SLO needs Instant Runoff Voting
San Luis Obispo City needs Instant Runoff Voting for the Mayoral election. With more than two candidates in the race, someone can win with 40% or even less. Then we'd have to ask, "Was that winner really preferred by most voters?"
Our County Supervisors have a second-round runoff if no one gets a majority the first round. We could achieve the same goal in one election with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
IRV is simple: Voters would rank each candidate 1st choice, 2nd choice, third if they wish. If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, we drop the last-place candidate and count their second-choices. (See www.fairvote.org)
This system is used in the Academy Awards, the Utah Republican primaries, and in San Francisco's Mayor and Supervisor races. Now LA is considering it.
We should elect the Mayor of San Luis Obispo using Instant Runoff Voting.
posted by Orval Osborne @ 9:14 PM
3 Comments:
Great call. Instant runoff voting is one of those slam dunk good ideas that comes along now and then. I was just reading about how well it's been working in San Francisco at www.sfrcv.com
The Oakland campaign website for it (it won 69% of the vote as a ballot measure last November) is good took at:
http://www.fairvote.org/oaklandirv/webarchive/
Consider this hypothetical election using IRV.
% of voters - their vote
28% "Green" > Edwards > McCain
20% Edwards > "Green" > McCain
6% Edwards > McCain > "Green"
46% McCain > Edwards > "Green"
In this IRV election, Edwards is eliminated in the first round, and then McCain wins against "Green". But wait! 54% of voters prefer Edwards to McCain - and 72% prefer Edwards to "Green"! Yet Edwards loses? The Greens now slap themselves on the forehead for not strategically top-ranking Edwards, the most similar major party candidate to their true favorite.
IRV sounds initially appealing, because people picture a weak third party candidate who loses in the first round. The myth is that this takes away the fear of voting for your sincere favorite candidate, and gives third parties a fair chance to grow; but if that candidate or his party ever grows to be a contender, he is statistically more likely to hurt the party closest to his own than to win. It doesn't matter how unlikely you imagine the above scenario to be - it's still _more_ likely than the odds "Green" will win. And so third party voters will learn to strategically vote for their favorite major-party candidate. You don't have to buy my math; you can look at decades of IRV usage in Australia's house, and Ireland's presidency. Both use IRV, and have been two-party dominated. So much for the myths that IRV allows you to "vote your hopes, not your fears", and eliminates spoilers. Now we know why the Libertarian Reform Caucus calls IRV a "bullet in the foot" for third parties.
Electoral reform advocates (especially third parties!) should be demanding Range Voting - score all the candidates and elect the one with the highest average. Its simplified form, Approval Voting, is probably the most feasible to implement. It simply uses ordinary ballots, but allows us to vote for as many candidates as we like. Consider the benefits:
* Spoiler free: Whereas IRV merely _reduces_ spoilers
* Simpler to use and implement: A simple one-round summation tells us the results, whereas IRV's potential for multiple rounds can cause long delays before the final results are determined. A side-effect of Range Voting's simplicity is that it makes the necessary transition away from voting machines more feasible. IRV's complexity leads most communities implementing it to purchase expensive and fraud-conducive (electronic!) voting machines, the fraudster's best friend.
* More resistant to strategy: As we see above, IRV often strategically "forces" voters not to top-rank their sincere favorite. But with Range Voting and Approval Voting, this _never_ happens. A vote for your favorite candidate can never hurt you, or the candidate. With IRV it can hurt both.
* Decreases spoiled ballots: Since voting for more than one candidate is permissible, the number of invalid ballots experimentally goes down with Range and Approval Voting. But here in San Francisco, we saw a seven fold increase in spoiled ballots when we started using IRV.
* Greater voter satisfaction: Using extensive computer modeling of elections, a Princeton math Ph.D. named Warren D. Smith has shown that these methods lead to better average satisfaction with election results, surpassing the alternatives by a good margin. But IRV turns out to be the second _worst_ of the commonly proposed alternatives. This mean that all voters will benefit from the adoption of either of these superior voting methods, regardless of political stripe.
* Reduces the probability of ties: While they are not extremely common, they do happen. IRV statistically increases them, but Range Voting decreases them.
Get the facts at RangeVoting.org and ApprovalVoting.org
And if you're in the market for a better system of proportional representation than the antiquated STV system, check out Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting.
http://RangeVoting.org/RRV.html
http://RangeVoting.org/Asset.html
IRV is hard enough to justify to voters raised in a winner-take-all system. Range voting may or may not be better, but it's harder to explain in a simple and straightforward manner. So go with the possible better rather than the improbable (though possibly) best.
In Oregon we have a good chance of establishing an open primary. If it happens, voters may be willing to go against their party's wishes again, and push through IRV. Perhaps. Maybe.
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