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September 19, 2005
Dangerous
Crooked Timber : A case for instant runoff voting
To show the dangers of talking about politics in another country, Australian John Quiggin doesn't realize that Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, or (more seriously) that runoff elections are standard in most party primaries.
Anyway, Quiggin wants someone in the U.S. to try instant runoff voting. While nice in theory, IRV would be unworkable in practice. Quiggin hasn't seen an American primary ballot (most local races are decided at the primary level with the general being a formality) I guess, and doesn't realize the nature of the problem.
Nearly all American elections are for multiple offices, ranging from President to intensely local offices where you start to wonder why they're not just appointed. On a standard primary ballot in a contested area, there might be twenty or more races. Half of them, maybe, would have three or more candidates; half of those might have five or six.
Now, going into a ballot box and ranking five candidates for Congress or Mayor is one thing. But going in there and ranking five for County Commission, or State House of Representatives, or Public Service Commissioner, Place 4, is something else. It's hard enough for people to know one guy to vote for. You expect them to wade through ten different rankings of interchangeable down-ballot candidates?
Posted by Mac Thomason at September 19, 2005 01:57 PM
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Comments
Your point about multiple offices is a good one, but I have a couple of responses/queries
1. There's no need to rank all candidates, you can just rank as many as you like and leave the rest (this is equivalent to abstaining in a runoff if your preferred candidate is knocked out).
2. If, as you say, runoffs are standard and multiple offices are contested, doesn't a similar problem emerge with lots and lots of runoffs? Can you really get an adequate turnout in a runoff primary for Public Service Commissioner, Place 4?
Posted by: John Quiggin at September 19, 2005 03:06 PM
1. I guess so, but then you wind up with the fifteen people who bothered to rank everyone deciding the election.
2. Well, no. The system relies upon there being up-ballot runoffs to turn out voters.
In the Alabama system, if there's not 50 percent plus-one-vote, there's a runoff between the top two finishers even if they only got, say, 24 and 22 percent in a five-way race. It's hardly ideal.
That's just in primaries, since 98-99 percent of the votes in the general go to the two major party candidates. Right now in Alabama the Republicans are in the ascendant, and they have a number of runoffs each time. The Democrats are usually scrambling for candidates.
Posted by: Mac Thomason at September 19, 2005 03:34 PM
"I guess so, but then you wind up with the fifteen people who bothered to rank everyone deciding the election."
Not really. Everyone who gives a ranking (in particular a first preference) to one of the two final candidates gets counted in the final ballot. Most of the time, this will be quite similar to the case with a runoff.
Posted by: John Quiggin at September 19, 2005 09:22 PM
I don't know. Seems to me that if most of the people don't vote for more than one candidate you wind up with first-past-the-post anyway.
Posted by: Mac Thomason at September 19, 2005 10:07 PM
Not so. A fairly typical instance might be an election with two candidates getting (and expected to get) 35 per cent or more each, and the rest of the vote divided among minor candidates. Only the voters for the minor candidates need to allocate second and subsequent preferences.
Posted by: John Quiggin at September 20, 2005 05:05 AM
Which gets back to the question of if they will, which is what I'm not confident of. If only a few people bother to rank candidates beyond a first choice, we wind up with de facto first-past-the-post.
Posted by: Mac Thomason at September 20, 2005 08:50 AM