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Salt Lake
Tribune
Ranked-choice
ballots would benefit voters
By
J. Robert Latham
October 5, 2003
SALT
LAKE CITY
When
Utah voters trek to the polls on Tuesday, they know that it won't be
the end of this election season.
After Oct.
7, candidates, citizens and local elections officials around the
state will be asked to do it all again before Nov. 4. That means
printing new ballots, staffing polling places, campaigning for
votes, studying the remaining candidates, voting and counting the
votes.
Conducting
both primary and general municipal elections throughout Utah costs
candidates, voters, and taxpayers millions of
dollars.
Political
consultants and those who print campaign materials may appreciate
the additional work primary elections generate. But in this era of
shrinking budgets, it makes less sense to conduct two elections when
one election will do.
Under
an electoral system called ranked-choice voting (also known as
"instant runoff voting"), voters are asked to list candidates in
their order of preference -- first choice, second choice, and so on
-- instead of choosing just one.
If no
candidate receives a majority of votes, the candidate with the
fewest first choice votes is declared defeated. The ballots are then
recounted and allocated to the remaining candidates according to the
highest ranked choice that remains. The process continues until one
candidate has a majority.
By
replacing primary and general elections with ranked-choice voting,
all participants save both time and
money.
Ranked-choice voting offers other benefits as well. Because it
mimics a series of runoff elections, courts have held that the
process complies with the "one person, one vote"
rule.
Among
the many reasons offered by the Center for Voting and Democracy (http://www.fairvote.org) in support of
ranked-choice voting is its elimination of the "spoiler effect,"
which occurs when more than two candidates seek one office. By
ranking candidates in their order of preference, citizens can vote
for their favorite candidate without worrying about electing their
least favorite candidate.
Voters
in California face the prospect of recalling Gov. Gray Davis by a
majority and electing his replacement -- from among 135 candidates
-- with a plurality, an arguably undemocratic result. Ranked-choice
voting ensures a majority winner.
In
addition, experience shows that ranked-choice voting civilizes the
dialogue among political candidates. The simple reason: Candidates
have an incentive to find common ground with their opponents'
supporters to court their second-choice votes. Mud-slinging is not a
winning strategy under ranked-choice
voting.
Is it
too complex for voters? Countries around the world that have used
ranked-choice voting for decades, and have higher rates of voter
turnout than does the United States, report ballot spoilage rates no
higher than occurs in most other
democracies.
The
Utah Republican Party has successfully used ranked-choice voting at
its past two conventions to elect party officers and nominate
county, state, and federal candidates. Students across the United
States, from Stanford University to the University of Maryland, are
adopting ranked-choice voting for their student body
elections.
It is
understandable that some elected officials may not be sympathetic to
tinkering with the rules that put them in office. Fortunately, Utah
law allows us to modify our local election rules and implement
ranked-choice voting by initiative if
necessary.
In the
meantime, it can't hurt to ask candidates how the campaign season
can be shortened and the way we conduct local elections improved.
Many of the winners and losers will be asking themselves those
questions after Tuesday.
J. Robert
Latham (freeutahns@qwest.net) is a Salt Lake Valley
lawyer |
