More Cities Keep Moving to IRV

Updated in June 2011

In 2000, no city in the United States used instant runoff voting (IRV). Since then, 17 cities and counties have passed ballot measures adopting IRV, including at least one every November since 2004. Eight of those jurisdictions have used IRV in elections. Two additional cities in North Carolina have used IRV as part of a pilot program. See exit polls done by local universities in several of these jurisdictions that show positive reactions to IRV by voters after using it.

In addition, Arkansas, Louisiana and South Carolina all use IRV ballots for their overseas voters participating in runoff elections, and Springfield (IL) did so in 2011 after a 91% vote to adopt this practice in 2006. Since 1941, Cambridge, Mass., has used a similar ranked choice ballot in choice voting elections held citywide for its nine-seat city council and its school committee.)

In nongovernmental elections, IRV is widely used. Nearly 60 colleges and universities have adopted IRV for student elections (including this spring at Brandeis and Brown, where student voters passed it by lopsided margins), along with even more associations, including for the Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Pictures and for several governing bodies of associations with more than 100,000 members. Internationally, IRV has recently been adopted and used for electing mayors in cities like London (United Kingdom) and Wellington (New Zealand). It is used for national parliamentary elections in Australia and Papua New Guinea and for presidential elections in Ireland, which will next be held in October 2011.

Since a victory in San Francisco in 2002, there have been three repeals of IRV among those 16 cities that passed it at the ballot. Here's a chronological review of what has happened in each of the 18 jurisdictions that have used IRV or voted to adopt it.

* 2000

San Leandro (CA) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 63% to 37% to establish IRV as an option in its elections. In 2010, the first year in which the city had state-certified voting equipment available to be used, the city council voted to exercise its option to use IRV for its elections in November 2010. It was used in a hotly contested, high turnout election for mayor that year, with some 99.7% of mayoral election voters casting valid ballots.

* 2002

San Francisco (CA) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 55% to 45% to establish IRV for mayor, Board of Supervisors and several othter city offices elections. IRV was first used in November 2004, and has been used for elections every November since that time. Here's an interview with Gerard Gleason, long-time member of the city's elections commission.

Basalt (CO) adopted a new charter by a vote of 74% to 26% that included a provision that IRV will be used for mayor when there are more than two candidates seeking the office. The city clerk has prepared for such an election, but none has to date been necessary.

*2004

Berkeley (CA) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 72% to 28% to use IRV for city elections once certain conditions were met relating to election administration. 2010 was the first year in which these conditions were met, and the city council voted by 8-1 to exercise its option to use IRV in November 2010. The election went very smoothly.

Ferndale (MI) passed a ballot measure by a vote of 70% to 30% to use IRV for city elections once certain conditions were met relating to election administration. Those conditions have not yet been met.

* 2005

Burlington (VT) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 64% to 36% to use IRV for mayoral elections in the wake of landslide advisory votes in 2002 and 2004. The city first used IRV in the mayoral elections in March 2006 in a five-way race in which no candidate earned 40% of the vote. It used IRV again in March 2009 in a five-way race in which no candidate earned more than a third of the vote and the incumbent mayor won after trailing in first choices. A repeal drive led by backers of a losing candidate started in 2009, seemed to falter, but regained steam as the mayor lost popularity in the wake of a local controversy. The March 2010 ballot measure to repeal IRV was opposed by the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, Howard Dean and nearly every elected official in the city. Five of the city's seven wards voted to keep IRV, but the mayor's unpopularity helped drive high turnout in the remaining wards, and the repeal was successful by a vote of 52% to 48%.

Takoma Park (MD) passed an advisory referendum on adoption of IRV by a vote of 84% to 16%. The city council adopted a charter amendment moving to IRV for all city elections in 2006 and used it for the first time in a special election in 2007, followed by uneventful mayoral and city council elections in 2007 and 2009. FairVote's exit poll survey in the 2007 vacancy election found support had risen to nearly 90%.

* 2006

Minneapolis (MN) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 65% to 35% to use IRV for mayor, city council and certain other offices. It used IRV in these elections in November 2009. Patrick O'Connor, who oversaw implementation of IRV in Minneapolis in 2009, said about his experience: "I have had the great fortune to be a small part of what could easily be considered the most significant civic exercise in the history of Minnesota government: the implementation of the first Ranked Choice Voting election in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. We proved that it could be well administered, quickly and accurately counted, and that voters had little problem with the concept."

Oakland (CA) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 69% to 31% to use IRV for mayor and city council elections once available as a realistic option to the city. That condition was met in 2010, and the city council voted to use IRV in November 2010. The hotly contested mayoral election drew the most interest, including a profile by the PBS Evening NewsHour.

Pierce County (WA) passed a charter amendment by a vote of 53% to 47% to use IRV for county council, county executive and other county executive offices. In 2007 voters handily approved measures keeping implementation of IRV on track for 2008. IRV was used for highly contested races for county executive and other offices that year, but the county also for the first time used and paid for the "top two" primary system for state and federal offices that had been restored in a 2008 Supreme Court decision. Use of IRV seemed redundant and costly to many voters, and it was repealed in 2009 despite support for keeping it from the League of Women Voters and the Tacoma News Tribune.

North Carolina's state legislature passed a law authorizing up to 10 cities to use IRV in a pilot program. In 2007, two cities chose to do so: Cary and Hendersonville. In 2008, the legislature extended the pilot for three years. Hendersonville used IRV again in 2009 and has voted to use it again in 20011. In addition, North Carolina used IRV for four judicial vacancy elections in 2010, including one statewide election with more than 1.9 million voters.

* 2007

Sarasota (FL) by a margin of 78% to 22% passed a charter amendment to replace runoff elections with IRV. Sarasota will use IRV once it has a cost-efficient and certified means to implement it.

Aspen (CO) by a margin of 77% to 23% passed a charter amendment to replace runoff elections with IRV in elections for the mayor and the two-seat city council elections. In May 2009, IRV was used for the mayoral race and a new form of IRV was used for the council races, stirring some controversy and particularly heated, well-financed opposition from the losing mayoral candidate. In November 2009, voters by 8 votes failed to approve an advisory measure to reject consideration of replacing IRV. Seemingly fatigued with ongoing debate about the system, voters backed a binding repeal in November 201o

* 2008

Santa Fe (NM) by a margin of 65% to 35% passed a charter amendment to replace plurality voting with IRV for city elections. The city will use IRV upon development of a means to implement IRV.

Telluride (CO) passed a statutory initiative by 67% to 33% to replace plurality voting with IRV for mayoral elections. It will be used in November 2011.

Memphis (TN), the second largest city in the southeastern United States, voted by a margin of 71% to 29% to adopt replace runoffs with IRV in city council elections. It will be used once Shelby County has voting equipment ready to run IRV elections.

* 2009

St Paul (MN) voted by 52.5% to 47.5% to replace two rounds of voting with IRV in elections for mayor and city council. It will first be used for city council elections in November 2011.

* 2010

Portland (ME) voted by 52% to 48% to back a new charter that established a direct election for mayor using IRV. IRV will first be used for mayoral elections in Maine's largest city in November 2011.

Myths about Voting Rights and IRV (and STV)

Instant runoff voting and its related multi-seat, proportional voting variant cakked "choice voting" (also called "single transferable vote" or STV) do not remove voter rights that exist in current U.S. elections. Here are point by point responses to those who have argued otherwise.

Myth #1 "IRV/STV remove the right cast a vote with a positive effect on a candidate’s chances of winning."

Truth: With IRV, your decision to vote and rank a candidate first can never in itself harm that candidate's chances of winning. This myth refers to the voting theory concept of "non-monotonicity." As in any runoff election system (whether instant or traditional) that winnows candidates between rounds, there is a theoretical possibility that a better way to help your candidate win ("have a positive effect") might be to vote in the first round for a weak opponent rather than your favorite candidate. If you're certain that your favorite candidate will advance to the final runoff round without your vote, you can vote for the weaker opponent so that your favorite will face this weak opponent instead of a stronger opponent in the final round, and thus help your favorite in the ultimate runoff round.

Note that this dynamic exists in traditional runoff elections, as used to elect many American officeholders, and to elect most presidents around the world. Variations of this dynamic also exist in elections with a primary and general election, as nearly universally used in the United States for partisan offices. It also exists with IRV, but to a lesser extent because a voter can't strategically change his or her ballot between rounds of counting.

Given that most elections in the United States are subject to this same theoretical strategy, it is simply wrong to say that IRV removes an existing voter right in this regard. Furthermore, because voters need accurate information on how other voters are likely to vote in order to utilize this theoretical strategy, combined with its counter-intuitive nature and great risk of back-firing, its significance is questionable. There is no evidence that this non-monotonicity dynamic has ever played a strategic role in a single one of thousands of public IRV elections.

Exploiting this non-monotonic possibility is more plausible in a traditional two-election runoff system. In runoffs with two rounds of voting, this is a risky strategy, but relatively safer compared to IRV, because you can move your vote back to your true favorite in the final round (if your favorite makes it into the final round). It is much more difficult in an instant runoff with a single ballot where insincere votes will stay with the competitor, and thus can back-fire.

