Would you like to see the potential spoiler role of alternative party candidates...

Mr_Jefferson_24

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Fri Nov-07-08 10:53 PM
Original message

Poll question: Would you like to see the potential spoiler role of alternative party candidates...

...eliminated with the implementation of instant runoff voting at the national level?

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Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a voting system used for single-winner elections in which voters have one vote and rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first preference rankings, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and that candidate's votes redistributed to the voters' next preferences among the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority of votes among candidates not eliminated. The term "instant runoff" is used because IRV is said to simulate a series of run-off elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election.<1>

IRV is also referred to as majority-preferential voting in Australia, the preferential ballot in Canada, alternative voting (AV) in the United Kingdom, and sometimes ranked choice voting in the U.S. It is also referred to as the Hare system or Hare method, after Thomas Hare, an inventor of single transferable vote (STV) because IRV is the same as STV for a single seat election: Even though voters can mark multiple candidates in preference order, the elimination process results in only a single transferable vote cast for the office.

Robert's Rules of Order calls preferential voting "especially useful and fair in an election by mail if it is impractical to take more than one ballot. . . . In such cases it makes possible a more representative result than that under a rule that a plurality shall elect. . . . Preferential voting has many variations." The single transferable vote technique used by IRV is the example given. The manual goes on to note that if voters don't rank enough candidates, this may prevent any from receiving a majority and "require the voting to be repeated. . . . Although this type of preferential ballot is preferable to an election by plurality, it affords less freedom of choice than repeated balloting, because it denies voters the opportunity of basing their second or lesser choices on the results of earlier ballots, and because the candidate in last place is automatically eliminated and may thus be prevented from becoming a compromise choice."<2>

At a national level IRV is used to elect the Australian House of Representatives,<3> the President of Ireland,<4> the national parliament of Papua New Guinea and the Fijian House of Representatives.<5> In the United States, it is used in five local jurisdictions, including San Francisco, California and Pierce County, Washington, and has been approved by voters in other jurisdictions such as Minneapolis, Minnesota and Memphis, Tennessee. In the United Kingdom, IRV is used for elections for leaders of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, while the supplementary vote form of IRV is used for all direct elections of mayors in England, including for the Mayor of London.<6> New Zealand cities using IRV include the capital, Wellington<7>. IRV is used in a number of non-governmental elections, including elections for the Canadian Wheat Board and student government in universities . . . .

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting