Lessons from Burlington

by Rob Richie // Published March 4, 2010

Let me cut to the chase. Despite winning in five of the city’s seven wards, the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) for mayor was repealed this week by a margin of less than 4% in Vermont’s largest city of Burlington. It’s a disappointment, particularly with a growing appreciation in Vermont for IRV. Those strongly opposing repeal of IRV included the state’s leading civic groups – VPIRG and state arms of the League of Women Voters and Common Cause – and a host of political leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Gov. Howard Dean and nearly every state legislator from the city.

IRV in Burlington only has been used in two mayoral races, as it was not adopted for city council races. Its defeat stems from a simple fact: the only candidate ever to win with IRV in Burlington is current mayor Bob Kiss, who won two elections for mayor in 2006 and 2009 in hotly contested races where no candidate won 40% of first choices. In a city with three major parties, all with roughly comparable support, victories for only one party's nominee meant that a majority of voters had yet to see their first choice win in an IRV race. Kiss was the majority choice over his top opponents in 2006 and 2009, to be sure, but with new controversies in the his administration in the past year, it was clear that in a referendum on the mayor this year, he would lose.

Opponents of IRV were well aware of this fact, and did everything they could to attach IRV to Kiss. At a televised debate, they carried signs saying “Where’s Bob,” suggesting Kiss should be the one defending IRV. They called out at the polls “if you don’t like Bob Kiss, vote to repeal IRV.” They focused on the 2009 election results, suggesting that IRV had cheated voters into a Kiss victory so that backers would have to explain how in fact Kiss had earned his majority win. After Tuesday’s vote, one city councilor called on Kiss to resign – showing the direct link in many voters’ minds between IRV and the mayor.

IRV opponents were led by Kurt Wright, who lost the 2009 race in a cliffhanger. Wright had led after the count of first choices and continued to lead in the count until the field was reduced to two. In the final instant runoff, a majority of voters ranked Kiss ahead of Wright, giving Kiss re-election. Within weeks of his defeat, Wright's supporters were in the streets collecting petitions for repeal – joined by some backers of other losing candidates. Their drive seemed to falter after initial enthusiasm, but then a public scandal enveloped the mayor, and petition gatherers rushed to finish getting their repeal on the ballot. In the repeal, the two wards where Wright ran most strongly voted against IRV by a margin of two-to-one after supporting it when first passed in 2005. The rest of the city voted 60% to keep IRV.

I don’t have a shred of doubt that if Kurt Wright or 2009 Democratic nominee Andy Montroll had won in 2009, IRV would be safe in Burlington. Some might grumble about the system to be sure, but more than one party would have been successful with IRV, and the anti-incumbent energy directed to Kiss wouldn’t have been part of the campaign – and indeed there wouldn’t have been a repeal campaign in the first place.

Reformers can’t control who wins and loses elections, but the lesson from Burlington is they need to be aware that many voters measure the value of a reform by who wins under the new rules. In the case of Burlington, exit polls after the first IRV election in 2006 found overwhelming support for IRV, with voters four times more likely to support it than oppose it and only a handful saying they found it confusing. But that was before they knew who won. As soon as you have winners and losers, as of course you always will, some voters will rethink their assessment. If the same candidate wins twice in a city where that candidate commands perhaps a third of the vote, you have to be ready.

This helps explain that keeping reform can sometimes be harder than winning it – at least until it’s understood as a change that doesn’t favor one side. The irony is that because IRV has been such a potent electoral vehicle -- winning by landslide margins in ballot measures in a range of cities such as Memphis (TN), Oakland (CA) and Minneapolis (MN). that it can be won before there is much grassroots effort to introduce it to voters. There’s a gut appeal to winning majorities in one round of voting and to being able to rank candidates instead of just “X”-voting for them. That’s good for IRV, but dangerous when those first results come in, and backers of losing candidates finger the new rule as the reason their favorite candidate lost.

Local backers [www.fiftypercentmatters.com] did a terrific job in responding to the attack on IRV, although formed their campaign too late to fully dispel some of the rampant misconceptions being spread by opponents. I hope that education is done because Burlington remains a city with a strong coalition that backs IRV and a problem to fix. The city has three major parties and a history of independent candidates, and the system just voted in – one allowing a candidate to be elected with just 40% of the vote – brings back the problems of “spoilers” and minority rule.

