Local government (city/county/township/judiciary) offices are nonpartisan, meaning that Instant Runoff Voting in such races would only make sense if we eliminated the primary, which currently serves the same purpose. In municipal elections, if more than two candidates have filed for an office, the city/county primary whittles the field to two candidates, which is essentially what IRV does in partisan elections at the state level.
IRV could only work at the city/county level if we did away with the September primary and held a single election with IRV in November. Clear? Or clear as mud? At the state level, we often wind up with multiple parties' candidates nominated for the General Election, leaving us with three, four, five or more candidates for, say, Governor (Green, DFL, Republican, Independence, Socialist Workers', Libertarian, etc. etc.). With IRV, voters may cast up to three of their top choices in that race. When all the votes are first counted and no candidate in that field achieves a majority of the total votes cast (50% plus one), instead of allowing the candidate with the highest percentage (like Jesse Ventura's 36%) to be the elected winner, the candidates falling below a certain percentage in the first tally are dropped and their first place ballots are tallied for their second choices. The second place votes for the candidates remaining in the field are added to their totals. If no candidate achieves a majority of that tally/count, all candidates below the top two (there can be no fewer than two candidates, of course) are dropped and the second and third place votes for all dropped candidates are tallied (again), and those that have been cast for those two top finalists are added to their totals, one of which must, by mathematical law, then reach a majority, he or she is elected. It is far more complicated in the telling than in the practice. Run-off systems exist everywhere else in the world and in many states and localities elsewhere in the US. It is not good to consider 36% for our governor to have been a mandate for governing when 64% of all voters voted for someone else. Plurality voting creates weak leadership status for elected officials. This year, without IRV and four major parties contending, our next governor may be elected with less than 30% of the votes cast. Not good. Minneapolis, St. Paul and other cities may wish to institute single elections with instant runoff systems, but it really isn't necessary at the moment. The better election reform at the local level should be councilmembers elected by a system of proportional representation. To do this would require reducing the number of wards to something like seven and electing two people from each ward.(I would prefer a mixed system of, say six wards of two each and three at-large/citywide representatives on the council.) This provides a greater breadth of citizen representation than under the current winner-take-all configuration. The top two council candidates (the Park and School Boards could be done the same way) would have been elected by different constituencies and be far more representative of the cross-section of each ward. This is another governance construct in effect in many other worldwide and some US jurisdictions. Andy Driscoll Saint Paul (where we tried instituting the mixed ward/at-large system 11 years ago, but wound up only with a bad result: a parttime city council.) ------ "He who knows the precepts by heart, but fails to practice them, Is like unto one who lights a lamp and then shuts his eyes." --Nagarjuna > From: phaedrus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 17:14:30 -0700 (PDT) > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Mpls] Instant Runoff Voting > > Can anyone tell me why Minneapolis does not use > Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) for all elected positions? > > This will allow all people to vote for the candidate > that best matches their own priorities while reducing > or eliminating the concerns like the Nader/Gore > situation. It also insures that any winning candidate > will more truly represent the majority of voters. > > I haven't read much of these sites, but they seem to > give an overview: > http://www.fairvote.org/irv/ > http://www.instantrunoff.com/ > http://www.fairvotemn.org/ > > If anyone disagrees that IRV is superior to our > current system, please point out how and why. > > If it IS superior, can we please start using it? > > - Jason Goray, Sheridan, NE > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs > http://www.hotjobs.com > _______________________________________ > Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy > Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: > http://e-democracy.org/mpls > _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
