Instant Run-Off Voting: Running for Second Place?

Close only counts in horsehoes and hand grenades…and instant run-off voting
Elections in San Francisco drive political consultant David Latterman nuts. Not surprising in a city where the last race for mayor included a candidate with a penchant for campaigning naked and a guy known as “Chicken John.” But of all the things that could irk a consultant in one of the world’s notoriously wacky political cities, it’s the way San Franciscans cast their ballots that gets him.
Races for the city’s Board of Supervisors and for mayor have been decided with ranked choice voting since 2004. Also known as instant run-off voting or IRV, it allows voters to support multiple candidates in order of preference, rather than just vote for one. Let’s just say you were really sold on the naked guy in the mayor’s race. In ranked choice voting, you could express your support, but also mark second and third ballot choices for more … conventional … candidates. That way, even if the vast majority of the electorate is less impressed with his au naturel campaign, you haven’t forfeited your impact on the eventual outcome by voting for him.
IRV has been implemented in a number of U.S. cities, even as the debate over its suitability as an alternative to the traditional system of plurality elections has broadened. San Francisco has employed IRV the longest, and several other cities use it, ranging from: Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; to Takoma Park, Maryland; Oakland, California; and Aspen, Colorado. Oakland and St. Paul will use the system for the %uFB01rst time this year. Memphis, Tennessee is debuting IRV for municipal races in 2011. Voters in Portland, Maine will decide in November whether to adopt the system for city elections starting in 2011. There are also localities that have rejected the system—voters in Burlington, Vermont and Pierce County, Washington both voted to remove the system after just one election cycle.
For the uninitiated, here’s how IRV generally works: Voters rank candidates in order of preference—usually expressing a %uFB01rst, second and third choice. If none of the candidates receives a majority of %uFB01rst place votes in the %uFB01rst round of counting, the candidate in last place is eliminated. In the second counting, voters whose %uFB01rst choice has been eliminated are transferred to their second choice. The process continues for as many rounds as necessary to produce a majority winner. It’s meant to simulate the traditional two- person run-off, with voters only having to cast one ballot.
Conceptually, the system isn’t the easiest to grasp for voters in a country where second place has almost always been synonymous with %uFB01rst-place loser. It adds a new dimension to the expression “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”—it counts in IRV, too. A candidate in second place after an initial count could still win the election if enough voters ranked him or her as a second option.
Think of it in the context of the 2000 presidential election—the race that made many progressives high on alternative voting methods like IRV. George W. Bush’s margin over Al Gore in Florida was less than 600 votes. Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader won more than 97,000 votes in Florida that year. Had instant run-off voting been in place, backers argue, Floridians’ opinions would have been better represented and Al Gore would have likely been elected president. The logic is that the majority of Nader supporters would have ranked Gore second in an IRV contest. So once Nader was eliminated, many of those votes would have transferred to Gore, who would have erased Bush’s lead and the months-long recount saga would have been avoided.
Keeping in mind that in the real world nothing is ever as clean as in hypotheticals, vote transfer in IRV elections can often be more complex and confusing and there are some variations in the system. Most cities only permit voters to rank their top three candidates, while others permit additional rankings. Where IRV is in use in North Carolina, a system called “top-two IRV” is employed. Under that system, all but the top two candidates are eliminated after the %uFB01rst round, with votes then transferred and re-tallied.
As a voting system, IRV is certainly not untested—Australia has used it to elect members of its House of Representatives since the early 20th Century, a version of it is in use in Ireland’s presidential election, Utah’s Republican Party employ’s IRV for elections at state party conventions and dozens of major organizations in the U.S. elect leadership using IRV. If you weren’t familiar with the system before last month, you likely read about its use in the Oscars’ Best Picture category. There, members of the Academy ranked their choices all the way through—from one to 10—to determine a best picture winner.
For all its potential bene%uFB01ts, Latterman, like many political consultants, is %uFB01rmly in the “no” camp on the question of IRV’s usefulness. “If you want a system that just serves to entrench the political interests of a community, this is the way to do it,” he says. IRV is the subject of a highly polarized debate that is playing out in small to mid-sized cities across the country—places already pre-disposed to parochial political power struggles. There are two intertwined sets of questions that are being debated.
On the one hand, there is the debate over whether or not the system works the way supporters claim: Does it really produce cleaner and less-negative campaigns? Does it truly solve the “spoiler” problem and increase voter interest and participation? Is it just a cover for a purely ideological agenda?
On the other hand, local candidates and political consultants are trying to %uFB01gure out how to run—and win—in IRV elections. For them, %uFB01nding out whether or not campaign strategy needs to change is key. Does going negative hurt a campaign more in an IRV race? How do you tell your supporters to rank opponents? Does creating strategic alliances with other candidates help your cause? On the following pages, we look at arguments for and against IRV. And try to answer some strategic questions about campaigning in IRV elections.
Read more about the debate over IRV here. Read about campaign strategies in IRV elections here. Shane D’Aprile is the senior editor of Politics magazine.