More broadly, backers of IRV in other cities and states adopting IRV must work to keep reminding people how the system works and to be clear in explaining the results after they happen, starting with the media (which did an inadequate job in Burlington after the 2009 election, leading some to think that some voters had two votes and others just one). New cities facing that opportunity this year included Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro in California.

Going even more broadly, that same education challenge exists for all reformers – never take your wins for granted, and keep working to make the case for your change even after you win it. You will reach a point where your proposal is the accepted status quo – for IRV backers, that will happen with the idea of voting becomes ranking. At that point your reform probably is safe, as it seems to be in other countries using IRV for decades such as Australia and Ireland.

What American reformers have going for us is that the constraints of our two-choice system are bitterly resented by a growing number of Americans. IRV represents a means to accommodate more options and encourage more inclusive modes of campaigning in a range of settings, such as nonpartisan elections and primaries. The case for IRV remains as strong as ever, and appreciation for its value keeps expanding. Losses hurt and lessons from them must not be forgotten, but our nation’s shift to “rank the vote” continues.

Comments currently closed for Lessons from Burlington

  • nice
    Posted by cheap vps, 2010-11-02 22:49:38 (3 years ago)
  • PS - Great point Angela on poll workers, and the need to have well-trained workers who do not confuse voters. This is no small matter when introducing preference structuration at a time when most people have a pretty clear sense of who they are rooting for.
    Posted by lhtorres, 2010-03-30 15:43:58 (3 years ago)
  • I think your opening paragraph will expose perhaps another part of the underlying dynamic at play here, which is your claim that, "Those strongly opposing repeal of IRV included the state’s leading civic groups – VPIRG and state arms of the League of Women Voters and Common Cause." The fact that these are all "arms" of national organizations in a state that prizes local civic capacity describes part of your constituent gap. At the end of the day, we're working to keep Town Meeting intact, and outside groups are championing reforms that put us in the position of laboratories for external designers. Why not put some of your resources toward helping us preserve a deliberative democracy, not tweak and aggregative one?
    Posted by lhtorres, 2010-03-30 15:37:56 (3 years ago)
  • Angela -- I believe you were one of the key leaders of the Repeal IRV effort in Burlington, but your comment suggests you have been misinformed about IRV and misinformed others in your efforts. If Bob Kiss were your third choice, your ballot only would count for him if your first two choices had been eliminated and your 4th choice were Kurt Wright. -- and if you preferred Kiss to Wright, it makes sense for your vote to count in the final instant runoff for Kiss over Wright. I suspect that wasn't how you voted, however, was it? If you ranked Kurt Wright ahead of Kiss, the fact is that it never counted for Kiss. As to Lea Terhune's messages, she overlooks such facts as IRV having been approved by Burlington voters in citywide votes in 2002 and 2004 and that, bottom line, there is no way that IRV would have been repealed this year if any candidate other than Bob Kiss had won in 2009 -- that was the key point of my post.
    Posted by Rob Richie, 2010-03-30 05:52:52 (3 years ago)
  • The city councilor who called on Kiss to resign was Ed Adrian, who was a SUPPORTER of IRV. More than 50% of the voters chose to get rid of IRV...I thought 50% matters? As someone who voted in the mayoral election, I would like to add that my 3rd place vote for Kiss counted toward him winning, and I DIDN'T want him to win. I thought I had to rank the candidates because a poll worker said that my vote most likely wouldn't count if I just voted for my candidate. The voters of Burlington have made their decision...we tried IRV, found it confusing, and got rid of it. So please stop whining about your loss and move on.
    Posted by Angela, 2010-03-12 17:49:30 (3 years ago)
