Howard Dean, former national chair of the Democratic National Committee, has this op-ed in the February 26 issue of the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press. His op-ed asks Burlington voters to retain Instant Runoff Voting. He points out that the Democratic Party nominee lost the Mayor’s election in both 2006 and 2009 in Burlington, but he still supports IRV and he also predicts the Democratic nominee will win the Mayor’s election in 2012.
At the press conference, Dean said Burlington has only used IRV once. He was quickly corrected.
He said his candidate did not win. The press did not ask why he didn’t rank the other candidates. What is the purpose of having and promoting IRV if you only vote for one candidate? His vote was discarded.
Perhaps he just doesn’t understand the concept.
Dean does not understand that:
1. The Democratic Mayoral candidate was the pairwise majority favorite of all voters and is the centrist candidate favored by the most number of voters, and that
2. IRV tends to eliminate the centrist candidates who are the pairwise favorite and elect extreme right or extreme left candidates due to IRV’s allowing the voters of the least favorite candidates to have their 2nd choice votes determine who is eliminated next while the voters of the most popular candidates never have their 2nd choice candidates counted when their first choice candidates lose, including the group whose 1st choice makes it to the final counting round and then loses.
Thus the Democrat is much more likely to win if Burlington abandons IRV and goes back to plurality. Also plurality meets more of Arrow’s fairness criteria than does IRV, which is fundamentally unfair and treats voters’ votes unequally.
IRV is suspiciously well-funded.
The two-round system (common throughout the world) does a better job of implementing majority rule. Also-obviously-better than FPTP.
A far better reform than IRV-but, alas, one with no sugar daddy-would be electing one house of the state legislature via a form of PR. All states except NE have bicameral legislatures. Where is the utility in electing mirror-image houses? Since all states but one seem committed to bicameralism one house should be elected by PR to enable representation for underrepresented minorities of all types-not just the
state-designated official-victim groups.
Kathy, you are very incorrect to say that a Democrat would be more likely to the mayorship under plurality. The data say exactly the opposite. Because the Democrat and Progressive usually split the vote, plurality would make it far more likely that a Republican becomes mayor, an outcome that, again according to the election data, would be a worse reflection of what Burlington voters want. Abandoning IRV would be a big step backwards for Burlington.
Greg, you are dead wrong. It isn’t the people’s fault if there are two liberal parties. Voting must be kept simple. Whoever wins, wins. It does not matter if vote splitting is an issue. Don’t blame the Republicans for the left wingers in Burlington splitting each other’s votes.
Liberal plot to throw out the majority rule concept. They know run-off elections usually favor republicans or conservative candidates. I don’t like the fact the person with the most votes loses. A top vote getter can lose if there are multiple candidates and they all put the top candidate as the last selection. Just plain and simple undemocratic. Scheme by liberals to have multiple candidates and have one Republican candidate. The Republicans is last choice on all the other candidates and then loses even if he got the most votes. In a run-off the the turn out is much smaller and would usually favor the Republican candidates. With run-off at least the winning candidate can claim a majority of voters cast a ballot in favor of him or her.
CaliforniaScreaming (#7), in Alaska about ten years ago it was the Republicans who had the vote splitting problem (they were worried about losing votes to both the Libertarian and Independence parties). It was the Republicans who put IRV on the ballot in Alaska. Was that also a liberal plot?
CaliforniaScreaming acknowledges that delayed runoff biases results toward one end of the political spectrum, but appears to favor delayed runoff anyway.