Common Cause and League of Women Voters defend IRV in Burlington
Following the successful IRV election in Burlington (VT) in March 2009, some supporters of the narrowly defeated Republican candidate have launched a petition drive to repeal IRV. In addition to repealing IRV their proposed change would reduce the winning threshold from 50% to 40%, with a separate runoff election if no candidate for mayor reaches that plurality mark.
The advocates of this repeal are following a strategy pursued by Republicans in Ann Arbor, (MI) when they repealed IRV in that city in the 1970s after the first African American Democrat in that city's history came from behind during the IRV count to defeat the Republican leader in first choice rankings. The petition seeks to hold the repeal vote at a special election, rather than at any of the regular city elections prior to the next use of IRV in March 2012. The strategy of voting at a low-turnout special election is apparently intended to enhance their chances of victory (as it did in Ann Arbor), since the aggrieved Republicans will be highly motivated to turnout, whereas the Democratic voters, who generally favor IRV, but also did not win in the recent IRV election (the incumbent Progressive Party mayor won re-election), will be less motivated to turn out.
Common Cause is a national organization that has advocated for the adoption of IRV, and the local Vermont chapter has been a stalwart of IRV. It, along with civic groups like the League of Women Voters of Vermont, are highly critical of the effort to repeal IRV. Below is a news release from Vermont Common Cause.
For immediate release April 1, 2009
Vermont Common Cause calls Burlington IRV repeal petition ill-advised and contrary to state law regarding charter change
The Vermont chapter of the government reform organization Common Cause today issued a statement opposing the petition organized by Republican Burlington City Councilor Paul Decelles for a special election to repeal instant runoff voting (IRV) in that city.
Common Cause/Vermont Chair Sheila Reed said "The recent Burlington election using instant runoff voting was a resounding success, just as it was in 2006. In both IRV mayoral elections, over 99.9% of ballots were valid, and there was no talk of spoilers despite more than two strong candidates."
Recommended by Robert's Rule of Order, IRV combines the rounds of separate runoff elections into a single election -- allowing voters to indicate their runoff choices by ranking candidates in order of choice, rather than having to turn out for a second runoff election. It was adopted by voters in a March 2005 charter amendment by a two to one margin.
Ms. Reed criticized the petition as ill-considered and ill-advised "First, it is undemocratic and unnecessary to use a low-turnout special election to amend a city charter three years before the next mayoral election, and state law appropriately mandates that charter changes brought forward by petition be voted at a regular election and not at a special election." [see V.S.A. Title 17 2645 (a) (5)]
"Second, voters in 2005 not only voted by an overwhelming 2:1 for IRV, they also endorsed the principle of majority rule for electing the city's highest office," said Reed. "Decelles wants to allow a candidate to win with only 40% of the vote. This reintroduces the "spoiler" problem and would allow election of a candidate whom 60% of the voters believe is the worst choice
"Third, instant runoff voting is better than the separate runoffs that this petition would establish if no candidate wins 40%," said Reed. "Runoffs have lower turnout, force candidates to raise and spend more money, and cost the taxpayers." Comparing the turnout at the March 3rd regular town meeting with the turnout in the Ward 7 city council runoff election (which did not use IRV), turnout dropped by nearly half in the runoff election. While both separate runoffs and IRV tackle the "spoiler" problem, IRV maximizes voter participation and avoids extending the campaign season.
Reed suggested that Common Cause would support extension of IRV to all Burlington elections to avoid turnout debacles like the Ward 7 race. "In fact," said Reed, "Burlington shows us that it's time to use IRV for our statewide offices to avoid undemocratic results." Common Cause, along with other good-government organizations like the League of Women Voters and VPIRG, supports legislation this year to use IRV for gubernatorial elections, as backed by about 95% of the 56 town meetings that voted on the issue in 2002.
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Comments currently closed for Common Cause and League of Women Voters defend IRV in Burlington
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Posted by Robert Bristow-Johnson, 2009-04-19 22:54:51 (4 years ago)
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IRV gave Montroll the best chance to win of ANY voting method currently used for ANY single-winner governmental election anywhere on the planet. The fact is, Montroll was in third place when the field was reduced to three. By the rules of plurality, he loses. By the rules of runoffs, he loses. By the rules of IRV, he loses as well. Every system has its trade-offs. IRV puts more weight on earning first choice support than Condorcet does. I'm far more sympathetic to Condorcet than some other single-winner alternatives promoted out there, but believe it's a hard sell (both in explaining that it can be a fair for a candidate to win who might have zero percent support in the first round and also in explaining how to break the tie when A defeats B, B defeats C and C defeats C). In the meantime, everyone knows the rules of IRV going in, those rules have a lot of grounding to them(spelled out in Robert's Rules as good to do in vote-by-mail elections, in the bylaws of the American Political Science Association, etc) and Kiss won fair and square by those rules. Nothing perverse about it.
