http://fairvote.org/?page=27&pressmo...howarticle=145

Instant Runoff Voting: Two Major Advances in 24 Hours

November Ballot Measures in Cities and Counties Representing 1.6 Million People

Instant runoff voting (IRV), the ranked choice voting method that generates majority winners in a single round of voting, has garnered rapidly rising support this year. On July 18, the city council of Oakland (CA) voted 6-2 to place IRV on the November 7th ballot, replacing their June primary and November runoff with one high turnout majority election in November.

On July 19, the North Carolina state senate passed legislation (H1024) with bipartisan support to use IRV for statewide elections for judicial office vacancies and to let 10 cities and 10 counties try IRV in 2007-2008. If passed, this legislation would represent the first statewide IRV elections in the modern era.

These advances come as interest in IRV expands nationally. IRV will be on the ballot in cities and counties with a combined population of 1.6 million people this November, including Minneapolis (MN), Davis (CA), and Pierce County (WA). The proliferation of reformer campaigns across the country follow highly successful IRV elections for San Francisco’s city elections, and a widely praised mayoral race in Burlington, (VT). Exit polls in both San Francisco and Burlington showed voters preferred IRV to their old runoff systems by margins of at least three to one.

According to FairVote executive director Rob Richie, “Interest in instant runoff voting is growing rapidly. More cities and states see IRV as a viable means to save tax dollars, accommodate voters having choices and fold low-turnout elections into high-turnout, spoiler-free majority elections.”

National backers of IRV include leaders from both major parties: Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean regularly speaks out in favor of IRV, Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain boosted Alaska’s campaign for IRV in 2002 and Sen. Barack Obama introduced IRV legislation as a state senator in Illinois. Former Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic will play a lead role in backing the IRV campaign in Pierce County this year.

In addition to resolving the controversy over third party candidates being “spoilers,” IRV simply solves problems. In 2004, North Carolina held a runoff election for the Democratic nomination for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The election cost counties $3.5 million dollars, for a turnout of only 2 to 3% of voters. IRV would have avoided a second election, without this drop in turnout. Meanwhile, Oakland spent over $250,000 between the primary and general elections in 2000, and most candidates win offices in the low-turnout primaries without even having to face the bigger November electorate.

With IRV, instead of marking an "X" next to one candidate, voters rank them in order of preference. IRV uses voter rankings to emulate a series of runoff elections ultimately determining a winner with a majority of the vote. IRV saves time and money by eliminating the need and cost of two rounds of voting. Voters and candidates also can focus their energy on one election rather than two, typically boosting turnout.

IRV is used in dozens of college sand universities across the country.

Here is another interesting article:

Monday, July 17, 2006 - 12:00 AM


Neal Peirce / Syndicated columnist
Repairing American democracy

By Neal Peirce
Syndicated Columnist
WASHINGTON — American democracy, once the wonder of the world, is working about as well as the levees around New Orleans — "degenerated into a partisan brew of spin, scandal, name-calling, money chasing and pandering."

That's the charge of reform advocate Steven Hill, and who is to doubt his indictment? Elections are marred by suspicious voting equipment. TV blanks out most serious campaign debate. Congressional and state legislative elections are increasingly less competitive as "red" and "blue" voters cluster in their own partisan enclaves. The presidential election system focuses all attention on a tiny band of swing states — and can easily make the popular-vote loser the winner. Citizens increasingly wonder: Why bother to vote at all?

What's to be done? In his new book, "10 Steps to Repair American Democracy," Hill abjures piecemeal reform and instead provides a " 'one-stop shopping guide' to what's broken about American democracy and how Americans can help fix it."
From Hill's list of 10, I'd pick five indispensable first steps:

Secure the vote. Butterfly ballots and hanging chads in Florida in 2000, thousands of low-income voters effectively excluded from polls in Ohio in 2004 — the scandals are well-known. A comprehensive Caltech-MIT study found a stunning 6 percent of ballots cast nationwide in 2000 weren't counted because of faulty voting machines, poorly designed ballots or foul-ups with absentee ballots. Private voting-machine companies have been shown to have egregious partisan ties.

Hill would have us create — with federal dollars to help — a new, professionalized cadre of professional election officials free of direction by partisanly chosen or motivated secretaries of state. A national elections commission would be empowered to create minimum standards that states must follow to assure honest elections. And there'd be a "voter-verified voter trail" for ballots cast by computerized voting equipment, ensuring honest recounts.

His next proposal: expand voter participation by a "right to vote" constitutional amendment, universal registration (everyone 18 and over automatically registered to vote, as most modern democracies do) and prohibiting voter intimidation.

Reclaiming the airwaves comes next — obliging broadcasters to provide ample free media time for candidates, more political news and balanced coverage. Hill also urges a more-robust public broadcast sector to counterbalance our increasingly powerful corporate media.

To minimize the overbearing role of money in elections, Hill suggests public financing of all campaigns at local, state and federal levels, and at least trying to limit donations and set spending caps on candidates.

There's one more reform on Hill's list I'd call absolutely essential: direct popular election of the president. Sticking with the Founding Fathers' jury-rigged Electoral College system makes zero 21st century sense.