Also, it is important to understand that any voting method that satisfies the monotonicity criterion in every situation must also fail the later-no-harm criterion (where indicating support for an additional candidate may cause your favorite candidate to lose). Unlike non-monotonicity, the later-no-harm criterion has a direct impact on actual voter behavior, with voters "bullet-voting" for a favorite rather than risk hurting this candidate by indicating their sincere second choice -- and those that do so getting a big advantage for their favorite candidate over those who just follow the ballot instructions. As with all evaluation criterion, there is a trade-off, but IRV strikes a favorable balance and can be advocated with confidence.


Myth #2 "IRV/STV removes the right to participate in the final decision of who wins the election by eliminating voters’ ballots prior to the final counting round. The more candidates, the more voters are eliminated prior to the final counting round."

Truth: Every voter has the right to participate in the final decision of who wins the election. Some voters will, of course have their votes count for a losing candidate. Under standard IRV and STV rules every voter has the same right to have their vote counted in every round of the tally.

This myth would appear to refer to the possibility that a voter may choose to not rank either of the two final candidates, and thus abstain from the final tally (voting for neither of them).

In addition, there are some implementations of IRV where, due to limitations of voting equipment, voters are limited to no more than three rankings. In these specific situations, and when there are many candidates, it is possible that a voter may not have ranked either of the finalists, but would have, given more ranking opportunities. These voters' ballots are said to be "exhausted" because they are stuck with a losing candidate. This issue lead to a federal court challenge in San Francisco in 2010. But the court rejected the complaint and upheld IRV.

The fact is that under plurality elections all of the voters who do not vote for a winning candidate likewise have their ballot stuck (exhausted) with a losing candidate. So, IRV, even in a case where voters are limited to three rankings, only IMPROVES the chances all voters have to have their ballot count, compared to plurality elections. Even in traditional runoff elections, all voters who voted for any of the candidates other than the top two, effectively get no say over which candidates advance to the final round, whereas with IRV, many of these voters have their ballots transferred to alternate choices and can help determine which two candidates make it to the final round. Thus, it is quite misleading to suggest IRV or STV take away a voter right in this regard.


Myth #3 "IRV/STV removes the right to have one’s votes counted equally and fairly with all other voters’ votes because only voters supporting the least popular candidates as their 1st choice are assured of having their 2nd choice candidate counted when their 1st choice candidate looses."

Truth: Every voter's vote is treated equally under IRV and STV. This myth suggests that a voter supporting a leading candidate would want to have the "right" to have her ballot count for her second choice, possibly defeating her first choice candidate. This would not be a "right," but rather a defect in the voting rules that would violate the Later-No-Harm voting criterion. The beauty of IRV and STV is that the alternate rankings are treated as contingencies rather than as simultaneous votes. A voter's ballot only counts for an alternate choice if that voter's more preferred candidate is out of the running. All voters' ballots are treated the same under this rule.

In a Michigan case where IRV was upheld by the court, the court decision stated:

"In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a '[IRV] System' is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."

In the 2009 Minnesota Supreme Court case unanimously upholding IRV the court decision stated:

"Nor does the system of counting subsequent choices of voters for eliminated candidates unequally weight votes. Every voter has the same opportunity to rank candidates when she casts her ballot, and in each round every voter's vote carries the same value."


Myth #4 "In comparison with top-two runoff elections, IRV/STV remove the right to elect majority winners. San Francisco had to eliminate its legal right to elect majority winners when it adopted IRV/STV because STV routinely elects winners with far less than 50% of the votes."

Truth: IRV elects majority winners according to the same logic of traditional two-round runoff elections, be reducing the field to two finalists, and electing the one with a majority of votes among the voters expressing their preference between these two.

This myth is based on using different standards to compute majorities under IRV and traditional runoffs.

These IRV opponents argue that there is a failure to produce a "real" majority under IRV because they use the total number of votes in the first round to compute a majority, not the total number of votes cast in the instant runoff. Sometimes the number of exhausted ballots - that is, ballots that don't rank any of the remaining candidates in the final instant runoff - is greater than the final margin between the top two candidates.

The mayoral election in Burlington (VT) in 2009 is used as an example of this "failure." In the first round of that election, the results were:

Kurt Wright 2,951
Bob Kiss 2,585
Andy Montroll 2,063
Dan Smith 1,306
Write-ins 36
James Simpson 35
(With four invalid ballots, three of which were found to be valid in a partial recount.)

In the final result of the election, the results were:

Bob Kiss 4,313
Kurt Wright 4,061
(with 602 exhausted ballots and the 4 invalid ballots)

IRV opponents argue that although Kiss won a majority of the valid ballots in the final round of voting, he failed to win a "real" majority because his final round votes were only 48% of the votes case in the first round.

IRV advocates point out that the result was due to some voters exercising their option to abstain from a choice between the two finalists - just as many registered voters abstained from voting in the first place. That doesn't change the fact that the winner Bob Kiss earned majority support from voters who chose to indicate a preference for either him or Kurt Wright.

Australia avoids this possible outcome by requiring voters to rank all candidates in its IRV races for the House of Representatives. That's certainly an option for those who want this definition of a majority, and it does ensure the voters take the time to indicate their last choice along with their first choice. But if eligible voters have the right to skip voting altogether, some will argue that they have the right to skip ranking candidates they don't like.

But it's not fair to say indicate that a traditional runoff produces a "real" majority due to only using the total number of votes in the runoff round to calculate a majority. By this argument, Vincent Dober won a "real" majority in the March 2009 Burlington's City Council Ward 7 election even though he received considerably fewer votes in the second round of the runoff election than the first:

Round 1:
Ellie Blais 461
Vincent Dober 612
Eli Lesser-Goldsmith 619
Write-ins 4

Round 2
Vincent Dober 515
Eli-Lesser Goldsmith 425

Under the standards that IRV opponents apply to IRV, we would use the first round totals to compute a majority, and Dober in the runoff would have secured only 30% of the vote - a considerably worse majority "failure" than in the Mayoral election held at the same time with IRV. IRV opponents can't have it both ways. Either Bob Kiss and Vincent Dober both won majorities or neither of them did.

A more consistent standard to compare IRV and traditional runoffs would be to look at the decline in turnout from the first round to the last. In the Mayoral election under IRV, 93% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the final round. In the City Council election under a traditional runoff, only 55% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the second round.

Another revealing example is the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Georgia. Incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss won re-election in a December runoff after falling short of a majority in November. Turnout in the second round was only 57% of the first round in spite of the fact that a Democratic filibuster-proof majority was at stake in the Senate.

First round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,867,097
Jim Martin 1,757,393
Allen Buckley 127,923
Write-ins 72
Total 3,752,577

Second round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,228,033
Jim Martin 909,923
Total 2,137,956

If this election was held under IRV, the number of ballots cast for the final round would have been at least 96.6% of the first round total. It would likely have been higher, as most of Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley's supporters probably would have indicated a second preference. Even if Buckley won a far larger share of the vote and none of his supporters cast votes for their second choice, it would have been mathematically impossible for final round votes to be only 57% of the first round total as under a traditional runoff.

To be fair, it is possible for second round turnout to exceed that of the first round under a traditional runoff -- and every now and then it happens. However, large declines in turnout seem to be the norm under traditional runoffs --- sometimes dramatically so, with turnout falling on the order of ten times in statewide runoffs in Texas and North Carolina in 2008. The strongest evidence for large declines in participation from the first to the second rounds of traditional runoffs come from federal primary runoffs. From 1994 to 2008, turnout declined in 113 of 116 regularly scheduled federal primary runoffs, and the average decline was about 35% -- see FairVote's data on these runoffs.

Bottom line: you can't make a majority of voters like one of the candidates running. But you can enact IRV to make sure you always elect the candidate who has majority support over his or her top opponent in the final round and to ensure the defeat of the candidate whom a majority of voters see as their last choice - a result that plurality voting makes all too possible.


Myth #5 "IRV/STV remove the right to a transparent, verifiable election process with a decentralized, simple counting process that can be easily manually counted and audited."

Truth: IRV and STV elections can enhance election transparency and integrity, and are manually audited routinely. IRV elections for the national president of Ireland are manually counted at decentralized counting centers, though a centralized count is also possible. The count can be done manually as well as by computer.

Because ranked ballot optical scanners capture individual ballot records (rather than just running totals), they can add a higher level of security and fraud detection than paper-only elections. It is the redundancy of ballot records (both paper and computer), made possible by the new generation of optical scanners, that makes fraud so much more difficult to accomplish and easy to detect (the perpetrator needs to utilize two distinctly different strategies using different kinds of resources and overcoming different kinds of security measures to change BOTH records, to get away with it.)