Posted by Rob Richie, 2009-04-18 15:16:15 (4 years ago) -
Terry, I emailed to you (info@fairvote.org) an analysis of both the principles that led us to IRV and how IRV actually performed a month ago. It's 6 pages. The fact is that, on March 3rd, a majority of Burlington voters (54%) had marked their ballots that they preferred Andy Montroll over Bob Kiss. In fact, in any head-to-head comparison, Montroll beat *every* other candidate. If Wright had not run, and the same voters expressed their same preferences, Montroll beats Kiss in the final round (but he didn't make it to the final round because Wright was in the race). It has to be at least suspected as "weird" or perverse that, in the tabulation of votes to determine the true preference, someone was elected when more voters expressed they preferred someone else.
Posted by Robert Bristow-Johnson, 2009-04-03 13:37:23 (4 years ago)
No one, including me, is saying that Kiss didn't win fairly by the rules that were (and still are) the law. Even though I felt burned by the 2000 Presidential election, if *my* guy had won the electoral count yet lost the popular vote, I would tell the other side "tough, now let's work together to get the law changed". I would not grant for a second that the winner, according to the rules, was not the legit winner. I am reading here, and all over the web point and counterpoint about IRV vs. Condorcet. The arguments against Condorcet are either based on a concerted effort by some disaffected minority to "game the system" and voting insincerely or that the Condorcet winner is (to stretch the term) some kinda "empty suit". (I think to apply that term to Andy Montroll would be a big laugh, but the fact is that Montroll is more of an acceptable compromise candidate to any Republican "Prog-haters" than is Kiss, and Montroll is more of an acceptable compromise candidate to Progressive "GOP-haters" than is Wright. I am at a loss to see why that is a "bad thing".) For a single winner election, particularly for an executive office, who we want is the "popular champion". In a tournament, the champion is the person who either beat you, or beat someone else who beat you. If each contestant performed consistently, the champion would beat whomever other contestant that is propped up against him or her. In democratic governance, the way we decide whom is better is that we vote. That's what elections are all about. We don't sit the candidates down to take written examinations to test competency, nor do we make them arm wrestle. We submit them to popular vote, whether the populace is right or wrong about it. In Burlington Vermont in March 2009, if you prop Kurt Wright against either Dan Smith or James Simpson, the people had expressed their judgment in favor of Wright. But if you prop Wright against either Bob Kiss or Andy Montroll, he loses. Similarly, if you prop Bob Kiss against Andy Montroll, Kiss loses. About 600 more voters expressed explicitly on their ballots that they preferred Montroll over Kiss. But, unlike Wright, Montroll never got his head-to-head match against Kiss. There is no consistent value that places the IRV winner (Kiss) above both Montroll and Wright: Kiss's larger number of 1st-choice votes is sufficient reason to rank him as the popular choice against Montroll, but not against Wright. Kiss's larger number of promoted 2nd-choice (or lower) votes is considered sufficient reason to rank him as the popular choice against Wright, but that doesn't work with Montroll. It is a *contrived* and *inconsistent* value system that says these 1st-pick votes are paramount importance (and 2nd-pick are as worthless as last-pick), except in the final IRV round where only then it's a head-to-head contest that governs. If Montroll would have faced off against Kiss in that round, we know that Montroll would have beaten Kiss. The same is true if Montroll would have been up against any other candidate in the final round, but that is not true for any other candidate. Kiss is awful lucky to not have had to been up against Montroll in the final round, because we know he would have lost (as would have Wright or anyone else). How can the IRV election be called an unqualified "success" in a democracy when the wills of a clear majority of voters were thwarted? You can argue your *hypothetical* "insincere voter" who is taking a big chance with the ranked ballot by not ranking their 1st-choice first so that they can game the system and you can argue your *hypothetical* "empty suit" Condorcet winner whose positions are like a warm bucket of spit, but the *actual* fact is, in Burlington Vermont, in 2009, the will of the majority of Burlington voters were thwarted. IRV *failed* to live up to its promise. It doesn't mean we should revert back to the 40% plurality rule we had before, but it also doesn't mean we should put on our happy faces and repeatedly label this failure as "success" and hope no one notices.