Editor’s note: This opinion piece is by Chris Roy, a Republican candidate for Secretary of State.
On Town Meeting Day, Burlington voters ended their experiment with instant runoff voting (IRV). Efforts to apply IRV to statewide elections should likewise be abandoned.
For those unfamiliar with IRV, instead of selecting a single candidate, IRV voters rank multiple candidates in preferred order. If no candidate receives a majority after counting first choices, the second choice of those who supported candidates with fewer votes are added to their totals. If no candidate reaches a majority after this round, additional candidates with lower vote totals are knocked out, with their supporters’ second, third, and fourth choices being applied until one emerges with “majority” support.
The theory is that this process of conducting hypothetical “instant runoffs” best reflects the intentions of the voters. In practice, IRV fails.
After approving IRV, Burlington voters have twice elected Progressive Bob Kiss mayor. In 2006, he received 39% support after tallying first-choice votes, and eventually won after two more rounds of IRV.
In 2009, Kiss was again elected, this time after four rounds of IRV. Democrat Andy Montroll received more combined first- and second-choice votes than any other candidate. Republican Kurt Wright had the most votes through the first and second rounds. Mayor Kiss only received 29% first-choice votes as an incumbent and yet, after four rounds, he emerged the winner.
Besides this unexpected outcome, more problems arise when IRV is employed in the real world. First, candidates are competing not only for first-choice votes, but also to be the second choice of voters who may prefer other candidates. Thus, Burlington ’s mayoral “debates” in 2009 focused on ways candidates agreed with each other. Voters were asked to rank multiple candidates while being denied the opportunity to explore distinctions between the candidates as is the case in traditional campaigns. Traditional campaigning would have been more likely to raise tough questions about the status of Burlington Telecom that might have avoided the crisis that arose after the mayoral election.
Second, IRV’s counting of votes involves computers, proprietary algorithms, and a lack of transparency. I observed the IRV “tally” in Burlington and watched as officials from various wards entered carrying black suitcases like government agents in a spy movie. The suitcases were plugged into a central computer, and each “round” of voting was displayed on a screen with the press of a key.
Third, allowing supporters of less popular candidates to have two, three or four votes skews the outcome in favor of their preferences. In contrast, a true runoff between Candidate A and Candidate B allows voters to focus on a clear choice.
In the wake of their real-world experience, Burlington voters rejected IRV and returned to a traditional method of electing mayors. Burlington ’s adoption and rejection of IRV parallels similar voter rejection in cities that previously approved IRV, including Aspen, Colo., and Ann Arbor, Mich.
Second, one can only imagine the time and expense involved if a statewide recount of IRV is ever required – an outcome that is easily foreseen given IRV’s lack of transparency.
Meanwhile, the Vermont House has referred H.396 to the Government Operations Committee. This bill would apply IRV to the election of Vermont ’s governor. Statewide use of IRV would implicate the preceding problems experienced in Burlington , and three more concerns.
First, it would be a substantial burden to ask Vermont ’s municipalities, from Bennington to Canaan and all towns in between, to administer a computer-based voting system that imposes logistic and technological burdens on local election officials. Not surprisingly, most town clerks have opposed IRV.
Second, one can only imagine the time and expense involved if a statewide recount of IRV is ever required – an outcome that is easily foreseen given IRV’s lack of transparency.
Third, one of the primary arguments in favor of IRV is that it avoids the cost of a runoff election. Under Vermont ’s Constitution, however, any gubernatorial election not resulting in a majority winner goes to the Legislature where, traditionally, the voters’ plurality choice has been respected.
Vermonters should take the lesson learned by Burlington voters to heart, and consign IRV to the ash heap of electoral history.
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Chris, only 23% of the 33,218 registered voters in Burlington voted on Tuesday. IRV was repealed by a 52% majority which was a total of 303 votes (representing the 4% point gap). Five out of seven of Burlington’s Wards voted to keep IRV. Don’t get ahead of yourself. This was hardly a resounding defeat of IRV in Burlington, never mind all of Vermont.
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Chris Roy aptly covers the problems with IRV, its unequal treatment of voters’ votes being the most fundamental problem.