The procedure for manually auditing a ranked-choice ballot election is a little more involved than a typical plurality election. There are two elements to such an audit: confirming that the machine record of ballot rankings matches the rankings marked on the paper ballots, and confirming that the IRV vote tallying procedure was properly done. To audit the ballot rankings, a random sample of voting machines are selected. San Francisco compares the total number of each ranking reported by the machine to the total number of each ranking manually counted on the same sample of paper ballots. A better method is to print a list of each ranking combination (such as 23 ballots ranked the candidates in order: candidate B, candidate A, candidate D, candidate C) and then looking at each ballot in the sample and checking off each corresponding ballot type on the list, until every ballot has been looked at and every ballot ranking on the list is checked off. There are several ways too confirm the IRV tallying algorithm. San Francisco runs the software again for the sample of ballots only, while also doing a manual IRV tally with the paper ballots, to confirm the results match. A better procedure is to run an IRV tally of all ballot data using different means (such as independent software, or just a basic spreadsheet program). Cities such as Burlington (VT) and San Francisco (CA) post all of the ballot records on the Internet so that anybody who wishes can double check the tally on their own as well. This creates greater integrity than is typical of any customary election audit. For more on this topic visit:
http://www.fairvote.org/?page=2438


Myth #6 "IRV/STV gives voters of the least popular candidates the most power to decide which candidates are eliminated, counting their 2nd choices first, [so] IRV/STV tend to elect extreme right or extreme left candidates, eliminating centrist majority-favorites."

Truth: Current plurality voting is more likely to elect "off-center" candidates than is IRV. In a plurality election with several candidates, a candidate does not need any support beyond his or her ideological core supporters to get the "most" votes - even if that is a relatively small percentage of the voters. With IRV, a candidate must be able to garner both strong core support and broad appeal in order to win. As with any runoff system, IRV will elect whichever of the two finalist candidates is most preferred by voters. With over 80 years of use in Australian elections for the House of Representatives, IRV has proven that extremists are not benefited by IRV.

STV is form of proportional representation, and thus will assure that the majority of a representative body will be elected by the majority of voters, the body will also include a number of minority winners proportionate to their support in the electorate. This respects the principle that the majority have the right to govern but that all voters have the right top representation.

Response to some recent attacks on IRV

Some opponents of election reforms such as instant runoff voting (IRV) have been circulating certain supposed failures of IRV. These opponents' claims need correction.

1. These opponents have claimed that IRV is costly.

In fact, instant runoff voting can save money immediately – it depends on the context.

Whether IRV will cost money or not depends on the situation. San Francisco’s use of IRV resulted in the City avoiding a number of runoff elections that would have cost millions of dollars more to administer than the cost of implementing IRV. It cost the city of San Francisco $2.4 million dollars to implement IRV, including $1.6 million for a one-time upgrade of voting machines and $800,000 to educate people on the new system. According to Gerard Gleason of the San Francisco Election Commission, now that instant runoff voting (locally called "ranked choice voting") is well established, voter education and poll worker training costs are insignificant. It has had some ongoing costs, but they are minor and far less than the costs of administering runoff elections. As for savings, in the first year of its use, IRV saved the city of San Francisco $1.2 million dollars by avoiding runoffs in district races for the Board of Supervisors, and has avoided the need for at least one citywide runoff that would have cost approximately $3 million as well as several additional district runoffs in other years.

Cary (NC) and Hendersonville (NC) are two cities that have participated in a state pilot program similar to the program envisioned in the New York legislation – a law first passed in 2006 and extended and expanded for three more years in 2008 after two IRV elections in 2007. The Wake County Board of Elections director Cherie Poucher estimates that IRV saved Cary $28,000 in its election in 2007, and would have saved as much as four times that amount if the mayor’s race had gone to a runoff. Hendersonville has implemented IRV with little cost, and while no runoffs have been avoided, savings would have been immediate if there had been runoffs. After voting to use IRV for a second time in 2009, the Hendersonville city council in 2010 voted unanimously to explore how it could make IRV a permanent part of its elections.


2. These opponents have suggested that rather than enhancing voter participation, IRV could reduce turnout, citing Minneapolis as an example.

In fact, IRV generally increases participation for picking decisive winners, but there is no guarantee.

IRV tends to improve voter participation, particularly when replacing two rounds of voting where either the first round or second round can have much lower turnout. But as a general matter, turnout is mostly driven by how exciting elections are, rather than the voting method. In the case of Minneapolis in 2009, the popular incumbent mayor had no serious opponent, and of course won in a landslide. When the outcome of an election is a foregone conclusion, turnout is generally low, regardless of method. Local scholars have dismissed IRV as a reason for the turnout decline in Minneapolis, pointing out that neighboring St. Paul had exactly the same dynamic with its mayor, and its turnout drop in 2009 was larger than that of Minneapolis. At the same time, Minneapolis avoided the need for its September primary, where turnout historically had been very low, yet eliminated most candidates.

When IRV combines two round runoff systems into a single election the increased voter participation is most dramatic. An analysis of voter participation (http://www.fairvote.org/assets/turnout.pdf) in San Francisco by Dr. Christopher Jerdonek found that the use of instant runoff voting in San Francisco’s November 2005 election increased voter participation in the decisive round of the Assessor-Recorder race by an estimated 2.7 times, or 120,000 voters of what would have happened in a December runoff that year. In six out of twenty-five neighborhoods, it is estimated that voter participation in the decisive round tripled due to RCV. (http://www.fairvote.org/assets/turnout.pdf)


3. These opponents have suggested IRV may harm racial minorities.

In fact, IRV has proven easy for voters of all races and has elected diverse representation in places like San Francisco.

IRV is a majoritarian, winner-take-all voting method rather than a proportional voting method designed to represent those in the minority. For that reason, it is neither more nor less likely to elect racial minority candidates than existing single-winner methods in a general matter, although traditional racial minorities can have trouble competing as effectively in expensive, one-on-one runoff elections as better-financed white candidates.

Nevertheless, there is convincing evidence that racial minorities easily adapt to using ranked ballots and, indeed, utilize IRV very effectively. Several studies of the San Francisco elections have shown that minority voters were just as likely to effectively utilize their rankings as other voters, with racially diverse districts actually decreasing the rate of residual votes (under-votes and over-votes) compared to non-IRV elections. Also, because the separate runoff election was eliminated, voter participation in the most racially diverse districts of San Francisco increased more than in white districts -- by an astonishing 307% compared to separate runoffs. http://www.fairvote.org/assets/turnout.pdf

The City with the longest use of instant runoff voting is San Francisco. Its 11 members of its Board of Supervisors include 3 Asian Americans, 2 Latinos, 1 African American and 1 Persian American. A full analysis of the impact of IRV on racial minorities in several cities is available here
http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting-and-its-impact-on-racial-minorities


4. These opponents claim that IRV usually produces a plurality winner and fails to elect majority winners.

In fact, IRV elects candidates with majority support over their top opponent.

As in traditional runoff elections, it is not surprising that the most common winner of the runoff tally is the leader of the first round. But, when a “spoiler” scenario has split the majority among similar candidates, IRV – just as in a separate runoff system – allows that majority to re-coalesce around the strongest candidate, resulting in a "come-from-behind" victory. Australia has used IRV to elect their federal House of Representatives for generations. An analysis of these elections from 1949 - 2007 shows that on average, in 16% of those contests that went to an instant runoff tally, there was a reversal with the first round leader being defeated. In other words, one out of six “plurality-only” leaders was in fact not the majority choice when the field narrowed to two. http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2010/05/preferential-voting-in-australia.html

In addition, as in separate runoff elections, some voters abstain from the runoff (either stay home if a separate runoff, or don't rank either of the two finalists in IRV). This can mean that the "majority" winner of the runoff gets fewer than half the votes cast originally in the first round. However, because IRV combines the two elections into one, the drop-off due to these "exhausted" ballots is generally much less severe than the drop-off occurring in separate runoff elections. Under separate runoff election rules, a "majority" winner often receives fewer votes in this runoff round than the "loser" received in the first round of voting – something that can never happen with IRV. For example, turnout in a 2009 citywide race with IRV in Burlington (VT) declined by 6% between the first round and decisive instant runoff. Turnout in an actual runoff in a city council race (which did not use IRV) that year in Burlington declined by 45%. Of all 116 federal primary runoffs in 1994 to 2008 in states around the country, fully 113 had declines in turnout, with the average drop in turnout of 35.1%.


5. These opponents claim that IRV leads to "2 party domination."

In fact, IRV accommodates voter choice, but does not represent those who can’t win majorities.

Some opponents of the American "two-party system" have suggested that IRV would simply entrench "2-party domination." IRV neither overthrows nor entrenches the current predominance of two major parties. IRV does allow minor parties to exist, contend for office, and possibly eventually win office, without being labeled as "spoilers." However, since IRV is a majority voting method, third parties that do not appeal to the majority of an electorate would not defeat candidates who can muster that majority support.


6. These opponents claim there is never enough voter education for IRV.

In fact, voter education is always good, but often not necessary.

Voter education has been more than adequate in every implementation of IRV in the U.S., as indicated by the fact that there have been very small numbers of ballots that did not indicate a valid first choice. In 2009, for example, Minneapolis for the first time implemented IRV to elect the mayor, city council and several other offices. A survey found that 95% of voters found the new election process easy to use and that the entire election produced just one defective ballot that could not be counted for its first choice among 45,968 cast.

The key is a good ballot design, as the voters' task is simple. Voters can mark their ballots in exactly the same way as they always have in the past. However, the voter has the option of ranking alternate choices, in case there is no majority winner and the voter's favorite candidate doesn't make it into the final runoff count. Since a vote for a minor candidate won't be wasted, as long as the voter ranks other choices, the voter can generally avoid the conundrum of voting for a favorite or a lesser evil. This in many ways makes voting with IRV easier than having to calculate who is a credible candidate under the current plurality method.

