Should caucuses and primaries use Instant Runoff Voting?

[moondust]

Obviously there won't be any runoffs but there are other considerations.

Q: Does IRV affect campaign debate?

A: Yes. Because IRV may require second and third choice votes to win, candidates have incentive to focus on the issues, to attract voters to their positions and to form coalitions. Negative campaigning and personal attacks are much less effective in an IRV election.

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/faq.htm

Particularly in a race with many candidates IRV would seem to produce a more representative outcome than winner-takes-all because you may get a lot of credit that you wouldn't otherwise get for being a close second choice or third choice of many voters.

[Dookus]

1. but most primaries aren't winner-take-all

they're proportional, thus there's no need for IRV.

[moondust]

5. True.

Not having participated in an IRV election before, I'm wondering if it would have any other advantages or have any affect on the eventual outcome. Perhaps a statistician would know what the difference, if any, might be. Somehow I don't think the result would be exactly the same.

Inidentally, most Republican primaries are winner-takes-all.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I likethe concept n/t

[SadEagle]

3. Iowa Caucuses already sort of do.

Any one who is in a group that produces < 15% of support can switch to a remaining candidate. Of course, it's not very instant, but it's a runoff.

And, as Dookus pointed out, there is already some proportional delegate representation in the primaries, so if one candidate gets 55% of the voters, and the other 45%, it's not like one gets all the delegates..

[Tactical Progressive]

4. That's a great idea

An excellent way to introduce runnoff voting into the everyday lexicon of the electoral process. Runnoff voting is probably the only mechanism that could conceivably enable the viability of third-party voting in our binary political system. Even then it would be tough, but at least possible. It isn't now as recent history has proven so strikingly.

As far as Dookus' point that 'most primaries aren't winner-take-all they're proportional, thus there's no need for IRV.', that's true on the face of it, but 'need' isn't the question. Primaries aren't elections, all they are is checkpoints to help people make up their mind. They aren't an end a process as is an election. So there could be both a proportional outcome AND a winner from the top two candidates, and they might not be the same. That would certainly expand the debate.

[morgan2]

6. irv would be great

but democrats don't want irv. 99% of them won't even mention the idea in public. The party is more concered with keeping itself in power than doing whats right.

[moondust]

7. But they now have it in San Francisco.

At least for elections.

[morgan2]

8. i could be wrong

but i believe what san francisco does is not irv. It is non partisan elections. The two leading vote getters in the single primary are on the ballot.

[LWolf]

9. Yes.

The primaries would be a good place to debut IRV.

You'd still have a democrat to run in the GE when the smoke cleared, and candidates would have to focus on issues.