Adam asked me today what I thought of http://www.irvwa.org. What I think seems worthy of a blog entry.
I've heard of this, the Instant Runoff Voting system, and it always sounded good to me. (For details read about it at the website above.) It breaks the two-party system, so the Republican and Democratic parties aren't all that happy with it. But it's very favorable for people who really want to vote for a third-party candidate, but also don't want their vote to be wasted or to hurt the chances of the major party candidate closest to their views.
Washington's gubernatorial election is currently very close as they count absentee ballots. Gregoire (D) is leading over Rossi (R) by a slim margin that's getting smaller and smaller as they count the absentee ballots, probably because most of the King County absentee ballots are already counted (King county votes heavily Democrat) and the outlying eastern counties, while significantly smaller in population, have not yet been counted and trend heavily Republican.
The problem is that the Libertarian candidate has garnered more votes than the difference between the two and if there was no Libertarian candidate, Libertarians would vote almost entirely Republican, just as Greens would otherwise vote Democrat. The Libertarian party, which I think has a very good platform, better than the Republican platform in many ways, will never know how many people would REALLY vote for them because plenty of people are afraid to vote Libertarian only to end up with a Democrat because they spoiled the Republican's chances. I'm in that category.
The IRV system would allow me to say, "I'm voting Libertarian, but if they don't win, I'm voting Republican." That's very powerful and very cool and I would vote for such a system.
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1 comment:
In principle, this seems like a great idea. It would at least be a way to say loudly that I don't like the big two without tossing my vote out the window. That's always been a problem in my state.
There are some problems of mechanics which must be solved. The first thing that comes to mind is that races could not be decided until mail-in and provisional ballots are included unless more than 50% of total possible votes have already gone for one candidate. Staying up all night for results would mostly be a thing of the past -- for others. I don't stay up anyway.
Personally, I would give up the instant gratification/disappointment for a better system. Also, if we had RELIABLE electronic voting machines, one could cast provisional ballots electronically, which would speed up the counting process.
I would vote to approve IRV.
Akakie
(amazing. agreement. wow)
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