Scholars have conducted formal voter surveys in several U.S. cities that recently implemented IRV (see http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=2170) to assess voter acceptance of the new system. Without exception, in every city, voters have overwhelmingly favored IRV over the old method. Also, studies of the San Francisco and Burlington IRV elections have proven that there was no increase in uncountable ballots (spoiled or skipping the IRV race) with the adoption of IRV. In the Burlington IRV election in 2006, for example, 99.9% of ballots cast in the IRV race for mayor were valid – and it rose to 99.98% in 2009 (a single invalid ballot). People had no difficulty voting; news reports indicated that poll workers on hand to explain IRV had an uneventful day.

The two nations with the highest voter participation rates in the world, Australia (which also has mandatory voting) and Malta, both use ranked choice ballots


7. These opponents claim IRV "leaves some voters behind."

In fact, voters use IRV effectively even without knowing the details of how the count works.

The only "complicated" aspect of instant runoff voting is the tabulation that occurs if there is no initial majority winner. But the voters don't need to absorb these details. A voter can dial a telephone without understanding the complexities of the internal electronics or vote for president, without understanding the constitutional complexities with the Electoral College. IRV is easy for voters to use, and a well-informed voter does not get an advantage over a less-informed voter who indicates their favorite choice first, second-favorite second and third-favorite third – just as suggested by the instructions.

A traditional vote-for-one method can create great strategic complexity for voters when there are more than just two candidates, due to the "spoiler" dynamic. However, IRV dramatically reduces the need for such calculations, as voters have less concern about "wasting" their votes, and second choices can never hurt that voter's first choice. While no voting method can completely eliminate every possibility of strategic "gaming," IRV allows for less strategic gamesmanship than either plurality elections or two-round runoffs.


8. These opponents claim that IRV is too difficult and complex to count.

In fact, jurisdictions have developed fair and secure IRV counting methods.

Because voters can say more with a ranked ballot, and it effectively combines two elections into one, tallying IRV ballots is more involved than a “vote for one with an “X” form of ballot. Nevertheless, a number of jurisdictions have met this challenge, either using special state-certified voting equipment (as in San Francisco, and, later this year, Oakland in California), new procedures (including a hand-count after tallying first choices at the polls, as done in 2009 in Minneapolis) or procedures using existing equipment (as in North Carolina, where all local elections must use federally certified equipment).

IRV elections can be readily audited, as is routinely done. Many jurisdictions audit a random selection of voting machines to compare the machine record with the paper ballots. There is no need to transport ballots to a central location, though this is an option for a recount. In Ireland’s national elections, the IRV election for the national president is hand-counted at local voting centers in less than a day. Australian jurisdictions get an unofficial full election night tally by hand, then a final official central count.

Jurisdictions in the U.S. typically collect voting machine data to run the IRV tally election night, with a manual audit later. Because IRV supports the capture of complete ballot images from paper ballots, rather than mere candidate totals, it can markedly enhance election integrity. It is the redundancy of having both a paper and electronic record of every ballot that makes fraud especially difficult. http://www.fairvote.org/ranked-voting-and-election-integrity-2/

Featured Quote "I have had the great fortune to be a small part of what could easily be considered the most significant civic exercise in the history of Minnesota government: the implementation of the first Ranked Choice Voting election in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. We proved that it could be well administered, quickly and accurately counted,
and that voters had little problem with the concept."
- Former city elections director Patrick O'Connor, who oversaw implementation of IRV in Minneapolis in 2009


9. These opponents claim jurisdictions are abandoning IRV.

In fact, most jurisdictions with IRV are keeping it -- only two have repealed it.

Some opponents of IRV imply that instant runoff voting has been repealed most everywhere it has been adopted. This is not true. Let's look at the facts, as of the date of this post.

At the start of the 21st century, no city in the United States used instant runoff voting. Since then, 14 cities and counties have passed ballot measures adopting IRV, five of which have already used it. Two cities have voted to use it on a one-time basis as part of a pilot program. In addition, more than 50 major colleges and universities have adopted IRV for student elections, along with even more associations, including several with more than 100,000 members. Internationally, IRV has been adopted and used for electing mayors in cities like London (United Kingdom) and Wellington (New Zealand) for national elections in Papua New Guinea. The new British government has committed to holding a national referendum on IRV for electing the House of Commons.

Returning to the United States, there have been two repeals of IRV among those 14 cities that passed it at the ballot: Burlington (VT) and Pierce County (WA). Repeals took place over the opposition of the local League of Women Voters and were tied to special partisan calculations that rarely will be repeated. At the same time, several cities are moving toward IRV, including action this year by the California city councils of Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro to use it this November. Despite what some might claim, no other city has repealed IRV; as one example of opposition claims, Sunnyvale (CA) this year changed a never-used feature to have the 7-member city council use IRV when electing one of its members to be mayor – backers of this change stressed that their vote had nothing to do with their views on using IRV in actual elections.

Rebutting the "Majority Failure" Argument Against IRV

One misleading argument made by some IRV opponents is that a "real" runoff (top two runoff, with a second election weeks or months after the first) produces a "real" majority, but that IRV may not produce such a majority. This argument is based on using different standards to compute majorities under IRV and traditional runoffs.

These IRV opponents argue that there is a failure to produce a "real" majority under IRV because they use the total number of votes in the first round to compute a majority, not the total number of votes cast in the instant runoff. Sometimes the number of exhausted ballots - that is, ballots that don't rank any of the remaining candidates in the final instant runoff - can mean that neither of the two finalists has more than 50% of the votes cast in the first round.

The mayoral election in Burlington (VT) in 2009 is used as an example of this "failure." In the first round of that election, the results were:

Kurt Wright 2,951
Bob Kiss 2,585
Andy Montroll 2,063
Dan Smith 1,306
Write-ins 36
James Simpson 35
(With four invalid ballots, three of which were later found to be valid in a partial recount.)

In the final result of the election, the results were:

Bob Kiss 4,313
Kurt Wright 4,061
(with 602 exhausted ballots and the 4 invalid ballots)

IRV opponents argue that although Kiss won a majority of the valid ballots in the final round of voting, he failed to win a "real" majority because his final round votes were only 48% of the votes case in the first round.

IRV advocates point out that the result was due to some voters exercising their option to abstain from a choice between the two finalists - just as many registered voters abstained from voting in the first place. That doesn't change the fact that winner Bob Kiss earned majority support from voters who chose to indicate a preference for either him or Kurt Wright.

Australia avoids this possible outcome by requiring voters to rank all candidates in its IRV races for the House of Representatives. That's certainly an option for those who care about this definition of a majority, and it does ensure the voters take the time to indicate their last choice along with their first choice. But if eligible voters have the right to skip voting altogether, some will argue that they have the right to skip ranking candidates they don't like.

But it's not fair to say that in contrast to IRV, traditional runoff produces a "real" majority while discounting the total number of votes cast in the first round when calculating a majority. By this argument, Vincent Dober won a "real" majority in the March 2009 Burlington's City Council Ward 7 election even though he received considerably fewer votes in the second round of the runoff election than his opponent received in the first:

Round 1:
Ellie Blais 461
Vincent Dober 612
Eli Lesser-Goldsmith 619
Write-ins 4

Round 2
Vincent Dober 515
Eli-Lesser Goldsmith 425

Under the standards that IRV opponents apply to IRV, we would use the first round totals to compute a majority, and Dober in the runoff would have secured only 30% of the vote - a considerably worse majority "failure" than in the Mayoral election held at the same time with IRV. IRV opponents can't have it both ways. Either Bob Kiss and Vincent Dober both won majorities or neither of them did. Under normal usage, the candidate with more than 50% of the votes counted in the final round is called a "majority winner."

A more consistent standard to compare IRV and traditional runoffs would be to look at the decline in participation from the first round to the last. In the Mayoral election under IRV, 93% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the final round. In the City Council election under a traditional runoff, only 55% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the second round.

Another revealing example is the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Georgia. Incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss won re-election in a December runoff after falling short of a majority in November. Turnout in the second round was only 57% of the first round in spite of the fact that a Democratic filibuster-proof majority was at stake in the Senate.

First round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,867,097
Jim Martin 1,757,393
Allen Buckley 127,923
Write-ins 72
Total 3,752,577

Second round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,228,033
Jim Martin 909,923
Total 2,137,956

If this election was held under IRV, the number of ballots cast for the final round would have been at least 96.6% of the first round total. It would likely have been higher, as most of Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley's supporters probably would have indicated a second preference. Even if Buckley won a far larger share of the vote and none of his supporters cast votes for their second choice, it would have been mathematically impossible for final round votes to fall to only 57% of the first round total as under a traditional runoff.

To be fair, it is possible for second round turnout to exceed that of the first round under a traditional runoff - and every now and then it happens. However, large declines in turnout seem to be the norm under traditional runoffs - sometimes dramatically so, with turnout falling on the order of ten times in statewide primary runoffs in Texas and North Carolina in 2008. Federal primary runoffs in the several stats that hold them provide particularly strong evidence for large declines in participation from the first to the second rounds of traditional runoffs. From 1994 to 2008, turnout declined in 113 of 116 regularly scheduled federal primary runoffs, and the average decline was about 35% - see FairVote's data on these runoffs.