  • Here's the 2005/2010 "anti-IRV" vote count, and % of INCREASE in voter DISAPPROVAL of IRV. FACT: Voter disapproval of IRV increased in every ward in the city. Ward 1: 180/264 % increase = 47%. Ward 2: 150/185, % increase = 24%. Ward 3: 210/292 % increase = 39%. Ward 4: 721/1203 % increase = 67%. Ward 5: 395/545 % increase = 38%. Ward 6: 329/477 % increase = 45%. Ward 7: 630/1006 % increase = 60% Raw data in previous post. Numbers got jumbled, so I re-posted them here. As for blaming the IRV election loss on Mayor Kiss -- STOP right there! That is classic BLAME THE VICTIM. IRV mayors are wounded, by IRV, because they don't have voter confidence and in a crisis our IRV mayor did not have enough support to rally the city. FACTS: ~ FairVote ran the 2005 campaign in Burlington, it was NOT a GRASSROOTS campaign. ~ In 2005 and 2010, pro-IRV campaigns depended on outside money. ~ In 2005, there were no public debates. ~ In 2010, there were public, televised debates or forums in every ward in the city. ~ In 2010, Repeal IRV was a GRASSROOTS citizen initiative, and voter approval of IRV decreased in every ward in the city. http://repealirv.blogspot.com/
    Posted by Lea Terhune, 2010-03-12 06:16:13 (3 years ago)
  • Between 2005 when IRV experiment was approved by voters, and 2010 when voters had experienced two IRV elections, voter disapproval of IRV increased in every ward in the city. A real 52% MAJORITY voted to REPEAL. Ward 1, 180/264 % increase = 47% Ward 2, 150/185, % increase = 24% Ward 3, 210/292 % increase = 39% Ward 4, 721/1203 % increase = 67% Ward 5, 395/545 % increase = 38% Ward 6, 329/477 % increase = 45% Ward 7, 630/1006 % increase = 60% Raw data, 2005: http://www.ci.burlington.vt.us/ct/elections/docs/march2005results.pdf And 2010: http://www.ci.burlington.vt.us/ct/elections/results/20100302/ Every Burlington legislator has signed on to House bill 773, the charter change which will restore Burlington to the time-tested and trusted traditional voting system. http://repealirv.blogspot.com/
    Posted by Lea Terhune, 2010-03-12 05:38:51 (3 years ago)
  • Maurice - Thanks for visiting our site. We made a donation of $6,500 to the 50% Matters campaign, which we voluntarily reported after the filing deadline.. We didn't "funnel" any money to VPIRG, although I know you and some others there have made that claim publicly with no basis. VPIRG is a state reform group with thousands of members, including many in Burlington. It didn't need nor ask for our money. I note that you didn't challenge my fundamental point: that a different result in last year's close election would have meant no repeal attempt this year. The change in the ward-by-ward results from the 2005 adoption to the 2009 repeal are instructive for why the vote went the way it did.
    Posted by Rob Richie, 2010-03-05 16:07:02 (3 years ago)
  • It's heartbreaking to lose anywhere, and must be especially so in Burlington -- a community that (to an outsider at least) seems very hospitable to electoral reform. But we learn from the bad results as well as the good. From what I can tell from far away in California, Rob's analysis here of the main lesson this time is very perceptive. As an aside, I have to chuckle when I hear people describe FairVote as "big money". That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Opponents of IRV must be starting to realize that they don't have much in the way of legitimate arguments.
    Posted by Bob Richard, 2010-03-05 13:45:42 (3 years ago)
  • This "report" is so biased it goes beyond dishonest. You failed to mention the huge sums of outside money funneled into a small city's LOCAL referendum election. IRV is not a reform, it is a tweaking of the voting process to favor certain groups in power and retain incumbents. What is remarkable is that despite all the power of your national interests and despite national and big state groups dumping more than $20.000 into a local election, a group of citizen populists were able to prevail. By the way, how much money did Fairvote funnel into VPIRG ? Don't hide behind your non-profit status. Walk the walk on election reform. You ARE the big Money.
    Posted by mauricemahoney, 2010-03-05 11:34:06 (3 years ago)
  • Actually the voters in Burlington saw that IRV didn't work. They saw that a candidate who was ahead through all the ballots, Kurt Wright eventually lost, they finally understood that IRV is a corruption of the election process. Rob Ritchie does not mention that IRV was narrowly adopted in Saint Paul, only by lying to voters whoi fined the Better Ballot Campaign for their distortions. It took to cycles, but the voters of Burlington realized IRV does not work and is a corruption of the system.
    Posted by Dann Dobson, 2010-03-04 22:04:29 (3 years ago)