Counting the 2nd choice votes of voters who vote for the least popular candidates and not counting the 2nd choice votes of most voters who vote for the most popular candidates when their 1st choice loses, is what causes IRV to eliminate the most popular candidate before the final counting round and elect a candidate who is opposed by a majority of voters.
IRV also prohibits all voters from participating in the final counting round whenever the voters are not lucky enough to vote for the two candidates who make it to the final counting round.
In Aspen, CO if 75 *fewer* voters had voted for a city council candidate, that candidate would have won, but instead he lost. This nonmontonicity of IRV methods is also caused by its unequal treatment of voters’ votes.
Roy is right-on when he talks about how IRV methods eviscerate election transparency and raise election costs by requiring the use of expensive new technology. Any other alternative voting method that treats all voters’ votes equally and is precinct-summable would be preferable to IRV.
IRV is the only alternative method that fails more of Arrow’s Fairness criteria than plurality voting.
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To follow up on my last comment, Chris, as Secretary of State what do you plan to do about low voter turnout? Less than 12% of the registered voters in Burlington voted to repeal IRV (on the other hand, only about 11% voted to keep IRV). I think that this low voter turnout is a much bigger threat to democracy than plurality voting or IRV (depending on your perspective).
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Chris, as much as you and Kurt Wright would like to think so, it wasn’t Wright who was robbed in the 2009 mayoral election in Burlington. It was Andy Montroll.
“What?” you say, “How could it be Montroll?? Montroll came in third in 1st-choice votes. We Republicans were screaming so much that that Bob Kiss was elected with a paltry 29% (our robust candidate had a commanding 33%) and Montroll had this puny 23% of first choice votes. You’re pulling my leg!”
You see Chris, the whole idea of the Ranked Ballot (of which IRV is not the only method to tabulate) is that *sometimes*, with an electorate split at least 3 ways, that Plurality does *not* indicate majority voter choice in an election. If Plurality *always* agreed with Majority (sometimes it does, as it did in 2006), then there was no reason to adopt an alternative to the traditional “vote for one” ballot in the first place. So when IRV does what it might be expected to do and discovers that No, the Plurality winner is not the candidate whom is preferred by a majority of the electorate, you mendacious Republicans start getting your knickers twisted in a bunch. You complain that 71% didn’t choose the elected candidate with their primary vote yet are curiously quiet about the fact that 67% didn’t choose your candidate.
How can you claim that Wright was robbed when more than two voters rejected him for every voter that *primarily* supported him? You are discounting the fact (that IRV *attempts* to consider) that voters for the two major candidates running against Wright had more in common with each other than they had with voters for Wright. It’s a split majority. How do we know it’s a split majority? We can’t assume so, but we can find out.
So 93% of the voters who came to vote March 3, 2009, actually had an opinion of the two candidates in the final runoff and voted in the final instant runoff. You show me a single delayed-runoff that gets 93%. Or 80%. Our experience with delayed runoffs is that they get between 50% and 55% of the turnout of the original election.
Of those 93% that participated in the final runoff, a *majority* (not a mere plurality) ranked Bob Kiss higher on their ballot than they ranked Kurt Wright. By a margin of 252 votes Kiss was preferred over Wright. That is undeniable.
But what also cannot be denied is that the same electorate had preferred Andy Montroll over Kurt Wright by larger 930 votes. And even more saliently, Andy Montroll was preferred over Bob Kiss by 587 votes. The mistake of IRV (that is not a mistake of another tabulation method named after Condorcet) is that the IRV kept the “beats-all” candidate out of the final round. Montroll would beat *any* other candidate in the final round had he been in the final round. That’s why we know that Andy Montroll was the most preferred candidate among Burlington voters than either Bob Kiss or Kurt Wright.
Both Montroll and Kiss were preferred over Wright by the Burlington electorate. Your candidate, Wright, was the THIRD most preferred candidate by the Burlington electorate. That’s how we marked our ballots, and at least with the ranked ballot, enough information was collected from the voters that we would have known that.
The method that we are returning to would not even collect the information from voters to see how they *would* vote if Wright was stacked up against some other candidate. You would like that information obscured so that your candidate can hide behind his fig leaf of Plurality (and solid support in the New North End) and claim a mandate to lead when, in fact, your candidate was roundly rejected by the City as a whole.