Bottom line: you can't make a majority of voters like one of the candidates running. But you can enact IRV to make sure you always elect the candidate who has majority support over his or her top opponent in the final round and to ensure the defeat of the candidate whom a majority of voters see as their last choice - a result that plurality voting makes all too possible.

IRV reduces problems of strategic voting

A key element of IRV is that, contrary to some critics, it reduces the need for strategic calculation compared to traditional vote-for-one plurality elections, or two-round runoff elections.

For example, the concern that voting for your favorite candidate might help elect your least favorite choice (prevalent in vote-for-one plurality races with three or more candidates) is reduced by IRV. With plurality voting, voters need to know the latest polls to determine who the likely front-runners are, to plan how to strategically use their one vote, and so on. While every voting method can have possibilities of strategic voting in some situations, IRV is less prone to strategic manipulation than plurality or two-round runoffs.

Prof. Nicolaus Tideman in his latest book Collective Decisions and Voting used real-world election data to analyze the resistance to strategy of various voting methods. On a scale of 10, with 10 being perfectly resistant (which no system is), plurality voting got a 6.3, two-round runoffs got 8.1 and IRV got 9.7.

As to facts about real use of IRV in government elections, Australia has used it for generations. Here is an analysis of IRV use in the federal House of Representatives of Australia from 1949 - 2007.

IRV is also simple for voters to use (over 99.9% of IRV ballots were valid in Burlington's five-candidate mayoral races with IRV in 2006 and 2009, with no invalid ballots in the low-income/low education wards.

The main point in response to concerns about strategy, is that with IRV, strategy is less of an issue than with plurality elections or two-round runoffs. IRV also introduces NO new paradoxes or pathologies that do not already exist (and worse) under either two-round runoffs or plurality elections.

Concerns about whether voters need an advance degree to fully understand IRV are misplaced. Do voters fully understand how a plain old telephone works (how the switching works, etc. to reach the intended person)? No. But they can use it just as effectively as an electrical engineer. So too with IRV, there is convincing evidence that voters with less education use IRV as effectively as anyone else.

Instant Runoff Voting, Election Integrity and FairVote

Updated June 19
Some critics of instant runoff voting suggest that its backers, including FairVote, should take election integrity concerns like verified voting, manual audits and transparent elections more seriously.

Local activists for IRV often have been leaders in local election integrity efforts - people like Rick Lass, who led the effort to win instant runoff voting in Santa Fe (NM) in 2008 and Anthony Lorenzo who led the effort to win an IRV ballot measure in Sarasota (FL) in 2007. As to FairVote, we've proposed procedures for auditing ranked choice voting elections and periodicaly highlight our views in communications to our members, like in this November 2009 Innovative Analysis. Here also is a link to our statement on election security and audits overall.

More broadly, FairVote was the first national group to propose establishing an affirmative right to vote in the Constitution, and in so doing highlighting a full range of federal, state and local laws and practices undermining suffrage rights. For years, we have also been leaders in the call for public interest voting equipment, including open source software and removal of profiteering from elections -- for instance, see this excerpt from a Tompaine.com commentary in 2004:

"Public Interest" voting equipment. Currently voting equipment is suspect, undermining confidence in our elections. The proprietary software and hardware are created by shadowy companies with partisan ties who sell equipment by wining and dining election administrators with little knowledge of voting technology. The government should oversee the development of publicly-owned software and hardware, contracting with the sharpest minds in the private sector. And then that open-source voting equipment should be deployed throughout the nation to ensure that every county -- and every voter -- is using the best equipment.

Getting issues of election integrity right are of essential importance in running fair elections, however, and we look forward to ongoing communication with election integrity advocates who have constructive suggestions on how best to implement ranked voting in elections that are secure and can be audited.

Fairvote MN statement on Minneapolis RCV Election Cost Report

Minneapolis Introduction of RCV Pegged at $365,000

1/3 of amount attributed to one-time start-up costs

Further cost efficiencies expected in future elections as RCV-capable machines become available

A new report by Minneapolis Interim Elections Director Ginny Gelms concludes that costs associated with the city’s 2009 switch to Ranked Choice Voting were approximately $365,000. Of the total cost, slightly more than a third encompassed one-time expenditures that will not be required in subsequent elections. The report also noted that additional cost-efficiencies are expected as voting equipment is put in place and voters and election judges become increasingly familiar with the system. “Process improvements implemented from lessons learned in 2009 will likely make for a more efficient process . . . which will impact the overall cost,” Gelms wrote.

The first RCV election in Minneapolis last November proved highly successful, with 95 percent of voters polled calling it easy to use. Former Minneapolis Interim Elections Director Patrick O’Connor who oversaw the implementation of the new system, says “we proved that it could be well administered, quickly and accurately counted, and that voters had little problem with the concept.”

The April 26 report noted that Minneapolis’ 2009 municipal election cost $1.47 million, an increase over the $1.13 million spent in 2005 (adjusting for inflation). The hand count in the 2009 election represented the largest portion of RCV-specific expenses.

Should a hand count be needed in the next election, however, the city can consider other options for cost savings such as removing the requirement to record the names of all write-ins (as former Minneapolis Elections Director Pat O’Connor has recommended).

The report also indicated that if RCV-capable voting equipment was available in the next election to tally the ballots, costs would be reduced by more than half. Gelms has said that such equipment may be available within the next three years; the city is working closely with Hennepin County to have RCV-ready voting machines in place by the 2013 election. Such machines are currently used in San Francisco; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and will be used in upcoming November elections in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, California.

The highly effective voter education effort leading up to the 2009 election was the other major RCV-related outlay, accounting for 30 percent of RCV costs. The effectiveness of the effort can be seen in the facts that 95 percent of voters found the new election process easy to use and that the entire election produced just one defective ballot among 45,968 cast. These results illustrate the importance of voter outreach and education, efforts which council member Robert Lilligren says should be a priority – to improve voter familiarity with city elections and promote turnout – regardless of whether RCV is used.

The city’s 2013 projections assume a continued strong investment in voter outreach, which FairVote Minnesota supports. Even so, RCV experiences in other cities, such as San Francisco, suggest that “earned media” coverage in newspaper, radio, and online news outlets can help defray future costs here as well.

It’s worth noting that the report only looked ahead one election cycle and as such didn’t address the potential savings achievable over the long run through the elimination of the primary in combination with the use of machines and reduced voter educational costs.

The move to RCV was led by FairVote Minnesota, a nonprofit organization working to enhance democracy through advocacy and public education.

Featured Quote: Former city elections director Patrick O'Connor, who oversaw implementation of IRV in Minneapolis in 2009: "I have had the great fortune to be a small part of what could easily be considered the most significant civic exercise in the history of Minnesota government: the implementation of the first Ranked Choice Voting election in Minneapolis and in Minnesota. We proved that it could be well administered, quickly and accurately counted, and that voters had little problem with the concept."

The distorted "backlash" against IRV -- The Sunnyvale Example

Updated June 19, 2010

IRV opponent Joyce McCloy is behind an anti-instant runoff voting blog with a simple modus operandi: highlight links to webpages that might discredit instant runoff voting and its advocates. This "evidence" tpically is incomplete, deceptive or just not true. But those seeking to seed doubt about change only need for it to appear possibly true.

Today's screed about a new alleged "repeal" of IRV was a good example. As Ms. McCloy knows, IRV in recent decades has been repealed in two and only two governmental jurisdictions in the United States: Pierce County (WA) and Burlington (VT). Both of these repeals were disappointing to advocates, of course, but there was a context to them (see more on Pierce County and on Burlington).

And that's it. No other city has repealed IRV even as more cities, organizations and colleges keep using IRV every year. Ms. McCloy knows that Aspen (CO) hasn't repealed IRV, but she says it has because voters narrowly failed to pass a non-binding advisory question to keep it. She knows that Georgetown University uses IRV, but she says it's been repealed because students didn't use it for a single election in early 2009 (and never mind IRV's ongoing and growing use in nearly 60 colleges and universities, including adoptions in the past year year at colleges like Cornell, Brown and Brandeis). She knows that Cary (NC) didn't repeal IRV (rather it had used IRV in a one-time pilot in 2007), but she says it did. And so on.

Today she's excited about Sunnyvale, California. This year, based on a rule adopted by a prior council, the Sunnyvale might city council would have used instant runoff voting within if at least three members of its seven-member city council had run mayor. Such small-scale uses of IRV can be interesting to consider, but with at least three candidates (all councilors) and only seven councilors with votes (including the three candidates), things can get tricky - tie votes, say, and efforts to outsmart colleagues.

So in what seems like a very sensible decision that IRV advocates would be quick to support, Sunnyvale's city council decided to change its rule to use IRV for these internal elections of the council choosing the mayor in the future. But does this mean Sunnyvale has "repealed" IRV and that supporters of the change think IRV's too confusing as a system? Joyce McCloy has added Sunnyvale to her litany of "repeals" in communications, but consider this quote from a thoughtful blogpost by one of the backers of the change, Sunnyvale city councilor Jim Griffith:

First off, while ranked-choice (or instant run-off) voting is terrific for general elections or when you have a lot of candidates to choose from, it doesn’t work well with a small number of voters and a small number of candidates (in our case, 7 voters, 3 candidates). There’s a lot of opportunity for game-playing, plus a good chance of an end result that many members of the public simply won’t understand. Neither of those serve the public good, so I wanted to get rid of the ranked-choice option

Joyce McCloy in her post bolds a quote from Councilmember Griffith as if he is anti-IRV when in fact he thinks IRV is "terrific" for general elections. Sadly, however, don't hold your breath waiting for corrections to her blog. A website URL can't be wrong or misleading, right?

