Instant-runoff voting gets the job done

Tang is a second-year political science student.

By Eric Tang

What are they putting in the water in San Francisco? (Or maybe
the better question is, what are they NOT polluting their water
with up there?)

Over the past several months, our sister city to the north has
been a gushing wellspring of progressive activity, culminating in
the extremely important instant-runoff voting measure.

Back in November, the citizens of San Francisco showed their
commitment to combating global climate change and other
environmental problems associated with fossil fuels by passing a
proposition to build the world’s largest solar power
complex.

Early last month the city celebrated the opening of the
nation’s first community center designed and built from the
ground up specifically to accommodate LGBT (Lesbian,Gay Bisexual,
Transgender) community needs. Then, only days after the
Center’s opening, the city of San Francisco once again
glistened in the public spotlight by becoming the largest city in
America to adopt instant-runoff voting (IRV).

For those of you unfamiliar with the system, instant-runoff
voting allows voters to rank their preferences among all of the
candidates in a race by putting a 1 by their first choice, 2 by
their second choice, and so on. If any candidate receives a
majority of the first place votes, he or she is elected. However,
if no majority is held on the first balloting, the candidate with
the least first place votes is eliminated and the voters who ranked
that candidate as their first choice have their second place votes
automatically redistributed to the candidates remaining in the
race. This process continues until a candidate has a majority of
the votes.

After the massive debacle surrounding the last presidential
election, it is painfully clear that America needs meaningful
electoral reforms. Ralph Nader and his supporters are often accused
of “robbing” Al Gore of the presidency. However, with
instant-runoff voting in place, the majority of Naderites most
likely would have selected Al Gore as their second choice.
Consequently, Gore would have received the few percentage points he
needed in key states to soundly defeat George W.

The greatest benefit of instant-runoff voting is that it allows
people to vote their hopes rather than their fears. Under the
current system, a vote for third party candidate can unfortunately
be the equivalent of voting for that person’s least favorite
candidate. As a result, many supporters of third-party candidates
fear that they might actually be helping to elect the
“˜enemy,’ and then end up voting for a candidate they do
not truly support. We saw this happen in Florida, where Ralph Nader
was polling at about 6 percent of the vote weeks before the
election, but dropped precipitously to only 1.6 percent of the vote
by Election Day, after it became clear that the state’s race
would be tight. Instant-runoff voting eliminates such fears and
“what if” concerns and allows voters to punch their
ballots without apprehension or doubt about whether they are
actually choosing their favorite candidate.

Additionally, IRV allows third-party candidates to compete in
tightly contested elections without being accused of “playing
the spoiler.” Losing this negative stigma, third-parties may
finally be able to penetrate the current two-party (or one party,
depending on how you count) stranglehold on American politics.

Another plus of instant-runoff voting is that it saves money.
Delayed runoffs held a week after the initial election cost
taxpayers millions of dollars. The measure passed in San Francisco
is predicted to save $2 million tax dollars every year for the
city.

Instant-runoff voting also makes it more likely that your vote
will actually “count” in determining the eventual
winner, and knowing that your vote may truly have an impact on the
outcome of the election should increase the woeful voter turnout in
most national elections.

Elections using instant-runoff voting also promote more positive
campaigning from candidates. In order to win races with three or
more individuals running, a candidate will probably need to garner
some 2nd and 3rd place votes as well as 1st place votes. Thus, a
candidate will be less likely to run attack ads or employ other
smear campaign tactics against their opponents because she will
need that candidate’s primary supporters to choose her as
their number two choice.

Voting is a right granted us by our founding fathers, and it
should be our duty to improve voting procedures. As we all
witnessed during the 2000 presidential election fiasco, flaws in
the current voting system have tainted the way we elect our
leaders. To ensure the strength of our democracy, I think it is
time Los Angeles and the rest of the nation took a cue from San
Francisco and adopted this sensible and effective voting
system.