Now I have written very critically of IRV, in how it elected the wrong candidate in 2009. The 2009 mayoral election in Burlington is a *classic* case study about how IRV failed to accomplish the very goals for which we adopted it. And all of these anomalies stem from the fact that the beats-all candidate, was prevented from advancing to the final IRV round where he would clearly beat any other candidate, including the candidate IRV eventually elected and the candidate *you* are trying to convince us should have been elected. When Montroll was the beats-all champion, why did IRV (or the delayed runoff, which we would have with the old rules) decide that the election was between the 2nd and 3rd most preferred candidates?
But I am not frothing at the mouth like Kathy Dopp (who has dropped in from NY or Utah or somewhere outa town and outa state to impart her wisdom). IRV failed in 2009, but Plurality would have done worse and Delayed Runoff *may* have elected the same candidate as IRV if the turnout was comparable. But if Kurt Wright was elected in a delayed runoff with greatly reduced turnout, that (with the insight provided by the ranked ballots we marked) would be a greater failure
Would you be equally willing to consign the Electoral College to the scrap heap of history?
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Robert:
Nowhere do I say that Kurt Wright “should” have won. That’s not for me to decide. In fact, I cite the example of Andy Montroll before Kurt Wright in my piece. My problem is with the process, not with the outcome. We’ll never know if the outcome would have been different under the prior, traditional system.
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Chris,
Under the old system, it would have gone to runoff with Wright and Kiss. If turnout was comparable to Election Day (say, about 93%, the portion of voters who expressed a preference between Wright and Kiss), then the outcome of the runoff would be no different. Kiss would have won.
But, as we know, the turnout is reduced an additional 45% to 50%. Then, you’re right, we do not know how it would have turned out, except we know it would be between Wright and Kiss. From what we know from the actual ballots marked by the Burlington voters (which is the information you want suppressed with the “traditional” ballot), Wright was preferred less than ether Kiss or Montroll (by 252 or 930 votes, respectively).
The “process” your side has brought us back to, risks electing the third most preferred candidate and, if had been in use in 2009, would have no hope in electing the candidate that voters prefer over any other candidate when they are asked to choose between the two.
If a majority of voters agree that Candidate A is a better choice than Candidate B, it’s important to me that Candidate B is not elected. For some reason it’s not important to you (at least not in multi-candidate elections). That is the most fundamental difference between our approaches to the question of how to elect someone in a multi-candidate election.
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The Pro IRV campaign called itself 50% matters.
So IRV is defeated by 52% of the voters.
So either 50% matters or it does not. Which is it?
Please stop moving the goalposts constantly, it only discourages voter participation.
IRV is a sorting and reallocation of votes, with some to be eliminated outright. Depending on the rules used by the jurisdiction, a different outcome can result from like votes. This is akin to playing Three Card Monte with elections.
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Yup, it took you 52% to repeal IRV. You didn’t do it with 48.5%, which is what Kurt had against Bob when they stood side-by-side. Neither side gets to win that question without a majority of the vote.
Joyce, we all agree regarding a binary question or two-candidate race in how to count the votes. What you say “the candidate with the most votes wins” agrees with what those of us on the other side say: “the candidate with a majority of votes wins”.
Either IRV or Two-Round Runoff or “beats-all” (Condorcet) are all methods of boiling down a multi-candidate race into a two-candidate race where we can all agree whom the majority winner is. What we disagree about is how to get to that point and judge the election result.
Even though we voted differently on Question 5, I have always been critical of IRV since last March. The problem with the IRV method of tabulation is that it only considered the majority in the Kiss-Wright pair. If it had considered how Montroll runs against Wright or Kiss, then Montroll would have had the majority preference against either of the other two. Yet either IRV or a delayed runoff between the top two vote getters (assuming the 1st-choice vote would be the same as the single vote cast on a “traditional” ballot) would be a race between the two losers when they’re compared to Montroll by the city voters as a whole.
Your method, that we revert to, gets us no closer to the unambiguous majority preferred candidate, which happened to be Montroll in 2009. And what’s worse, your method will *hide* the information from voters about that because it collects less information than the ranked ballot. Because Montroll is “Third past the post” does not mean his weak preference any more than Wright’s “first past the post” means his widespread preference. There is no candidate voters preferred more than Montroll when they are asked to choose between the two.