Addendum, May 25: I received an email from Sunnyvale city councilor Jim Griffith. He expressed appreciation for my post and clarified that in fact the Sunnyvale city council never used IRV. While there might have been three councilors seeking to be mayor this year, only two ended up doing so. But the potential choice among three councilors led to the council sensibly deciding that a binding IRV vote with only seven voters choosing among three or more candidates (all of whom also would be among the seven voters) wasn't appropriate. Griffith also reiterated his support for IRV for general elections.

North Carolina FAQ on Instant Runoff Voting

www.NCVotes123.com April 2010

The following are questions frequently asked by North Carolina municipalities considering implementation of instant runoff voting (IRV) and answers based on responses from the State Board of Elections, the University of North Carolina School of Government, and scientific exit poll surveys conducted in North Carolina.


1. What is instant runoff voting (IRV)?

IRV is a majority voting system that combines a regular election and a runoff by giving voters the option of ranking candidates in order of choice. The two candidates with the most first choices advance to the runoff. In the runoff, each ballot is counted for whichever runoff candidate is ranked higher. As with a traditional runoff election, the winner is the candidate with the majority of votes in the runoff round.


2. How is IRV an improvement over a city’s current method of election?

IRV can improve each method of election used in our cities:

· If a city has a plurality election method, IRV would eliminate the possibility of a winner who was strongly opposed by a majority of voters, but won because votes for opposing candidates were divided among them.
· If a city has a partisan primary method, IRV would eliminate the problem of a majority of voters having limited choices that have been filtered by political parties and save the cost of an extra election.
· If a city has an automatic nonpartisan runoff, IRV would ensure a majority winner without the guaranteed cost of holding two separate elections.
· If a city has a conditional runoff, IRV would prevent the need for a separate costly low-turnout runoff.


3. What does an IRV ballot look like and how does a voter mark it?

A sample IRV ballot used in Cary can be found here. A voter simply fills in the first bubble next to his or her favorite candidate, the second bubble next to the voter’s second choice candidate, and the third bubble for their third choice. A voter may rank only one or two candidates if they so choose. Ranking more candidates does not count against your first choice, but increases the chances that you will elect a preferred candidate or prevent the election of a disliked candidate.


4. How are IRV elections counted on North Carolina voting machines?

The State Board of Elections has developed secure, inexpensive means to count IRV ballots on all voting equipment used by North Carolina cities. Hendersonville’s Ivotronic direct recording electronic system allows a final result on the night of the election. Cary’s M100 optical scan system allows a determination of first choices on the night of the election counted at the polls, with a final result one or two days later at a central location where all counting will be done on machine.


5. Is IRV legal in North Carolina?

In 2006, North Carolina entered into a pilot program by adopting law allowing up to ten jurisdictions (each year) to try IRV for their local elections, including school board elections. In the summer of 2008, North Carolina extended the program for three years with passage of Elections Amendment Act (S-1263), authorizing continued use of the instant runoff voting for willing counties and municipalities.


6. Where has IRV been utilized in North Carolina?

Both Cary and Hendersonville utilized Instant Runoff Voting in 2007. Hendersonville used it again in 2009. Outside North Carolina, cities recently adopting IRV include Memphis (TN), Oakland (CA), and Minneapolis (MN). It is a common method for elections of organizations, including the president of American Political Science Association and of student leaders at nearly 60 universities, including North Carolina State and Duke.


7. What expenses does IRV incur for a municipality that implements it for one year under the pilot program?

A jurisdiction participating in the IRV pilot program is responsible for the cost of educating voters, candidates, and election officials on the election method. These costs were minimal, however. With the use of a good tested ballot design, education costs can be pennies per registered voter. In addition, groups like the League of Women Voters can provide volunteer voter assistance. The State Board of Elections has developed inexpensive procedures for conducting the IRV count. Despite the minimal cost of voter education in Cary, the City saved $28,000 with IRV.


8. What did the voter education programs consist of in Cary and Hendersonville?

In both Cary and Hendersonville a simple ballot design was the key to successful voter education. Cary city officials sent sample ballots in utility bills and issued a media advisory about the ballot change. Local newspapers, in both cities, ran articles bout the new ballot design. Board of Elections staff visited civic organizations to inform them of the new method. Local radio stations ran 30-second Public Service Announcements. The North Carolina Center for Voter Education produced an informative video on IRV that ran on government access stations.


9. Did IRV save money in Cary and/or Hendersonville?

By avoiding a runoff in one of its districts, Cary saved $28,000 in 2007. A citywide runoff would have cost more than $100,000. Hendersonville did not need a runoff in 2007 or 2009, but any runoff would have cost much more than IRV.


10. Were any surveys conducted of voters in Cary and/or Hendersonville and did voters understand IRV?

Dr. Michael Cobb, assistant professor of political science and survey researcher at North Carolina State University (NCSU), in 2007 designed and analyzed the results of an exit poll survey on how voters in both Cary and Hendersonville felt about IRV. Karen Brinson of the NCSU Board of Elections managed the poll. The survey revealed that 68 percent of Cary voters preferred IRV, and 81% found it “very easy to understand.” It revealed that 71% of Hendersonville voters preferred IRV, and 86% found it “at least somewhat easy to understand.” Cary’s own survey in 2008 found similar findings, with even more dramatic differences among the more than 60% voters who gave IRV a top rating of 7-9 compared the 6% of voters who gave it a rating of 1-3.

In 2009, Dr. Cobb again did a Hendersonville survey. Voters overwhelmingly found IRV easy to use, and only 20% opposed its use for statewide elections.


11. What jurisdictions opted to use IRV in the pilot program in 2009?

Based on its administrative ease and strong public support for IRV, Hendersonville’s city council approved implementing IRV in for its 2009 elections and has indicated unanimous interest for 2011 elections and beyond. Cary considered doing so as well At a March 12th public hearing, city supporters of IRV heavily out numbered opponents, while the city’s 2008 survey revealed that a s strong majority of Cary voters understood and preferred IRV – indeed voters were ten times more likely to give it their highest rating of 7 to 9 compared to the lowest rating of 1-3. The council did not pursue the pilot, however, in part because of some uncertainty over the counting method for optical scan machines. Now that the State Board of Elections has developed a sensible procedure for doing IRV on the state’s optical scan machines, more cities may use IRV in 2011.


12. Does IRV make it harder for racial minorities (groups who have been historically disenfranchised and denied equal access to formal education) to vote, dissuade them from voting, or dilute the impact of their collective votes?

African American endorsers of IRV include President Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and election law scholar and Department of Justice official Spencer Overton. Surveys in both Cary and Hendersonville (as well as those in more diverse cities throughout the U.S.) show that voters of all racial groups understand IRV equally well. In most cases, IRV protects the strength of racial minority groups by preventing the need for a separate runoff for which racial minority voters have traditionally been the least likely to return, and by avoiding the possibility that racial minority voters will split their votes between opposing racial minority candidates of choice.

Racial minorities have been strong backers of IRV when it has appeared on the ballot, including super-majority support in landslide victories in cities like Oakland, Minneapolis and Memphis (TN), all of which passed IRV by margins of two-to-one or more in recent years. Voters of color also have been strongly supportive of the system in exit polls, and in the City with the most IRV elections, San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors has become more diverse during the six years the system has been adopted.
In San Francisco turnout among racial minority voters increased under IRV in the decisive runoff round, and prevented the “splitting” of Asian votes among four strong candidates of choice in a district race for election to the Board of Supervisors in 2006.


13. What steps does a municipality take to enter the IRV pilot program for 2011?

Each local governing board participating in the pilot (after receiving written instructions from the State Board of Elections on implementation) must approve participation in the pilot program, and agree to cooperate with local board of elections in a voter education program. The local board of elections must also approve participation. If a jurisdiction is in more than one county, all county boards of election must approve it. For more information please see Instant Runoff Voting: Goals, Standards, and Criteria for Implementation and Evaluation (presented to the North Carolina State Board of Elections on December 11, 2008 by the University of North Carolina School of Government). The report can be found at www.ncvotes123.com


14. How are IRV ballots exactly tallied to determine a winner?

First, all ballots are counted toward their first choice. If a candidate receives a majority of first choice rankings, the candidate wins the election. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, then all candidates are eliminated except for the top two vote getters. In the runoff round, each ballot is counted for the runoff candidate ranked ahead of the other runoff candidate on the ballot. Any ballot listing one of those candidates first is counted for that candidate. Among the remaining ballots, any ballots listing one of those candidates second is counted for that candidate. Any ballots without a first or second choice ranking for a runoff candidate are counted for whichever runoff candidate is ranked third. The winner is the candidate with a majority of the total votes.

