Instant runoff would end spoiler effect in elections

Steven Hill and Rob Richie in today’s San Jose Mercury News:  Instant runoff would end spoiler effect in elections.

One of Election 2004’s quieter stories may ultimately have far-reaching consequences. In a time of polarized national politics, San Francisco successfully implemented an important innovation in how we vote: electing majority winners in one election with instant-runoff voting (IRV).

San Francisco now elects its board of supervisors with IRV. Several races were hotly contested, including one with a remarkable 22 candidates, yet observers long used to the blood sport of San Francisco politics were amazed to see how many candidates formed electoral coalitions and downplayed negative attacks.

Two exit polls showed that city voters liked their new system and found it easy to use, including the city’s many non-English speakers. San Francisco will use IRV again in 2005 for citywide offices, joining the ranks of Ireland, Australia and London that use IRV to elect their highest offices.

IRV elects a majority winner in one election by simulating a series of traditional runoffs. Voters rank candidates in order of choice: first, second and third. If no candidate wins a majority of first choices, voters’ rankings are used to determine which candidate has support from a popular majority. If your first choice runs weakly and gets eliminated from the “instant runoff,” your vote counts for your second-ranked candidate — that’s the candidate you would support if forced to come back to the polls a second time. …

With cross-partisan support from Republicans and Democrats like John McCain and Howard Dean, legislative bills for IRV were introduced in 22 states in 2003 and 2004, and several states are poised for real action in 2005. Ballot measures supporting IRV passed by 2-1 ratios in all three cities where it was on the ballot in 2004: Ferndale, Mich., Burlington, Vt., and Berkeley. Officials in bigger cities like New York, Los Angeles and Seattle are eyeing San Francisco with interest.

California often has led the nation, from hula hoops to property-tax revolts. Instant-runoff voting could be the latest example, an upgrading of our democratic methods that better accommodates the multipartisan reality of American politics today.

This is exactly the kind of reform our electoral system needs.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.