Terminology
Ranked
Voting in Brief
Hypothetical IRV Election
RV Events and Information
Other Resources
The Single Transferable Vote
- This is the ballot type used in ranked-voting system. It allows the
voter to rank the candidates in order of preference, where "1" is your
favorite, "2" is your second preference, "3" is your third,
and so on. Voters may rank as many or as few candidates as they
wish.
Ranked Voting - This is the general term for voting systems that use the
Single Transferable Vote ballot type.
Instant Runoff Voting - This is the single-seat version of Ranked
Voting. It is used for single-seat races such as Mayor, Governor, County
Supervisors, and City Council Members (if voted on in wards). It would
also be the system used for President and Vice President, since they are
selected as a team.
Choice Voting (also called Proportional Representation) - This is the
multi-seat version of Ranked Voting. This would be used for multi-seat
elections, such as City Councils without wards and Board of Education seats,
where more than one seat on a political body is being voted for at
once.
Plurality - Under this system, the candidate with the most votes
wins. This does not guarantee that the most votes is actually a majority,
and often it isn't.
Currently, Eureka faces only one major election problem, that of candidates for Mayoral and City Council seats winning with less than a majority. The interesting thing is that this arose as a “solution” to a previous problem in the early ‘90’s when costly runoff elections were required to determine a winner amongst a group of candidates in which no one candidate was able to reach the 50% + 1 majority threshold. So, instead of choosing to use a process which would guarantee a majority winner without holding a second election, the majority requirement was simply removed.
The symptom was relieved, but the underlying problem was left unsolved.
We’re now left with a situation in which candidates are elected without
a majority, and who could potentially be opposed by more than half the voting
populace. Such a situation goes
against the very American principle of majority rule.
At the national level, as we all remember, the last two elections have
been particularly contentious. No
matter which side you were on, there was a sense of frustration associated with
the process. Though less extensive
for the Republicans, both they and the Democrats have experienced the so-called
“spoiler” effect. Libertarians
have spoiled Republican races as Greens have spoiled races for the Democrats.
In the election of 2000, it is said that this spoiler effect cost Al Gore
the Presidency. The understanding of the spoiler effect has been around long
enough that it is basically second nature for Libertarians and Greens to vote
strategically rather than honestly, the former voting for Republicans and the
latter for Democrats. For many,
there is a great personal and social pressure to vote for a candidate you may
not like just to make sure the other guy doesn’t win.
Libertarians and Greens know this as the “lesser of two evils”
dilemma.
Well, the good news is that it doesn’t have to go on. Other systems are out there that can allow us to be
explicitly clear as to what we want in our elected officials, without
worrying that our vote will be “wasted” on a likely loser or that we will
“split” the vote and spoil an election.
The best of
these systems are all based on the concept of Ranked Voting, called Preferential
Voting in Robert’s Rules of Order (official parliamentary procedure).
The single-seat version of Ranked Voting is called Instant Runoff Voting,
and the multi-seat version is called Choice Voting.
The basic concept is as “easy as 1-2-3”.
Voters simply rank the candidates in order of preference.
If, during the first round of tallying, your first choice is eliminated,
your vote is transferred to your second choice.
This is repeated until one candidate shows a majority.
The process basically replicates a series of run-off elections, but by
using only one ballot and requiring voters to go out and vote only one time.
This way, we can be guaranteed that every winner wins with a majority,
without the cost and inconvenience of runoff elections.
In 2002, current Eureka Mayor Peter LaVallee won the mayoral race with
only 38.6% of the vote. Candidate
Cherie Arkley lost with 38.1%. Not
only did the winner win without a majority, but the race was extremely
close. Under IRV, this would not
have been the case: Eureka would
have had a clear winner with a majority of the votes.
Ranked voting has a multitude of benefits for the voter:
It also has multiple benefits for the
candidates:
In addition, the system also benefits:
For Eureka, this would mean that there would be no more winners without majority support, which is step back towards the real democracy we all expect, and that voters can feel that they have really spoken their peace when they leave the voting booth.
Other well-known organizations also use various forms of Ranked Voting. Following are some examples:
Ranked
Voting has a strong track record, as well.
Following are some examples of places where Ranked Voting is utilized:
These
systems are beginning to gain enough steam to have become more widely accepted
in the mainstream. Most notably,
San Francisco held its first application of Instant Runoff Voting in the
November 2005 election. After a
couple small glitches, it met with fantastic results.
This and other recent moves toward Ranked Voting implementation add great
momentum to the concept of Ranked Voting, and it is the desire of the Humboldt
Voters Association to see an RV system implemented here.
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HVA Home
Below is a graph showing a hypothetical IRV election. In the initial count of first rankings, though Carol has the most votes, there was no majority winner. Under Eureka's current plurality system, she would have won without a majority, but this is Instant Runoff Voting, and so we need to do runoffs. Therefore, because Duane has the least number of first rankings, he is eliminated. Those ballots are looked at for their second rankings, and are distributed to the remaining candidates respectively. When votes are tallied again for the first "instant runoff," we see that there is still no majority winner. Again, we look for the candidate with the least number of votes. That would be Bob. He is eliminated and his ballots are looked at for their second (or third, possibly, if that voter ranked Duane, who is no longer valid, second). Those votes are distributed to the remaining candidates. We can now see that Annie has beaten out Carol as the winner. So, while Carol had strong enthusiastic (first ranking) supporters at the beginning, Annie ended up having broader support and ultimately won the election. The voters are happy because they know Annie has demonstrated broad-based majority support, and Annie is happy because she knows she has the mandate of demonstrated majority support. This is true democracy in action.
Results from the June 6, 2006 IRV demonstration election
at the Municipal Auditorium in Eureka:
Raw data and
interpretations (.pdf file)
Press
release (.pdf file)
There are a lot of other organizations out there that support IRV and can provide resources and more information. Following are some examples:
To learn more about Ranked Voting:
Californians for Election Reform (CfER)
California Instant Runoff Voting Coalition (CalIRV)
The Center for Voting and Democracy
Midwest Democracy
Stay up-to-date by joining Ranked Voting specific e-mail lists:
California IRV Listserv
(CfER and CalIRV)
California IRV
News (CfER and CalIRV)
National IRV
Listserv
Democrats for IRV
Republicans for IRV