Posted on 03/05/2006 8:04:51 AM PST by ncountylee
BURLINGTON, Vt. - Runoff elections are typically cumbersome processes, taking weeks and sometimes months to determine a winner. Burlington is going to do it all instantly.
In an innovation known as instant runoff voting, the results of Tuesday's five-candidate election for mayor and whatever runoffs are needed to settle it will all be known soon after polls close.
For the first time in a mayoral election in the United States, voters will mark their ballots for their favorite candidate, along with their second, third, fourth and fifth choices.
If none of the five gets 50 percent of the vote on the first round, the candidate with the lowest vote total would be eliminated. Then the second choice of the voters who made that candidate their initial pick would be counted, and so on.
"As soon as somebody gets to 50 percent, it stops," said Jo LaMarche, the city's election director.
The winner will succeed incumbent Mayor Peter Clavelle, who announced last year he would not seek an eighth two-year term in the city of nearly 40,000 people.
Advocates promote instant runoff voting, also known as ranked-choice voting, as a way of boosting voter turnout and encouraging more people to run for public office by eliminating concerns that a third-party candidate might be a spoiler.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
It's too bad, really, 'cause it would be nice to be able to vote in support of the candidates you really want, without throwing your vote away, in effect letting the opposition win.
Some liberals pushed for this after they lost in 2000, arguing that if, for instance, New Hampshire had had the instant runoff, Gore would have won.
It never got traction, for a couple of reasons. A lot of folks (including Nader) were happy with the way 2000 turned out, so if it ain't broke...
Mainly, both major parties like their monopoly on power, and if you could vote for a minor party without feeling like you were helping the opposition and wasting your vote, more sensible people would vote for third parties, and eventually one of them might even win!
If people thought about this, there really isn't much of a downside to the instant runoff, (unless you really love the way the two major parties are running things...)
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