In all jurisdictions, the first round of tallying is conducted using the jurisdiction’s current tallying procedure. For subsequent rounds of counting (if necessary) in jurisdictions in counties using direct-record electronic (“DRE”) machines, vote information is transferred to an Excel spreadsheet, validated for transfer accuracy, and then sorted and counted, either through the regular Excel functions or by hand-to-eye from the Excel spreadsheet. For jurisdictions located in counties using optical scan (OS) machines, subsequent rounds of counting take place centrally, using a methodology developed by the State Board of Elections that allows the count to be conducted entirely on OS machines.


15. Are these tallying methods certified and constitutional?

All of the above methods are certified and constitutional.


16. Who endorses IRV?

Public interest organizations like Democracy NC, Common Sense Foundation, Common Cause, North Carolina League of Women Voters, FairVote, NC Fair Share, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, NC Public Interest Research Group, Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition, Independent Progressive Politics Network, Southerners on New Ground, NC Green Party, and Traction support IRV. Individuals backing the North Carolina IRV pilot include House Speaker Joe Hackney, House Minority Leader Paul Stam, and John Hood of the John Locke Institute. Nationally, President Barack Obama, former governor Howard Dean and Sen. John McCain are among those who have acted on their support for IRV.

For more information and videos on IRV please visit:

NC Votes 123 Coalition
www.ncvotes123.com

Democracy North Carolina
www.democracy-nc.org

FairVote's IRV Program (w/videos)
www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting

NC Ctr. for Voter Education video
ncvotered.com/cary/

2009 Hendersonville survey
news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmscobbhirv09/

Wake County review of Cary vote
http://archive.fairvote.org/index.php?page=2543

Response to "blackboard" videos by SJVoter

Terry Reilly ("SJVoter") is an opponent of instant runoff voting from San Jose. He has made a series of videos using a blackboard that share a fundamental misrepresentation. His videos appear to show flaws and troubling paradoxes unique to IRV. In fact, IRV doesn't introduce any paradoxes that don't already exist under common runoff elections systems ( including the runoffs Reilly ironically defends in San Jose). Every one of his videos' examples is also applicable to any runoff election system, and he ignores far more serious paradoxes with plurality elections, such as the possibility of electing a candidate that the majority of voters agree is the absolute worst candidate.

If you don't immediately see how the paradoxes Reilly presents in the YouTube videos apply to traditional separate runoff elections, you only need to walk through the exact scenarios presented, but imagine that the IRV rankings are merely preferences inside voters' heads. These voters can vote for their first choice in the initial round of voting. Then in the separate runoff they use the preference order in their heads to decide which of the finalists they will vote for in the second round of voting. Whether the issue is non-monotonicity, winner-turn-loser, participation, etc.... ALL of these paradoxes apply to ALL runoff election systems, not just IRV.

However, IRV does REDUCE the risk of these paradoxes playing any role in an election compared to traditional runoff elections. This is because, in a traditional runoff system, a voter can vote strategically in the first round for a weak opponent, and then switch his or her first choice to the true first choice in the runoff round. Since IRV uses a single ballot and a single round of voting, this trick can't be used. So with IRV attempting to exploit these paradoxes to manipulate the election is far more likely to back-fire than with traditional separate runoffs.

Response to Kathy Dopp "Report" on IRV "Flaws"

Kathy Dopp, a Blogger and lone member of what she calls the "National Election Data Archive," has authored a "report" alleging 18 flaws of IRV. Her "report" has been floating around the Internet, but is deeply flawed itself.
Here is a response to each of the points she raises...

1. Dopp: "Does not solve the "spoiler" problem except in special cases..."

Dopp has her "special cases" reversed. In fact, IRV solves the spoiler problem in virtually all likely U.S. partisan elections. Whenever a third party or independent candidate is unlikely to be one of the top vote-getters (true in over 99% of U.S. elections), IRV eliminates the spoiler problem completely. If a third party grows to the point that its candidates out-poll major party candidates, another issue that is related to the spoiler problem, can occasionally arise. This is where supporters of a third party candidate may worry that by supporting their favorite candidate, they risk causing their less-preferred compromise choice to be eliminated from the final runoff, leading to the election of their least-preferred choice. In other words, the issue of whether to vote for your favorite choice, or to rank your compromise choice first can resurface in this unique circumstance. But this is extremely rare and no different than a candidate in a party’s political primary arguing "Vote for me because I am more electable in the general election."

2. Dopp: "Requires centralized vote counting procedures at the state-level…"

IRV creates no need to centralize the counting or the ballots themselves, although that is one possible counting procedure -- and indeed a central count is often sensible for smaller jurisdictions. But all that is required to implement IRV is central coordination of the tally. If ballot images are recorded on optical scan equipment, the data from those images can be collected centrally for an IRV ballot (with an appropriate manual audit to confirm accuracy). If a hand-count is conducted, vote totals need to be reported to a central tallying office in order to determine what step to take next in the count. In Ireland, for example, there are 43 counting centers in the presidential race. Election administrators count ballots and report their totals to a national office that in turn instructs the administrators at each counting center on what to do next. The entire process takes less than a day even though more than a million ballots are cast.

3. Dopp: "Cannot be implemented without modification to the ballots or to the optical scan voting machines or their software."

She is wrong when she says older "discrete-sensor machines cannot accommodate ranked ballots. San Francisco has used such voting machines for IRV since 2004. Obviously one needs to modify the ballot to give voters the option of ranking candidates, and many current voting machines are not programmed to record ballot rankings. While true, this is hardly a "flaw" of IRV.

4. Dopp: "Encourages the use of complex voting systems and …[FairVote promotes] electronic-balloting…"

Most government IRV elections are in fact conducted with hand-count paper ballots, including national elections in Australia, Ireland and Papua New Guinea. FairVote is a leading advocacy organization for IRV, but it is joined in supporting IRV by numerous other organizations and individuals, including the founders of TrueVote Maryland and election integrity leader David Cobb and Anthony Lorenzo.

As to FairVote, it advocates the replacement of all paperless voting machines with paper-ballot systems, such as optical scanners. All three of the major voting machine vendors have created optical scan options for ranked-choice ballots. Not all of these are ideal (some, for example, cannot handle more than three rankings), but FairVote expects IRV elections to be overwhelming run on paper ballot systems in the future. FairVote advocates that all such machines store a redundant electronic record of each ballot, as well as a paper ballot to allow for better fraud detection, and simplify ranked ballot tabulations. Rather than making such elections more complicated, this would simplify the process, while improving transparency and integrity.

5. Dopp: "Confuses voters…"

All the evidence shows that voters are not confused by IRV. The rate of spoiled ballots did not increase in any of the U.S. cities when they switched to IRV. For example, Burlington (VT) used IRV for the first time in a hotly contested race for mayor in 2006, and among those casting votes in the IRV race fully 99.9% of ballots were valid, with the very highest valid ballot rate in the ward in town with the highest number of low-income voters. San Francisco’s rate of valid ballots in the most closely contested race in its first citywide election with IRV was 99.6%. Furthermore, exit polls have been conducted in every city having an IRV election for the first time in the modern era. Each survey shows that voters overwhelmingly prefer IRV to their old method of elections.

6. Dopp: "Confusing, complex and time-consuming to implement and to count…"

IRV certainly is simpler for election officials and voters than conducting a whole separate runoff election to find a majority winner. It is more complicated to administer than a single vote-for-one election, but election officials have adjusted well to their new responsibilities. Note that the winning threshold for an IRV election, as with any election, must be specified in the law.

7. Dopp: "Makes post election data and exit poll analysis much more difficult to perform…"

To date, IRV election can make it easier to do post-election and exit poll analysis. Because optical scan counts with IRV require capturing of ballot images, San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT) were able to release the data files showing every single ballot's set of rankings – thereby allowing any voter to do a recount and full analysis on their own.

Exit polls can be done just as well under IRV rules as vote-for-one rules. California requires a manual audit in its elections, which has been done without difficulty in San Francisco’s IRV elections. Manual audits should be required for all elections, regardless of whether IRV is used or not.

8. Dopp: "Difficult and time-consuming to manually count…"

Manual counts can take slightly longer than vote-for-one elections, but aren't difficult, unless many different races on a ballot need to go to a runoff count. As cited earlier, Irish election administrators can count more than a million ballots by hand in hotly contested presidential elections in one standard workday. In most IRV elections the bulk of the ballots have first preferences marked for the two strongest candidates, so these ballots only need to be sorted once. It is only the small stacks of ballots for eliminated candidates that may need to be resorted according to alternate choices.

9. Dopp: "Difficult and inefficient to manually audit…"

IRV can be manually audited just as well as vote-for-one elections, although it does take more effort (since voters must be allowed to express more information on their ballot). Contrary to Dopp's insistence, there is no need to use precinct sums to perform an audit. A manual audit can be done using a random sample of ballots from a random sample of voting machines to confirm that the ballot records are accurate, or by a complete re-tally from a random sample of voting machines. A complete re-tally of all ballots (a recount) is, of course, possible but unnecessary unless a court recount is ordered.

10. Dopp: "Could necessitate counting all presidential votes in Washington, D.C.…"

If the Electoral College were abolished and IRV were then adopted for future national popular vote elections for president, there would need to be national coordination of the tally in order to know which candidates got the fewest votes nationwide and needed to be eliminated – just as in Ireland. But the actual counting of ballots does not need to be federalized any more than if IRV was not used, and could be conducted by counties, states or whatever level is easiest and most secure for that jurisdiction. Note that voters certainly would be pleased to have a majority winner in elections for our highest office.

