New Zealand continues to show leadership in providing its voters with
fair representation and meaningful ballot choices. After a three-week
postal voting campaign, on September 27th the city of Wellington (the
nation's capital and its second largest city) announced that a majority
voted to keep the choice voting method of proportional representation for
city council elections and instant runoff voting for its mayoral
elections. Proponents won based on such arguments as choice voting
leading to the election of more women and young candidates to
office.The 5th largest city Dunedin also elects its leadership with choice voting and instant runoff voting, as do several smaller cities, and all the nation's health boards are elected by choice voting -- called "single transferable vote" in New Zealand. New Zealand in 1993 voted to change its parliamentary elections from U.S.-style winner-take-all voting to the mixed member method of proportional representation.
News releases on Sept. 8 and Sept. 18 by Wellington reformers
Wellington 2007 election results
New Zealand government page on choice voting
How New Zealand voted to adopt "MMP"
On August 22, 2008, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law SB 439, allowing all municipalities to adopt ranked ballots for overseas voters by ordinance when a primary occurs close to the general election. Overseas voters are often disenfranchised when this happens, because election officials do not have sufficient time to print and mail ballots. Under the Illinois law, however, military and other overseas voters will rank candidates in the primary election, and their ranked ballots can then be used to determine their vote in the general election. Springfield (IL) adopted this practice via ballot measure with an affirmative vote of 91% last year. Ranked choice ballots are already in use for overseas voters in Arkansas, Louisiana and South Carolina. A similar Bill is also currently being considered in California.
In North Carolina, the state legislature on July 18 sent to the governor
legislation to extend the current pilot program for IRV in localities in
the wake of highly successful IRV elections in 2007 and an endorsement
from the League of Women Voters of NC. In Memphis (TN), a charter
commission has placed IRV on the November ballot, one among several
upcoming IRV measures around the nation. In Long Beach (CA), the Long Beach Press Telegram endorsed the city election director's proposal for IRV. This
fall's five leading candidates for president all have been active
supporters of IRV, while the student-run Roosevelt Institution's new25 Ideas for Electoral Reform features two proposals for instant
runoff voting.
