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.