RANKED VOTING
There is an amazing voting process about to take place in San Francisco - ranked voting. For local candidates - they are supervisors here (kind of like city council people, but in SF the county and city are kind of the same thing). It is essentially instant run off voting. For each slot you get 3 choices, ranked 1 through 3. If someone gets more than 50% of 1st choice votes, they win, if no one does, they eliminate the lowest vote-getters. Then if your 1st choice was eliminated, they count your 2nd choice, if not they count your 1st choice again in round two of counting. If someone gets 50% at that point, they win, if not, the process is repeated again.
Anyway, it is amazing that they have started this here - it will be the first time we use it. It has the potential to spread and to create an opening for 3rd and 4th party candidates.
There are lots of store fronts that have 2 signs in their windows for candidates running in the same district. Sometimes they put one above the other. At first I thought there were a lot of places that just let anyone post signs in their window. But then I realized it was a byproduct of our ranked voting system. They are essentially saying who they think our 1st and 2nd choices ought to be. In some districts there are alliances built, as candidates say vote me 1st and this other guy 2nd, or vice versa, but don't vote for X.
So imagine if this were our system in presidential elections. People really could vote their conscience.
Anyway, I hope it catches on, but I understand a lot of the major party big shots don't like it.
So, I think I'm going to try to sell my car in the next 48 hours. Does anyone in the Bay Area want it?
2 comments:
If Ralph Nader is right about anything, it's that electoral reform is absolutely necessary to the future of democracy in this country. After the 2000 election debacle there was a lot of chatter about the electoral college and electoral alternatives. IRV of the sort you discuss presents, I think, a great alternative to the broken system we now use. It's a well known fact that Gore won more popular votes than Bush in 2000, but considering the number of people who voted for Gore OR Nader - the political mood of the nation certainly did not favor the rightist agenda of the Bush ticket.
Lately, I have heard a lot of people ask why nobody talks about the electoral system anymore. Of course, I think the answer is obvious - electoral reform challenges the domination of the two major parties.
In this interview http://www.democracynow.org/static/nader.shtml with Amy Goodman, Nader mentions another way that the two major parties are attempting to undermine real democracy in America - redisctricting. Now, those of us in Texas are well aware of the way that the GOP used redistricting to attempt to ensure a gain in Congressional seats, but this practice is not unique to the GOP. Both of the major parties use redistricting to draw single party districts to protect incumbents - a way to ensure you don't even have a choice between two evils.
I look forward to reading about how IRV works out for you. If we as a country are serious about free and fair democratic elections, it's a practice that needs to be instituted across the country.
Hopefully this will become big.
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