If the turnout to the delayed runoff would have been similar to that on Town Meeting Day, then the outcome would be no different than IRV. Kiss would have won.
But Kurt Wright was preferred THIRD, below either Montroll or Kiss when the voters are asked to choose between the two. IRV was meant to, at least, prevent a minority-preferred candidate from winning, and it did that in a crappy way.
But if Kurt would have won in a delayed runoff with 47% reduced turnout, that would have been a greater failure of a voting system to accurately reflect the preference of the electorate. Electing candidates with greater voter turnout is more indicative of the will of the people than electing candidates with significantly less turnout. Larger electoral base, more democratic (small “d”). Unless you’re one of those who oppose Motor Voter and convenient voter registration.
But I accept that your side won that election fairly, you got a majority. I just disagree that the forthcoming mayoral elections with 3 or 4 credible candidates will always be decided as fairly because of the likelihood of a minority-preferred candidate “winning” against a split majority preference. The Dems and Progs will get burned a few times, and then will decide to put forth a single candidate (which is precisely what Tony Geirzynski advocates) and that will be the decline of a multi-party environment that some of us really think has been an asset to Vermont.
The two-party system; having to always choose between Dumb and Dumber, is not as good as a viable multi-party environment. But if people discover that their vote for Nader (or Pollina) just doesn’t help, they will revert to a safe two-party vote.
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Joyce, you’re arguing with a straw man. I never said 50% matters (although I think it does) and I don’t represent the 50% Matters campaign. How am I “moving the goalposts”? I never challenged the results. Based on the results in Burlington Chris Roy said, “Vermonters should consign IRV to the ash heap of electoral history.” I’m not sure how he can possibly come to this conclusion with a defeat of IRV by 303 votes in only one city, with only two out of five Wards voting to repeal IRV.
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Bradley. My apologies, I didnt mean to “aim” that post at you. So please forgive me. (also please excuse typos i have a few keys stuck its aggrevating and may need new keyboard).
I agree that the vote in Burlington, with a 4% spread, 52% is not a gigantic smackdown against IRV. I do believe that it signifies a sea change, though, when you consider that the push against IRV came from a grassroots group up against mostly outside money. Also, some voters became disillusioned with IRV.
See interview with Burlington Voters before the repeal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1hogdzeRKQ
See Burlington Voters speak out about Instant Runoff Voting after voting to Repeal it on March 2, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUDw_nVzgM4
Now the vote in Pierce County Washington last November,
really was a referendum against IRV/RCV. That was a stunning defeat:
Instant runoff voting was rejected by an overwhelming majority of Pierce County Washington Voters. 44,145 of 64,106 voters said yes to ditching instant runoff voting, also called ranked choice voting. That is 71.76% for eliminating IRV and 28.24% who wanted to keep IRV.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 3 (approved repealing IRV)
APPROVED 44,145 71.76%
REJECTED 17,372 28.24%
Over Votes 34
Under Votes 2,555
Here’s the Charter Amendment description:
Ballot Measures and Validation Requirements Pierce County (253) 798‐7777 Ordinance 2009‐1, Charter Amendment No. 3, if approved,would eliminate Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and restore the primary and general election for County Elected Offices in accordance with State Election Law. Simple Majority
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I’m trying to understand why Chris Roy and Kathy Dopp think that Bob Kiss should not have won in 2009 based on the votes that were cast.
(Note: I’m not evaluating whether Kiss is a good mayor today, whether he was a good mayor a year ago or whether the voters were right to cast votes as they did. I’m just looking at the ballots as they were cast and who deserved to win based on those ballots.)
To review, in the first round of the count last year (looking at first choices only), 33% voted for Wright and 29% for Kiss and the rest voted for other candidates. Kathy Dopp wants Wright to win because of this result. Presumably Chris Roy also thinks that result is the right one for Vermont’s statewide offices like the one he is seeking this year.
But let’s go deeper. Neither top candidate had proven themselves representative with those results. If you have 33%. that means 67% voted for someone else. Same with 29%. (And indeed 49% isn’t good enough, if it’s based on a 51% majority splitting its vote between two other candidates.)