Hill then has three reforms I'd call intriguing next steps, experiments we ought to try.

First there's runoff voting, now being used in San Francisco's mayoral elections, Utah Republican primaries and other places. Voters list their preferences — No. 1, No. 2, etc. If no candidate gets a majority of the No. 1 choices, immediate recounts include voters' second or even third choices. The lowest vote-getter is eliminated on each count until there's a majority. The method has big pluses: diminished campaign mudslinging, incentives for higher voter turnout and less impact by spoiler candidates (such as Ralph Nader in 2000).

Hill would also scrap — especially for legislative races — the "winner-take-all" election system that so often leaves political minorities and our many racial and ethnic groups unrepresented. His model: Illinois' success, from 1870 to 1980, with three-seat state House districts. Voters could cast all their three votes for one candidate, or distribute them as they chose. Result: Any candidate who got over 25 percent was likely to win. More mavericks, willing to buck their party's leadership, got elected. Bipartisan coalitions were commonplace.

Now Hill suggests three-seat districts, not just for legislatures but congressional seats too, a big break for "blues" in "red" areas and "reds" in "blue" areas, plus election of more Latino and black representatives.

Hearing this spate of ideas, some may grouse: Why change the ground rules? Didn't our Founding Fathers know best? Yet in his introduction to Hill's book, Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker has it right. Reinvigorating the republic is a way to keep faith. "The question isn't: What way back then, did Jefferson (and Madison and Hamilton) do? The question is: What would they do now?"

Let me do it fer them vermin get to ya, it wunt werk, sorry dude!

http://www.defendingthetruth.com/showthread.php?t=2434 (This needs to be implemented immediately! Thanks hevusa)

I don't know if anyone actually reads my posts about election reform. Well, that won't stop me from posting.

In the system suggested by Hill, politicians would be appointed to set voting standards, but I am worried that they'd make bad standards and too many standards. For example, they might make voting so secure that only a few select people have access to the voting information, which leaves us with a strong possibility of corruption. Alternately, they might make so many standards that verifying votes becomes difficult and expensive.

Most implementations of the "voter-verfied voter trail" system suggest that we use paper copies of the votes as the "source of truth", and that recounts would have to be done based on these paper counts. Not only is this incredibly difficult to do, the chance of innaccuracy or corruption of vote-counters is very high.

I propose a different system. We should make all vote information immediately accessible to as many people as possible. When you vote, you should be able to immediately view that vote online, along with a count of all of the votes for each candidate. Summary reports of all votes everywhere should be available on demand. The source code used to generate all of this information should be available.

With this much insight into the voting system, anyone can monitor the poll numbers, and anyone can verify that his own vote has not changed at any time. Plenty of people from every ideology will be watching for any signs of corruption, and we won't even need to use tax dollars to pay them.

Prohibiting voter intimidation is fine by me.

I do not see what the problem with voter registration is. It doesn't seem to me that universal registration will do much to elect better candidates or prevent fraud.

For the most part, these seem like good ideas, except I don't know how one would determine who qualifies as a "candidate" and is entitled to money and airtime. We obviously can't let just anyone have these things, but if we require a minimum number of supporters, well that pretty much means only wealthy people and primary political parties will be getting this free air time and financing, which gives us the same problem we have today.

Further, I think it is generally a bad idea to limit donations; the idea of limiting the spending cap is better.

To me, this statement destroys the credibility of this article. The author clearly has no idea why we have the electoral college, and he likely doesn't care.

In fact, the electoral college was created for a very good reason, and fixing it is the most important part of election reform. My recommended election reform is almost entirely based on fixing the electoral college. But we can't do that if politicians decide to remove it. If you're only going to read one piece of my post, this should be it:

The electoral college was created because our founders knew that the average person is completely uninformed about politics. Because of this, they didn't want the average person deciding who we should elect as president. But even though the average person is uninformed about politics, he might still be able to point to someone else and say, "I don't know much about politics, but this guy over here knows a whole lot." So instead of electing the president, the people would elect this college, and this college would make the real decision about who the president is.

The idea is that presidential candidates would not campaign to the people, but would instead campaign to the electoral college. This has many advantages if done correctly.

Instead of spending millions of dollars on television ads which call their opponent a "war monger" or "someone who can't make up his mind", presidential candidates would have to talk about real issues to this small group of college members. They'd have to do this because these college members would be more informed about politics than the average person, and they're going to see through trash-talking.

Each college member could personally meet each candidate, talk to that candidate, and ask questions of that candidate. Long debates could take place, instead of just the "two minutes per issue" that we get in television debates. And every college member would pay attention.

Candidates wouldn't need to have lots of money, and they wouldn't need to be from a big party because they'd only have to talk to a small group of people, and that small group would be very willing to listen.

But the most important part of this system is that we elect a different kind of candidate. We don't elect the charismatic trash-talker who looks good on television. We elect the political thinker, who has the right stance on the issues.

