There's a proposition on our primary ballot that would institute an instant runoff in our elections. I have a gut feeling that this is a bad idea, but there's a media lovefest going on around the topic. I'd love to hear your opinions on the topic.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Answers

The topic the topic the topic! Could I use that phrase any more in three sentences?

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I'm too lazy to go look this up-- what's being proposed? I saw the thread title and thought "that's going to cause some bad erosion".

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Basically, it's to guarantee a majority win in elections. Voters rank the candidates, and if no one has the majority, then the lowest vote earning candidate's voters have their second place get their vote. And so on. It feels in my gut like a bad idea. I think part of the reason is that I hear people saying that it removes the risk of a "spoiler" like Nader or Perot. That feels like a big "Fuck you if you want anyone other than a Republican or a Democrat to have the right to run." It's also likely to be expensive to impliment in a state like Alaska because we've got some really poor districts in the bush that would have to get the technology to rank. But it's supposed to save money because of not needing to have a runoff election between the top two candidates a month after the general election.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Oh, that sounds like a bad idea. Similar to catalogs that ask me to indicate an alternate color choice-- if I wanted the sweater in brown, I'd order the sweater in brown, not order it in blue with brown as my second choice.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I think a lot of places use this process. Doesn't Australia do this in all of their elections? I think there is actually a sense that it gives third parties more power, because they can bargain with the major parties to use their influence to have their members put the major party down as a second choice. I'm not sure how it works out in practice, though, and it might work better with the high voter turnout you see in Australia (where voting is mandatory).

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

In Australia, we have a system called Preferential Voting (aka Alternative voting according to some pages I looked up, but I've never called it that.)

This link explains a little bit about it, and for more info on Australian elections in general, they have this page.

"Voters are free to allocate their preferences in any way they wish, although parties often recommend (and distribute leaflets at polling booths to this effect) that voters allocate preferences in a particular way." from that section is particularly relevant. I judge a party by who they give their preferences to. If they seem normal, and yet they urge for preferences to go to a loony party, that will affect how I vote.

In Australia, we also talk about voting above the line or below the line. You can either vote for the party you want (which means it's important to know how they distribute their preferences), or vote below the line, whcih means you have to put a numebr from1 to however many candidates there are. If you miss any, or put a double number, it's immediately an invalid or "donkey" vote. If there's 20+ candidates, a lot of people vote above the line, for ease.

It's also mandatory to vote, if you don't, they fine you, if you still don't, they fine you again, and if you don't again, they fine you, and remove your name from the electoral role, so you can't vote.. That last bit has perplexed me forever.

"Don't want to vote? Well, we'll just take away your right to vote then!!".


-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

If I understand correctly the way this works, I'd be all for it. It actually would theoretically give third party candidates more of a chance, not less. For example, I heard a number of people in the last election say that they'd have voted for Nader but didn't want to "throw their vote away." So they voted for Gore (their second choice) instead since with the current system, Gore had the only realistic chance of defeating Bush. With the instant runoff, they could have voted for Nader as first choice and Gore as second choice, thus eliminating the problem.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

I think if you want to use KarenD's sweater analogy, it's more like: "We're going to send you a sweater anyway, and you're going to have to pay for it, so you might as well tell us your backup color preference, because if we're all out of the blue you might end up with one in puce."

There are times when it's not so much that I'm gung ho on a particular candidate, but I want to vote *against* a dangerous candidate to block him from getting office. In that situation I'd want the runoff. I think it's a valid aspect of the democratic ideal to give people a way to have their voice heard on who they really don't want representing them, as much so as counting votes on who they do want. But I don't know if it all plays out that way. I'm sure it gets complicated.

And I suspect if we had it here, it would lead to interesting new tactics, and some very negative campaigns. I imagine two candidates effectively working together behind the scenes, by telling the public: "Take one of us or the other, but whatever you do, don't take That Third Guy because he's a horrible, horrible person." A little smear campaign could really wipe out a candidate that way.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

What Amanda Page said.

I worked for the Australian Electoral Commission during our 1998 Federal Election. Counting votes was absolutely fascinating. Feel free to call me a geek. I can say from my experience, most people don't fill out their preferences but when they did, most of them actually did it correctly. Quite surprising really when there were over 30 boxes to number. The best thing was getting to see all the deliberate donkey votes. A number of people added boxes and voted for Mickey Mouse, Bon Scott or other celebs of choice. Of course, there were a number of 'get fucked' votes too.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002

Yeah, Karen, I forgot I was going to get a sweater regardless. I was trying to work up an analogy to figure skating judging instead, but this just led to disturbing visions of W. in sequins and spandex.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

For me, it seems like it would be a good idea, since I would feel freer to vote for who I wanted to. It might also reduce the stigma of voting for minor parties being the same as throwing your vote away (since any preference you have between the major candidates would be accounted for).

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2002

As a Nader voter in 2000, I am absolutely 100 percent in favor of IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). It's a great idea. If I had my druthers, this country would have power-sharing, coalitions, and more parliamentary-style politics instead of lesser-of-two-evils choices between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2002

It seems to me, as others have said, that it would be good for non-majority parties, because people wouldn't be afraid of throwing their vote away if they knew that if the non-majority party they wanted to vote for didn't win, they could still choose the lesser of two evils. That would have eased my mind a lot in the last election. Why would it be bad? Maybe because the majority parties don't have to worry about losing votes to non-majority parties, they won't acknowledge the issues raised by the non-majority parties.

-- Anonymous, August 19, 2002