I don't think IRV fits in a DFL endorsing convention right now. First, an endorsement requires 60 percent, not 50 percent. It's not clear to me how IRV would work in a super-majority situation. Standard IRV says the lowest vote getter's votes are reallocated according to preference until someone gets above 50 percent. In a 60 percent situation, however, I could see that leading to having only 2 candidates remaining, one with 58 percent, the other 42 percent, for example. At that point, should candidate B's votes be reallocated to see if candidate A can get over 60 percent?
I raise this hypothetical because under the standard rules, in a two-candidate race where candidate A gets to 58 percent, it is virtually certain that he/she gets over 60 percent on the next ballot. The truth of the matter is that a large majority of convention delegates want an endorsement and would willingly change their preferences in order to achieve an endorsement. In my experience, getting into the high 50's quickly leads to endorsement (the rare exception to this IIRC was the Kress-Niziolek Ward 10 convention). And IRV, as it stands now, would not permit that. I would oppose any formulation of IRV for the DFL that would prevent convention delegates from switching their preferences to achieve an endorsement.
Secondly, there are practical matters relating to tabulation of ballots. Having served several times as head teller at DFL conventions in the past, I understand and can quickly implement reliable, verifiable counting procedures under the standard rules. To be sure, reliable procedures to hand tabulate an IRV ballot exist, or can be created, but at this point neither I nor anyone else in the DFL has done it. I would hate to be a candidate going through this process in the first place - the uncertainty and possibility for error would be much higher than usual.
Lastly, I suspect that the rules of the DFL would have to be amended in order to permit IRV (or so I've been told). The only body with the authority to do that would be the City Convention (assuming -- a big if -- that we wouldn't have to go through the state DFL central committee). A ward convention cannot amend the city DFL rules on its own. This raises the specter of a DFL endorsement obtained through IRV being declared invalid, and having to do the convention over entirely.
In short, I think IRV is great. I would like to see it adopted by the DFL. However, adopting IRV as a short-term response to the rules dispute in Ward 2 is both unwise and (likely) against the existing rules.
What I would be willing to do is this: I can chair a study group to examine IRV and propose amendments to the city rules which would permit use of IRV in future conventions. Ideally, we could come up with a set of standard IRV rules, parallel to the existing standard rules, and then future conventions could adopt IRV or the old rules as they see fit. We could also discuss and recommend tabulation procedures. As a delegate to the city convention, I can move to amend the rules to conform to what the study group recommends.
I'm too far removed from Ward 2 to have a candidate preference. The political scientist part of me would like Ward 2 to rush into an IRV situation, just to see what happens. But the former DFL official in me smells a train wreck in the making. It would bad for the DFL to experiment with IRV under these circumstances: at the last minute and under partisan pressure from assorted camps to manipulate the rules to their advantage.
Greg Abbott Linden Hills
On Mar 9, 2005, at 3:36 PM, Elizabeth McCann wrote:
Dan Miller and his campaign fully support the use of an Instant Runoff Voting process (IRV) to ensure a fair, accurate and efficient system to select a candidate for endorsement at our Ward 2 convention on April 9th.
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