So instant runoff voting comes into play. The logic is “Well, what would the result have been today if the choice had just between Wright and Kiss? Neither candidates has proven themselves a majority winner by first choices alone, so let’s do an instant runoff to simulate that choice.”
When you do this runoff, it turns out that, of ALL the voters indicating any preference between Wright and Kiss, a clear majority supported Kiss over Wright. That’s why he won the election. To be sure, it was close — so close that it’s clear that Wright easily might have won with the IRV system too — but Kiss won.
Ms. Dopp and Mr. Roy both seem to discount the rankings of the backers of the other candidates. But the rules were clear going into the election, and voters handled the rankings well. In fact, a recount showed that only a single voter in the mayor’s race didn’t indicate a valid first choice. In addition, the vast majority of supporters of the losing candidates decided to indicate their preference between Wright and Kiss. (Some didn’t, but not really a surprise, as for some voters it was “a plague on both of them”). Enough of them preferred Kiss that he won.
So.. what’s wrong with this result? Kathy Dopp wants the plurality leader Wright to win even though when paired against Kiss, he loses. Presumably Chris Roy also thinks this plurality “first choice only” rule should govern elections statewide in Vermont. But in this case, it clearly would have violated what most voters wanted.
The amendment that just passed in Burlington would allow someone to win with just 40% in the first round. To give you a sense of why this is unfair, suppose that the amendment on Tuesday had been organized so that there had been three options: a) keep IRV; b)replace IRV, and let 40% determine winners; c) replace IRV, and let 50% determine winners. Suppose that means that the results were 48% to keep IRV, 30% to replace IV with a 50% winner system and 22% to replace IRV with a 40% winner system.
Mr. Roy and Ms. Dopp suggest that this result should be good enough to keep IRV — it “leads”, so it “wins.” I would say no, that’s an unfair referendum gerrymandered to help IRV win with more than 40%, but less than 50%. Why is it different with candidates?
Finally, Mr. Roy seems to suggest he’s for traditional runoffs in Burlington, even if only with a 40% threshold allowing blatantly unfair result. But if he hopes to be Secretary of State, I trust he’s thinking about what it means to hold runoffs.
In Burlington, for example, the runoff system blatantly discriminates against military voters overseas. Of the voters overseas who voted on Town Meeting day last year, for example, none voted in the city council runoff a few weeks later (and voter turnout dropped nearly in half overall). That’s wrong, and indeed federal law now requires at least 45 days between rounds of election. To stand up for our troops, is Chris Roy going to fight to change Burlington’s runoff law to prevent this discrimination? If not, why not?
Let’s look at the prospects of a statewide runoff as a tool to uphold majority rule for electing governors and the office Mr. Roy seeks, Secretary of State. To have a runoff for that office, with the appropriate window of at least 45 days between elections, you’re talking about a statewide runoff seven weeks after the first elections — e.g, right in the middle of the holidays. You’re talking about holding a whole second election and all those costs. Is that really what he wants?
Or is that he just wants to say “Forget majority rule. First choices only, even if it’s a clear vilation of what most voters want.” Before Mr. Roy assigns IRV to history, he might want to answer these questions.
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A few thoughts in response to Mr. Richie. Here is what I would have liked: A robust public debate and campaign where the various candidates for mayor only sought first choice votes. Then, assuming no candidate achieved 40%, a run-off between the top two candidates which would have allowed them to make a direct case, A vs. B. Messrs. Kiss and Wright (or Montroll) would then have won or lost depending on the merits.
As for the less-than-50% is illegitimate argument: The mayor of Rutland was elected with a plurality less than what Kurt Wright received after the first round of first-choice votes. Former President Clinton never received 50% of the vote, nor did Abraham Lincoln. There is nothing fundamentally unfair about allowing plurality winners in multi-candidate races, and it happens all the time across the country. However, if a town wishes to establish some threshold which requires a run-off if it is not surpassed — perhaps 40% or 50% — then so be it. As for the state, my commentary notes that currently there is no requirement for a run-off in statewide elections, with the governor and lieutenant governor races being sent to the legislature absent a majority winner.