You may be wondering why things don't work this way right now. We do have an electoral college, after all. Well, the problem is that states were allowed to decide how the electoral college would be elected, and all the states made a very poor decision. Basically, the electoral college is elected on the same day as the president, and people don't vote for college members, they vote for a political party. Whichever political party wins, gets to choose all the college members. So we pretty much end up with a bunch of radical college members, who decided who they are voting for before the candidates were even announced.

Instead of this, college members should be elected directly by the people a long time before the election, maybe even before the presidential candidates are even announced. Making this simple change would vastly improve our election system.

The benefits of IRV are somewhat diminished by reforming the electoral college in the fashion I mentioned above, however, it would still be a good system to use in many places in our election system.

Hmm, I don't know much about this election system. It seems like it has some advantages.

The founders would almost certainly reform the electoral college so that it might be used in the fashion it was intended.

Jaxian

I disagree with your assessment of the electoral college. I don't believe it was started because they thought the average man was so uninformed or to protect smaller states (the two most common misconceptions), but rather came about because of slavery.


That aside I think the main reason we should implement IRV is to eliminate the "spoiler" vote. People could vote their hearts at the same time they prevent candidates they absolutely don't want to see in office. It is a more fair system for everyone involved, gives 3rd parties a chance, and saves our taxpayers money. A win, win for everyone involved.

Your belief is incorrect, and so is Professor Paul Finkleman.

In truth, the electoral college was supported for a variety of reasons, including the one that Finkleman mentioned. However, the most important of those reasons was indeed that the people will not make a good choice about who the president is.

Finkleman's quotes by Madison, which I consider the heart of his argument, were taken from Madisons notes from the Constitutional Convention's debates about the proper method of selecting the executive. Those notes can be found here:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...ector1787.html

These notes begin after it has already been suggested that the legislature select the president. In them, you will find evidence that the legislature was chosen, in part, because they will have the most knowledge about who would make a good president.

But the important thing to understand is that these debates occurred before the debaters reached a conclusion. Not all of the arguments had been made, and not all of the reasoning had been presented. The best resource for understanding the real reason each piece of the Consitution exists is the Federalist Papers.

The relevant Federalist Paper is #68. The text of this Paper can be found here:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed68.htm

The following quote is the relevant part:

This quote should make the intentions of the founders very clear.

It is also important to understand that even if the founders hand not implemented the college for this reason, my justification for reforming the college instead of getting rid of it would still stand.

Well, I do think IRV is a good idea, but IRV doesn't solve the problem that the wrong sort of people are raising to popularity. It is the wealthy, charismatic, trash-talkers who gain popularity, not the intelligence people who have the right stance on the issues. IRV might help us choose the best out of five bad candidates, but they're still bad candidates.

I envision IRV being used to choose electoral college members, then electoral college members using IRV to vote on the president. IRV is still better than what we have today, so long as it does not get rid of the electoral college.

I disagree that IRV will fail to improve the quality of candidates. Take the 2000 election. If we had IRV implemented more people would have voted for Nader instead of trying to prevent a Bush win via Kerry. Now I don't think Nader would have won even if IRV was in place but I do think the green party would have gotten the 5% of the total vote they needed to get federal funding. Over time 3rd parties would gather strength and compete with the two party monopoly and provide quality candidates.

As far as the electoral college is concerned... I appreciate the information you presented. But there is one thing that bugs me about your assessment. If Madison and the like thought the people were not smart enough to vote for our president then why consider 5 slaves equal to 3 regular votes? They aren't allowed to vote but they still enter the equation. It doesn't make sense to me... if the electoral college wasn't started because of the slave population in the south then why would it be necessary at all if only the wealthy elite were voting anyway?

The electoral college was put in place so that states with higher populations alone could not be the only deciding votes!

I think this is a common misconception. The electoral college just makes people concentrate on a few swing states. It fucks most of the population.

I do agree that this would happen, and it might improve things a little. But the problem is that candidates would still largely be getting elected for the same old reasons. There might be more candidates in the pool, but the people will still be voting based on a person's charisma and his pool of money. Instead, I'd rather the principles of good government be applied to each candidate's stance on the issues in order to determine who the best candidate is. That can't happen in a vote among people who aren't informed about good political principles, who aren't infromed about the issues, and who have neither the time nor the desire to read up on each politician's stance on the issues.

Having more candidates might improve things a little, but if the core reasons our presidents are being chosen do not change, then we shouldn't expect much change in the final outcome.

I'm not certain I understand exactly what you are asking, but perhaps this well answer your question: the 3/5 rule was created to give slave-holding states more influence over the election. However, the electoral college was not created to accomodate the 3/5 rule; it was created for the reasons listed in Federalist Paper #68. That it made this 3/5 rule easier to implement may have been an additional bonus, but it was not the reason for the college's creation.

When you say that the people are not smart enough, just to be clear, it isn't their intelligence, necessarily that is the problem. It is that many people are simply uninformed about politics and political issues, which leads them to vote based on factors which are largely unrelated to how a candidate will perform as president. Even if they were informed, many people have neither the time nor desire to put a reasonable amount of thought or discussion into who the best president would be.