 1933-1945 with about 70,000,000 DEAD humans in World War II due to Hitler and the other fascist statist control freak regimes.
IRV ignores most of the data in a Place Votes Table — regardless of the EVIL math MORONS hyping IRV.
i.e. a third choice may be the *moderate* of the bunch who loses with IRV.
34 H–W–S
33 S–W–H
16 W–H–S
16 W–S–H
99
Who wins with a simple YES or NO vote on each choice ???
H Hitler, S Stalin, W Washington, George — HERO U.S.A. General of the American Revolution.
Of course in this New Age of EVIL, all sorts of hypsters are lurking around with the latest and greatest statutory *fixes* for everything — related to Ponzi and Madoff brainwashing schemes — IRV, NPV, etc. etc.
P.R. and nonpartisan A.V. — NO primaries are needed — pending advanced public education about head to head math.
Yes, that was the re-post I was waiting for. Thanks.
Vaughn, I would really caution you against pushing for IRV for city council, basically switching it from at large to single member districts.
It doesn’t matter which voting system you use for a single member district. Even with a Condorcet system, it will be non proportional.
I know Cincinnati has attempted it before (and succeeded in the first half of the Century), but you should not give up on single transferable vote. It’s a proportional system, something that is impossible under multi member plurality (the unfortunate favorite for at large in the US) and any single member voting system.
IRV will allow the person with the most votes to lose. In a tight 3 way race. The person with the most vote gets too many 3rd choices and the other candidate can win without a mandate. Pure scam.
The whole reason for run-off elections is to make sure a majority of voters decided an elections. The electorate can be assured that a majority elected their leader. No gimmicks. If it aint broke don’t fix it.
#8 Your post doesn’t make sense. And further, our election system IS broke, and we do need to fix it.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner — since the seat winners happen to have an EQUAL vote (i.e. ONE) in the meetings of legislative bodies.
SOOOOOO difficult for the armies of math MORONS on Mother Earth who may NOT be able to detect that 2 is more than 1 — directly or indirectly.