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Chris, it’s a canard to keep repeating that there was no robust public debate in the mayor’s race last year. I was there. I went to the NPA’s and coffeeshops where the candidates all came and debated issues from city employee pension arrangment to the Moran plant. This canard is not only supported by your side, hell, we had Howard Dean (I really supported the guy in 2003/4 and still like him, but that interview on Church Street was a disaster, see the youtube yourself) talking about how IRV makes for more civil or polite campaigns. I don’t think it made any difference last year. The candidates (including Wright) were all decent to each other and would remain so whether we had IRV or not.
Rob, welcome to Vermont. If Kathy Dopp (or Warren Smith) is gonna drop into our internal family spat, you should be involved too. I noticed you didn’t ask *me* why I understand that the 2009 mayoral election failed. And, from our discussions over at your turf last year, you should know why. Rob, I *totally* support and identify with the goals you seek in election reform. And, in contexts where there are 3 major parties (or more) and credible Independent candidates, we need something else than the “traditional” ballot and Plurality rule to maintain a fertile environment for such. The fact that Vermont *does* have a credible Prog party is an asset for the state.
This alternate to the “traditional” ballot is the ranked ballot (I can still shoot down Warren Smith’s idea that Score Voting will solve all our problems), but the IRV method of tabulating those ranked ballots is so clearly flawed, Rob, that I just don’t understand why you’re still in denial about that. Especially after these repudiations in VT WA and NC. It may not be long that you’ll see repeat performances in MA, MN and maybe even SF.
Coupling the Ranked Ballot with the IRV tabulation method was a big mistake from the very beginning, Rob. And it continues to be a mistake. I think you guys at FairVote would be wise to look seriously at the product you’re selling instead of just how you can market it.
But Chris, your arguments are all based on subjective opinions with no evidence (like IRV discourages debate) and some downright falsehoods. The ranked ballot does *not* violate any notion of “One person, One vote”, in fact, making people return to the polls for a delayed runoff is what is truly “One person, Two votes”. And it’s not just about inconvenience (but does not exclude it). What you mendacious Republicans want is, after your candidate loses, you want another whack at it. You want to be able to pour in another truckload of money into the Runoff election and pull “victory” out of the jaws of defeat 3 weeks after Election Day. If your side was honest, you would label yourselves as “One person, Two votes” or advocates of Minority Rule, because that is what you are.
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Thanks for your reply, Mr. Roy. My comments:
1) There is nothing to stop robust debate in an instant runoff voting election. I would hope candidates would be authentic and present their real views no matter what the system. It’s a serious charge to suggest that Kurt Wright and Andy Montroll were inauthentic in 2009.
2) Do you think he Burlington city council runoff in 2009 was a success in 2009 when voter turnout dropped nearly in half and no military voter overseas was able to cast a vote in the runoff (even though some did in the first round)?
3) I would suggest you look again at the math of a 50% threshold vs. a 40% victory threshold. When it is 40%, the presence of a third candidate immediately introduces the “spoiler” dynamic – meaning majority rule can be thwarted. Again, consider a ballot question where one option with 48% could defeat two similar options that together make up 52%. Wouldn’t you see such a structure for a ballot choice as unfair?
4) The fact that Bill Clinton and others have won elections with less than 50% is unimportant to me. Anyone able to get a substantial share of the vote has a reasonable chance to be an effective leader/representative. But that doesn’t change the fact that we should seek to protect majority rule. As it happens, I suspect Bill Clinton would have won a majority with IRV against his top opponents in 1992 and 1996. I suspect Jim Douglas would have won a majority in the 2002 governor’s race. But it’s better to know, then to hope.
5) I’m surprised to say that you’d prefer that the legislature pick the governor and other statewide constitutional offices when there is no majority winner than to find ways to keep that power with the voters. When more than 50 Vermont town meetings weighed in on that question in March 2002, they overwhelmingly backed upholding majority winners with IRV over just turning it over to the legislature.
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Mr. Richie:
Let me be precise with my responses so there is no misunderstanding.
1) When one speaks to a crowd, the nature of the audience and the goal of the presentation necessarily modify the tone and substance of the presentation. That is not a question of being “inauthentic,” and the use of that term by IRV supporters is a red herring. Instead, it’s a mattter of effective, goal-oriented public speaking. The unavoidable fact is that political campaigns under IRV smooth over disagreements and avoid a tough exploration of the issues because all candidates have the secondary goal of also getting second-choice votes from supporters of the other candidates. Thus, someone seeking the second-choice votes of Kiss supporters will not ask as tough questions about Burlington Telecom and other issues as would be the case in a traditional campaign.
