Instant Runoff Voting
Instant Runoff Voting, often referred to as "IRV", also known as the Alternative Vote (or "AV"),[1] is a system of voting designed to allow voter preferences below their first choice to be considered.
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[edit] Method
In IRV, a voter picks not only their first choice for an office, but gives a order of preference for the remaining candidates. When the polls close, if a candidate has 50% "+" of first choice votes, they win. If no candidate has reached this threshold, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is "removed", or excluded, and their votes are redistributed according to the ballots' second choice. The votes are re-tallied to see if a candidate has attained 50% "+" threshold. This process continues until one candidate reaches the threshold number of the votes, at which time a winner is declared.
The Australian Electoral Commission gives this example,[2] from the 1972 Federal election to the seat of McMillan, illustrating this point.
| Round | Armitage
(Liberal Party) |
Buchanan
(Independent) |
Hewson
(Country Party) |
Houlihan
(Democratic Labour Party) |
Mountford
(Australian Labor Party) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1
Redistributed votes |
12025
810 |
3113
Excluded |
8282
1980 |
3583
138 |
22802
185 |
| 2
Redistributed votes |
12835
391 |
0 | 10262
3144 |
3721
Excluded |
22987
186 |
| 3
Redistributed votes |
13226
Excluded |
0 | 13406
12690 |
0 | 23173
536 |
| 4
Redistributed votes |
0 | 0 | 26096
Elected |
0 | 23709 |
As can be seen, even though Hewson initially did not obtain the most votes (he was third), he won on the back of the preferences of the Country Party's ally, the Liberal Party, and those splitters the People's Popular Front of Judea Democratic Labour Party. In a voting system where votes aren't redistributed, Mountford would have won in the first instance with 45% of the vote - supporters of IRV/AV would rather this be stated as 55% voted against Mountford. By the end of this IRV example, Hewson won with 52% of the backing of the voters. In reality, these situations are rare, and in the majority of cases the round 1 winner will also end up being the final winner under AV; the difference being that they have a confirmed majority support. Situations where eventual winners receive relatively few first preference votes in round one are rarer still. IRV is aimed at these situations, however, and attempts to reconcile the broadest possible support for a candidate, by eliminating the problems associated with a split vote across similar parties such as tactical voting.
[edit] Potential benefits
IRV is seen as a potential boon to alternate or third party candidates in strong two-party systems, since a voter can pick their "real" choice without "throwing their vote away". Another benefit to small parties is that they can determine their "real" polling strength without damaging a larger party candidate that would be their choice over another large party candidate.
It also allows voters to truly "vote their conscience" rather than hold their nose and pick the lesser of two evils, while still indicating which of those lessers they could be more comfortable with.
[edit] Potential problems
One difficulty arising from IRV is the loose-knit coalitions that form, where parties agree to assist one another against one singled out party by printing "how to vote cards" with that party in last place on all cards. This is really only viewed as a problem by people who support the party being singled out. A typical occurrence is the Australian party "One Nation", which has appeared last on most party's how to vote cards, due to its extreme anti-immigration position and poor economic platform (they once proposed printing more money as a solution to budget deficits, known as "Qualitative Easing" elsewhere). As One Nation has never won a House seat, this is probably a good thing.
Another problem that is less to do with the system, but more how it is implemented, is that, on occasions, during the recount, the winner changes. Generally, the electoral commission will attempt to get a result on the night of the election and will start redistributing votes before they are all counted. If it is a close contest on who comes last, the order of redistribution can effect the final outcome of the election. As a result, there is usually a mandatory recount where the redistribution is checked in full to ensure that the result is correct.
[edit] Donkey vote
In systems where Instant Runoff Voting exists, there is the potential for a donkey vote, where the voter simply numbers all of the boxes in order they appear. This is not so much a problem with the system, as a problem with the voter, but it does mean that the votes are skewed towards the order of the names on the ballot paper. This problem is greatest in countries such as Australia that combine IRV with mandatory voting.[3] As a result a lottery is usually held to determine the order of the candidates on the voting sheet. On voting machines, the impact of this behavior could be reduced by randomizing the order in which the candidates are presented to each individual voter.