11. Dopp: "IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system …"

IRV neither "entrenches" nor "overthrows" the two-party system. It simply ensures no candidate wins in the face of majority opposition. If a minor party has the support to earn a majority of votes, it will win in an IRV election.

IRV is a winner-take-all method, like plurality voting and two-round runoffs. However, IRV allows independents and candidates with minor parties to run without being labeled as spoilers. This may reveal a higher level of support for these parties, and if these parties are attractive to voters, their support may grow.

Relating to multi-party representation, any winner-take-all, single seat election method tends towards two dominant parties, at least in any given geographic area. To allow for multiple parties to regularly win office, jurisdictions should adopt a form of proportional representation in which candidates will be able to win office with less than 50% of the vote.

Note that Australia’s IRV elections are often cited as an example of two-party domination. But while the two major parties (one of which is actually a coalition of two parties, with one party running in one particular region of the country) dominant representation, the minor parties contest elections very vigorously, with an average of seven candidates contesting house elections in 2007. That year the Green Party did not win any seats in house elections, but it ran candidates in every district and earned 8% of the national vote. It naturally would prefer a proportional representation system, but supports IRV over alternate winner-take-all systems and uses it to elect its internal leaders.

12. Dopp: "Ranking a voter’s first-choice candidate LAST could cause that candidate to WIN…"

Dopp is referring to what election methods experts refer to as the "non-monotonicity" paradox. The key fact she doesn't state is that this is not unique to IRV, but common to all runoff election systems (whether instant or traditional). While technically correct, her presentation is intentionally miss-leading. The mere receiving of an additional first choice vote can never be the cause of a candidate's losing (although her wording intentionally implies this). Non-monotonicity is the result of the possibility that a change in the order of finishing of the other candidates that results from switching votes may mean that the otherwise winning candidate will face a stronger opponent in the final round of the runoff (whether an instant runoff or a separate runoff). In traditional separate runoff election systems this possibility may open the door to strategic manipulation, in which voters vote for a weak opponent of their true favorite in the first round, and then switch to their true favorite in the second round. Fortunately, with IRV the appeal of such manipulative strategy is practically eliminated, because a voter is not able to change her first choice between rounds, and thus the risk of the strategy backfiring is much greater with IRV than in a traditional runoff. For a fuller discussion of the monotonicity issue see http://www.fairvote.org/monotonicity/

13. Dopp: "Delivers other unreasonable outcomes..."

Unreasonable outcomes are less likely with IRV than with any other single-seat voting method in use today. Every single voting method ever proposed can deliver "unreasonable outcomes" in some scenarios, but real-world experience has shown IRV to be one of the best methods. The overwhelming number of election method experts agree that IRV is fairer and more democratic than plurality voting even if some might prefer other theoretical voting methods. The American Political Science Association (the national association of political science professors) has incorporated IRV into their own constitution for electing their own national president. Robert’s Rules of Order recommends IRV over plurality voting.

As to the specific examples…Irv can indeed have more ties, because there may be numerous rounds in the tally. However, such ties are for last place and elimination, and have little possibility of mattering. Most jurisdictions with IRV use a rule that eliminates in a single batch all candidates at the bottom with no chance of winning, so that none of these potential ties among write-ins or fringe candidates need to be settled.

As to the vanishingly rare but mathematically possible pair-wise "lose to everybody except one" possibility, Dopp fails to mention that plurality elections frequently elect the candidate who in pair-wise comparisons would lose to every other candidate (the "Condorcet loser") which can never happen with IRV.

Real world experience for over 80 years in Australia proves that IRV does not in fact favor extremist candidates over centrists. Certainly not has much as plurality elections can. This is because under IRV a candidate needs to not only have strong core support, but also appeal to the supporters of other candidates for second choices. If anything, candidates in the political center have the benefit that it is easier for them to win second rankings from the supporters of candidates on either side of them politically, than for candidates at the margins.

14. Dopp: "Not all ballots are treated equally…"

This charge reveals a lack of understanding of how IRV works. All ballots are treated equally. Every one has one and only one vote in each round of counting. Just as in a traditional runoff, your ballot counts first for your favorite candidate and continues to count for that candidate as long as he or she has a chance to win.

Your rankings should be considered as backup choices. Your ballot will only count for one of your lesser preferences if your favorite candidate has been eliminated. Every ballot counts as one vote for your highest ranked candidate who is still in the running in every round of counting.

Note that courts in Michigan and Minnesota have upheld IRV for this very reason and Robert’s Rules of Order recommends it over plurality voting. For some key quotes from the Michigan court decision upholding IRV's equal treatment of ballots, please see note <1> below, or for the full court decision see http://www.fairvote.org/library/statutes/legal/irv.htm

15. Dopp: "Costly…"

The two main expenses associated with the transition to IRV are voting equipment upgrades and voter education. Both of these are one-time costs that will be quickly balanced out by the savings coming from eliminating a runoff election in each election cycle. In San Francisco, for example, the city and county saved approximately $3 million by not holding a separate runoff election in 2005, easily covering the mostly one-time costs spent in 2003-2004 to implement the system.

In North Carolina, counties spent $3.5 million for the Superintendent of Public Instruction runoff in 2004, at election with statewide turnout of only 3%. In 2007, IRV elections in Cary (NC) avoided the need for a runoff in one of the city council districts that would have cost taxpayers $28,000.

An effective voter education program can also be done for relatively little money by learning from what types of education worked well in other jurisdictions and what types did not – with the biggest factors being a good ballot design, clear voter instructions and effective pollworker training in that order. In a report to the Vermont General Assembly, the Vermont Secretary of State estimated that, based on how well IRV was implemented in Vermont’s largest city of Burlington in 2006, voter education for statewide IRV in Vermont would cost less than $0.25 per registered voter. In a city of more than 100,000 people, Cary spent less than $10,000 on all IRV implementation and voter education (saving the $24,000 cost of a separate runoff election in District B) – with highly favorable reactions from voters.

16. Dopp: "Increases the potential for undetectable vote fraud and erroneous vote counts…"

Actually, just the opposite is true, so long as paper ballots (such as optical scan) are used. The reason that any attempts at fraud are easier to detect with IRV is that there is a redundant electronic record (called a ballot image) of each ballot that can be matched one-to-one with the corresponding paper ballot. Cities such as San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT) release these ballot files so that any voter can do their own count. Without such redundant ballot records (which are not typical with vote-for-one elections) there is no way to know for certain if the paper ballots have been altered prior to a recount.

17. Dopp: "Violates many election fairness principles…."

This charge reveals either a general lack of understanding, or intentional miss-representation. Every single voting method ever devised must violate some "fairness principles" as some of these criteria are mutually exclusive. Dopp's example in appendix B of "Arrow's fairness condition" (the Pareto Improvement Criterion) completely misunderstands the criterion, and gives an example that has no relevance to it (and contrary to her implication, IRV complies with this criterion). IRV works essentially the same as a traditional runoff election to find a majority winner. When the field narrows to the two finalists in the final instant runoff count, the candidate with more support (ranked more favorably on more ballots) will always win. Some theoretical voting methods may satisfy some "fairness' criteria, such as monotonicity, but then violate other more important criteria such as the majority criterion, or the later-no-harm criterion.

18. Dopp: "Unstable and can be delicately sensitive to noise in the rankings…"

This point has some validity, but is of extremely minor significance. Whenever there is a close election with many candidates, regardless of the voting method, there is a chance that the ultimate winner may win due to the votes of the "most ill-informed voters." Holding a separate runoff as proposed by Dopp as a way of effectively excluding many voters (due to typically smaller turnout) is an anti-democratic approach.

No implementations of IRV in the U.S. have suggested mandating that voters rank all candidates, as is typical in Australia. It is rarely ever important that a voter "fill out a ballot ranking every candidate 10 deep." A study of the related single transferable voting method used in Cambridge (MA) found that in a race with over 20 candidates for nine seats on the city council, approximately 90% of voters saw their first or second choice elected. Dopp's final suggestion of "restricting the ranking depth" so as to ease the cognitive burden on voters and eliminate "noise" of low rankings has been implemented in many U.S. applications, though most experts agree it is preferable to give voters the option to rank as many candidates as they wish.

Endnotes

<1> The rank order ballot used in instant runoff voting (and other voting systems) is known by political scientists as the "single transferable vote" or STV. This balloting procedure has been consistently upheld in United States courts as constitutional and upholding the "one person, one vote" principle. As an example, here is what the Michigan Court ruled in upholding the use of instant runoff voting in an Ann Arbor, Michigan Mayoral race in a 1975 challenge:


"Under the "M.P.V. System" [IRV], however, no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a "M.P.V. System" is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."


page 11, Stephenson v Ann Arbor Board of City Canvassers File No. 75-10166 AW Michigan Circuit Court for the County of Jackson


The Judge also observed on page 7, "Each voter has the same right at the time he casts his or her ballot. Each voter has his or her ballot counted once in any count that determines whether one candidate has a majority of the votes. . . . Far better to have the People's will expressed more adequately in this fashion, than to wonder what would have been the results of a run-off election not provided for."