2) Voter turnout is a separate issue. The Secretary of State, and all public officials, must work to encourage as many voters as possible to participate. For instance, I am an elected memeber of the Williston Selectboard. In Williston, we actively engaged voters on the questions of a village roundabout and new ambulance service, with the result being a relatively high turnout for Australian ballot voting on Town Meeting Day. Engaging and respecting voters through transparency and a desire to actually listen will encourage greater voter participation. Ultimately, though, one can bring a horse to water, but can’t make him drink. IRV is in no way a magic solution to that problem.
3) What’s wrong with the so-called “spoiler” dynamic? That simply involves labels assigned by one group of supporters to another candidate. Candidates run, and candidates either win or lose. If someone wants to label a third-place finisher like Ross Perot or Anthony Pollina a “spoiler,” that is not a problem with the system. That is a matter of campaign dynamics and “name calling.”
4) I do not assign the same talismanic power to a “majority” as you do in a multi-candidate race. Let’s say there are 10,000 registered voters. If a candidate receives 40% of the vote when there is 60% turnout (2,400 votes), is that person somehow less “legitimate” than someone who receives 50% of the vote when there is 40% turnout (2,000 votes)? A straightforward system that provides that the candidate who receives the most votes wins is common-place, long-standing, and perfectly acceptable.
5) I didn’t say that was my preference. I was simply observing that the Vermont Constitution provides the governor and lieutenant governor races go to the General Assembly absent a majority winner. Unless there is a constitutional amendment, that system will remain in place as it has for over two centuries.
In the end, voting can be a simple process: “yea” or “nea.” Supporters of IRV have to provide lengthy explanations as to why IRV is really simple and fair. By having to explain it in such length, their arguments prove the point of those who do not support IRV.
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Mr. Roy
You said “A straightforward system that provides that the candidate who receives the most votes wins is common-place, long-standing, and perfectly acceptable.”
Such a system is not acceptable to me and a lot of other people. There is nothing acceptable about someone winning when 59.9% of people voted against him or her.
And BTW, if I were you, I would not hang my hat on the idea that things that are “commonplace” and “longstanding” are necessarily acceptable. While tradition is important, this country would be very different if we hadn’t recognized the injustices of many commonplace and longstanding practices.
If you had been seeking higher office in the 1960′s, would you have opposed one person one vote in VT because the old system was commonplace and longstanding?
How about the right to vote for Blacks and Women?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting you don’t support the constitutional changes that have been made; only that a reliance on tradition can be a very dangerous thing.
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Mr. Roy,
I appreciate your detailed response.
We obviously will need to agree to disagree on some of these issues, such as my believe that the term “spoiler” isn’t calling someone a name, but rather commenting on the fact that with the 40% system approved in Burlington last week or the plurality system used for the state’s federal elections, the majority of those choosing to participate can have their choice trumped due to dividing their vote.
There is one very specific concern I’ve raised that I wanted to flag. There is a new federal law requiring elections to be at least 45 days apart to avoid discriminating against military voters overseas. In the 40% system approved in Burlington for mayor and already used for city council races, the longest number of days allowed between elections is 27 and could be as short as 13 days. In the 2009 city council runoff that you defend in Burlington (the one where turnout dropped nearly in half, as opposed to the IRV election for mayor where turnout in the final round of counting was only slightly down from the first round), there were overseas voters in the first round, but none who cast a vote in the runoff. I hope you look to solutions to ensure their votes count — just because Burlington’s elections aren’t covered by the federal law protecting the rights of military voters shouldn’t mean that that a solution shouldn’t be pursued.
Thanks for engaging. Again, we clearly don’t see eye to eye on this, but appreciate the frank exchange.
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Though it is fiction, I recommend Shakedown in the Mountains, by once legislator Gary P. Richardson for a casual but basic understanding of the violation of individual democratic rights that is an integral part IRV.
YES, consign it to the ASH heap!
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Some ashheap! IRV is being used by more American cities than ever for their elections this year, and gaining more support and use around the world.
Unlike plurality voting or the 40% system adopted in Burlington, it also protects the majority from election of their least favorite candidate.