[edit] Examples where it might have been illuminating
Recent examples of how this might have made U.S. presidential politics clearer include Nader voters in 2000 being able to support Gore as a second choice, or Perot voters in 1992 being able to show their preference between Bush and Clinton at some point on their list.[more detail please]
In U.S. Presidential elections, every state -- with the exception of Nebraska and Maine -- holds a FPTP election, and casts its electoral votes for whichever candidate receives the most popular votes. In 2000, though, Florida's vote was too close to call:
| Candidate | Votes in FL |
|---|---|
| George W. Bush | 2,912,790 |
| Al Gore | 2,912,253 |
| Ralph Nader | 97,488 |
| Pat Buchanan | 17,484 |
| Harry Browne | 16,415 |
| everyone else | 6,680 |
If Florida had used IRV instead of FPTP, the election might not have been nearly so close. Let's assume that everyone who voted for Ralph Nader picked Al Gore as their second choice. Even if the folks who voted for any of the other low-ranking candidates had picked George W. Bush as their second choice, Gore would have gained 97,488 votes while Bush would have gained only 40,579 -- giving Gore an incontestible 50,000+ vote lead.
[edit] Real world implementations
Some jurisdictions have implemented Instant Runoff Voting. The only countries to have set it up on a national level are Australia (in the House of Representatives, at both the state (except Tasmania, those wily devils) and federal level), Ireland (straight IRV for President, and a somewhat quirky variant for Dáil [lower house of parliament]), Papua New Guinea (for Parliament), and Fiji (for the House of Representatives). Several major U.S. cities use it for municipal elections, including Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oakland, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
From 1998 onwards, Conservative Party leaders have been elected via a form of IRV involving rounds. Each round eliminates the least popular candidate and the ballot is cast again until two candidates are left and the election proceeds to the full membership vote - assuming no one changes their mind unless their favoured candidate is eliminated, the differences between this and IRV/AV are negligible. In 2005, David Cameron was elected Tory Party leader by this method.[4] This is particularly interesting as Cameron spearheaded the "No 2 AV" campaign against electoral reform in the UK. So while the system is good enough for MPs, the hoi polloi aren't deemed smart enough to deal with preferential voting.
[edit] UK referendum
On May 5th 2011, the UK held a referendum on switching to instant runoff voting (billed exclusively as Alternative Vote, AV) for its parliamentary elections.
This was primarily driven as a deal by the coalition between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party as a condition of having a coalition government. The Liberal Democrats were in favour of full proportional representation (PR), not least because such a thing would favour their party massively. The Lib Dems won 23% of the popular vote in the 2010 election, but gained only 8.7% of the parliamentary seats - an actual decrease in power despite an unprecedented increase in popular support. Thus the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, once referred to AV as a "miserable little compromise" next to PR.
AV, rather than proportional representation, was the most they could get out of the Conservative Party's majority control of the coalition government. The referendum was held, and thanks to voting for or against the "miserable little compromise" as well as the following lies as misrepresentations, the UK was saddled with the old FPTP system instead. Joy.
[edit] No2AV
The No2AV campaign worked against AV during the referendum, favouring the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system over AV. The Tory-led group ran a fairly dirty campaign throughout that was, frankly, riddled with lies and misrepresentations of AV. The following are claims mentioned on the main No2AV leaflet that was sent out in the weeks running up to the May 5th referendum.
- Keep One Person, One Vote
This is based on the misrepresentation that AV allows people to vote more than once. This is an odd claim because surely if someone was given more than one vote they'd put all those votes behind one party. In fact, AV is also one person, one vote - it's just that votes get counted in rounds. Each vote is counted once in each round, and so no one person is able to vote more times than anyone else.
- None of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet
Good to mention it, as campaigns like this do not use taxpayer money. This is a clear use of poisoning the well to imply that the Yes To Fairer Votes campaign were using tax money - which wasn't true, and no one would be able to get away with that sort of lie, but is a great example of how sneaky rhetoric can be.
