Proportional representation and instant runoffs would go a long way toward making our electoral system more democratic. See
Election Reform: Instant Runoffs (Impractical Proposals, 2004-12-29) and
It's ba-a-a-a-ck: New Life for Conservative Initiative to Apportion Electoral Vote (Impractical Proposals, 2004-11-03). Proportional representation may be a hard concept for voters who have no experience other than with winner-takes-all ballots, but instant runoffs are so clearly superior to the method used in most U.S. elections, according to FairVote.org, that the alternative is gaining support across the country.
Many newly elected candidates are no doubt celebrating today, basking in the glow of their fresh victories. But they were not the only winners from Election Day 2007.
Instant runoff voting earned landslide support on ballots across the country. A whopping 77% of voters in Aspen (CO) voted to move to instant runoff voting. Sarasota (FL) voters topped that margin, voting 78% for IRV and prompting the Sarasota Herald Tribune to call the city "a model of election reform." In a particularly important election for next year, 65% of voters in Pierce County (WA) voted on a charter amendment to keep IRV on track for the hotly contested 2008 county executive race. In rural western Washington, voters in Clallam County narrowly rejected establishing IRV as an option in their charter.
Several cities also held ranked voting elections.
* San Francisco held its fourth IRV election overall, and its first for mayor, with first-round winners in three citywide races.
* Takoma Park (MD) smoothly held its first IRV election for mayor, with nary a single spoiled ballot out of more than 1,000 cast.
* The city of Hendersonville (NC), following in the footsteps of Cary (NC) in using IRV this fall, had a strong first IRV election for two city council seats. As one voter put it, "There's nothing to it."
* As a bonus, a graduate student in Cambridge (MA) won a city council seat in an upset victory under the choice voting system of proportional voting, now
in its seventh decade of use.
From FairVote.org
2 comments:
While it's clear that our traditional "vote for one" (plurality) voting system is inexcusable, Instant Runoff Voting is not much better - and there are many better simpler solutions. There is also a great deal of public misunderstanding and misinformation surrounding IRV, largely the result of the IRV propaganda organization, FairVote.
One common myth is that IRV elects "majority winners". But IRV can lead to the election of candidate X, even when candidate Y is preferred to X by a huge majority. Consider this hypothetical IRV election.
#voters - their vote
10 G > C > P > M
3 C > G > P > M
5 C > P > M > G
6 M > P > C > G
4 P > M > C > G
C is the clear Condorcet (condor-SAY) winner, meaning he is preferred by a landslide majority over all his individual rivals. He is preferred over G, P, and M all by an 18-10 margin.
But... M wins, even though he also has fewer first-place votes (6 voters) than C with 8.
Also:
1. P is preferred to M by 22 of the 28 voters, yet he's the first candidate eliminated.
2. G also has more first-place votes (10) than M's 6.
3. So M either loses pairwise to, or has fewer first-place votes than (or both) every rival, but still IRV elects M.
Notice that the first group of voters could have caused C to win if they had only "lied", and put him first in their list. That would mean they'd get their second favorite instead of their fourth favorite. Statistical analysis reveals that this strategy is advised for all candidates who don't appear to have at least a 20% chance of winning. That means that, contrary to FairVote propaganda, IRV does not let you "vote your hopes, not your fears". And this means that IRV effectively degrades toward plain old plurality (vote-for-one) voting. This is explained in more detail here, by math experts:
http://rangevoting.org/TarrIrv.html
Election integrity experts and activists, like computer science Ph.D. Rebecca Mercuri disapprove of IRV because it is conducive to the adoption of fraud-susceptible electronic voting machines. IRV is also more susceptible to fraud because it is not countable in precincts. That is, candidate A could win every individual precinct, but bizarrely lose when the ballots are all summed together - which enforces centralized tabulation, which is more susceptible to central fraud conspiracy. And IRV typically causes spoiled ballots to go up by a factor of about 7.
http://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html
A much simpler and far better system is Approval Voting. It's just like the current system, except that there is no limit on the number of candidates one may vote for. While it may seem initially less intuitive than ranking choices, deep scrutiny shows that Approval Voting produces a far more representative outcome, and is less harmed by problems like strategic voting. This is shown through an objective economic measure called Bayesian regret, which shows how well a particular voting method tends to satisfy the preferences of the voters. The improvement gotten by Approval Voting relative to IRV is especially large if the voters are strategic, as was described above (although FairVote promoters will often falsely claim that the best strategy with Approval Voting is to "bullet vote"). See:
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegDum.html
If we don't mind a somewhat more cluttered ballot, we can upgrade to Range Voting, which uses a ratings scale, like Olympics scoring. It is arguably more intuitive, and produces phenomenal Bayesian regret results, meaning more satisfied voters, and more competitive nominees, if used for a party's nomination process (i.e. a big strategic advantage).
For a look at how the major parties could become dramatically more competitive by merely adopting Range Voting or Approval Voting, see:
http://rangevoting.org/ForDems.html
http://rangevoting.org/ForReps.html
Election reformers must be diligent and do their research. Don't be misled by FairVote's clever marketing. Look at what Ivy League mathematicians and political science experts such as Steve Brams, who write entire books on this stuff, say. FairVote has an agenda, and it's definitely not in the pubic's best interest.
Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA
415.240.1973
clay@electopia.org
I agree that IRV isn't quite what it's made out to be.
I focus on strategic state-level incorporation of proportional representation, which I find isn't too hard to explain to people with closed lists, as the allocation of seats among parties can be done to minimize the distance between the percentage of the seats won and the percentage of the vote received. This doesn't require ranked voting, which can be used in primaries to select the team of candidates, w. a "team leader" who'll be the main spokesperson trying to get as many players to make it to the big game.
http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2008/08/initiative-for-most-people-and-polemic.html
please read and consider and share with others.
Election reform is so import for renewing our democracy that so easily slides into single-party rule....
dlw
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