Voters Choose IRV

[nosmokes]

October 2005

Voters Choose IRV

According to a new study commissioned by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and conducted by San Francisco State University, voters who have had the opportunity to use Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), (also called Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV), prefer it to the old system. 61% of polling place voters and 77% of absentee voters preferred the system where the voter can rank candidates according to choice and have their second or third choice counted if their first or second choice is eliminated. (If your first choice is for someone who does not receive a predetermined minimum percentage of votes, then all those votes are eliminated and your second choice is then counted and so on.) 46% of voters polled (versus the 3% with the traditional system) felt with Ranked Choice Voting they will be more likely to vote for their preferred candidate rather than choose between the "lesser of two evils". Almost all of the voters polled (87%) felt that they understood how Ranked Choice Voting works, indicating that it would be easy to adapt in other communities. Ross Mirkarimi, a Green Party member, currently holds office on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the body which commissioned the study.
The complete report is availabel here:
http://pri.sfsu.ed

u/reports/SFSU-PRI_RCV_final_report_June_30.pdf

[SoCalDem]

1. Most people over age 9 understand first, second, third, etc

There is no reason to NOT use it./.

[baltlib]

2. i would have no problem with it ... but

there is always a but... i would think they should have a limit of seconds choices. i think if you could vote for 3 or 4 extra people it would just make the voting too confusing. i would say to have maybe 2 choices total. i also think that it might make the popular vote tabulating kind of hard too, i mean if some one votes to lets say mr smith as their first vote, and mr smith does not win should their vote be counted in a popular type vote.

[Wilms]

3. This link will work better.

Main Page:

http://www.sfrcv.com

Full Report pdf:

http://pri.sfsu.edu/reports/SFSU-PRI_RCV_final_report_June_30.pdf

Neat post. Thanks.

[truthisfreedom]

4. oh, for a second there, i thought you meant Irv "scooter" libbey.

heh.