- The cost of AV is £250 million
This £250 million cost of AV was effectively a PIDOOMA figure, and was present in much of the No2AV campaign from the beginning. By the day of the referendum, however, it had become clear that the figure was simply made up from nowhere, and proponents of the No2AV campaign admitted as much the second the ballots closed.[5]
The figure breaks down as £91 million for the referendum (which included local elections that were happening anyway) that would occur regardless of the ballot's outcome. £130 million on electronic voting machines that have never been implied by anyone in authority as even necessary. £26 million on explaining it to voters, which is usually spent explaining each election anyway. The remaining £3 million is presumably a rounding error as the No campaign have frequently been shown to be very bad at maths. As an extension to this point, the no campaign have frequently said, using appeal to emotion that the money would be better spent elsewhere. But since such money clearly wouldn't be spent on AV, it wouldn't be spent on the 2,503 doctors that they claim it would pay for instead. Indeed, AV was rejected at the referendum, but this money didn't magically make its way into the hands of taxpayers.
- The second or third best can win under AV
The thing is that "best" is a subjective concept - and "best" in the sense of an election is measured in a different way. If two different systems selected the same "best", they effectively would be the same and a switch would be pointless. So of course two electoral systems would produce different results - that's the point! AV supporters state that the candidate with the largest and broadest support is "best", in contrast to FPTP which suggests only a largest minority is "best". Impressively, the diagram that comes with this part of the leaflet highlights pretty well what is wrong with the FPTP system when multiple opposition parties exist - that someone can win with 60-70% of people voting against them.
- AV is unpopular
AV is famously used in Australia (where they don't use electronic voting machines). Many other countries use proportional representation systems or alternatives like Single Transferable Vote (STV). But given that the "miserable little compromise" was forced upon voters by the people who want to vote No, is this a surprise? Regardless, the popularity of the system is not an argument against it.
- How the systems compare
The No2AV campaign frequently overcomplicated AV to make it seem impossible to understand. In reality, if you don't understand how preferential voting works (it requires complex things such as "counting numbers"), you may find yourself qualified employment at the Creation Museum.
- The BNP card
Godwin's Law applies here as the BNP card has been used by both campaigns to say that the other system would favour fringe groups such as far-right and neo-Nazi groups. Specifically, the No2AV leaflet says that BNP votes will be counted "again and again". It is most likely, though, that the BNP wouldn't gain enough first preference to survive the eliminations long enough to be counted "again and again" (not that votes are counted "again and again" under AV anyway, see above). Also, if the people want a BNP candidate, they should get a BNP candidate. It's called democracy.
It is also worth noting that the BNP itself opposed AV in favor of First Past the Post which they felt would give them a better chance of winning (FactCheck later verified that this was true). In fact BNP deputy chairman Simon Darby is quoted as saying "AV is a retrograde step – it's worse than what we've got now. We are never going to get our feet under the table under the AV system."[6]
In the end, however, the UK voted overwhelmingly to keep FPTP and not switch voting systems, proving that if you attack a straw man often enough with a well funded campaign of propaganda, you too can win any vote you choose.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Cartoon on YouTube showing Instant Runoff Voting (Warning: This video is aimed at changing the US electoral system to this method - is that so bad?).
- Another YouTube video on the Alternate Vote, this one done by a Brit using fictitious animal elections as examples.
- Chrisgates.net - Interactive flash animation of the potential use of IRV in 2000 presidential election.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ [1], UK Electoral Reform Society
- ↑ Australian Electoral Commission - How the House of Representatives votes are counted
- ↑ One RationalWikian, acting as scrutineer at a byelection with 17 candidates, saw about 50% donkey or reverse-donkey votes.
- ↑ Election.demon.co.uk - Conservative Leaders
- ↑ New Statesman - “No campaign used made-up figures”, says David Blunkett
- ↑ http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-would-av-help-or-hinder-the-bnp/6273