Instant runoff voting gets a run for its money

BY DENNIS GEISINGER

Instant runoff voting (IRV), a new type of ballot system set to be implemented in city elections in Minneapolis as soon as 2009, was challenged in a suit filed Dec. 12 in Hennepin County District Court as “undemocratic and unconstitutional” by a group called the Minnesota Voters Alliance. Instant runoff voting ranks a voter’s choice of candidates in order of preference and when votes are tallied, candidates with lowest preference are dropped until a majority vote for a candidate is achieved.

The proposal to use IRV in elections for Minneapolis municipal offices passed in November 2006 by a 65 percent margin and days later was certified by a canvass of the City Council.

Advocates of IRV, also called “ranked choice, single transferable, majority preferential or alternative” voting, say that the system would do away with elections where winners do not receive a clear majority vote and negate the expense and logistical problems caused by runoff elections.

What is beyond dispute is that different versions of IRV have been used internationally for some time in places like Canada, Australia, Ireland, Malta and Fiji and here in America in cities like San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., Ferndale, Mich., Basalt, Colo. and Burlington, Vt. Efforts nationwide are being made to promote the adoption of this alternative voting system on the city and state level.

According to FairVote Minnesota, the state chapter of a national group promoting IRV, runoff elections are expensive and difficult to administer. The group says that voter turnout drops significantly for runoffs and that calls into question whether meaningful majority rule is ever actually achieved. Runoffs lengthen the campaign season and increase campaign cost, reduce voter choice by eliminating candidates and increase the likelihood of negative campaigning by cutting the field to only two candidates, say IRV backers.
“Instant-runoff voting is the only system in which people can choose exactly who they want,” said Minneapolis resident, Ben Swanson, in a letter to the Star Tribune after news of the lawsuit broke. “Many times in our bipartisan system, voters are afraid of ‘throwing their vote away’ on a third-party candidate. Instant-runoff voting allows you to choose your first preference, and if that person doesn’t get a majority, you have a say in who subsequently gets your vote,” said Swanson.

“Clearly the newest and ‘hottest’ electoral reform idea in the United States right now is instant runoff voting or IRV,” said Douglas J. Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and an expert on electoral voting systems. “But while this voting system does have some advantages, it also has some serious limitations and drawbacks,” Amy said.

Amy charges that IRV is still a majority system, which does not adequately represent the political minority—especially women and ethnic minorities, and third and other small parties.

Another of the dramatic effects of using IRV in legislative elections, according to its critics, would be the death of the primary system, a long-standing bulwark of the American electoral process.

The Minnesota Voters Alliance says that the totaling and re-totaling of candidate preferences flies in the face of the state Constitution’ s ban on the “single expression or opinion of choice.” According to instant runoff critics, the IRV system gives some voters their first and subsequent choices while giving others only their first choice, and, in elections with more than two candidates, the ranking method robs voters of knowing if in practice they are actually helping or hurting their favored candidate’s chances.

“Instant runoff voting is bad for voters,” said Minnesota Voters Alliance member and University of St. Thomas philosophy professor, Mike Degnan. “They will have no idea of how their preference ranking will actually work in a runoff,” Degnan said.

In June, the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office began a statewide task force called the Ranked Choice Voting Issues Group to study how legislation would set statewide rules and standards for the conduct of ranked choice voting elections. According to Beth Fraser, Director of Governmental Affairs in the Secretary of State’s office, the group will issue a report after its final meeting at the end of the month that will disclose its findings as to the experience of other American municipalities and the voting equipment, voter education models and other issues related to the adoption of IRV in Minnesota.

“We’re not advocating or opposing instant runoff voting,” said Fraser.