Run-Off Elections

[GiovanniC]

First off, please forgive my ignorance.

I was listening to Cobb (Green Party Pres Candidate) the other day and he was talking about having elections where a candidate must get at least 50% of the vote or there would be a run-off election between the top two candidates to determine a winner. To me, this just makes so much sense.

If something like this were in place in 2000, Nader wouldn't have even been a factor (I don't want this to be an argument about whether or not Nader truly was a factor, it's really not super-relevant). Neither Gore nor Bush won 50% of the overall vote, and they didn't win 50% of the vote in some individual states, also (i.e., Florida).

But if there had been a system for a run-off in place, those who voted for Nader likely would have voted for Gore (or not at all), and Gore would have been the clear winner -- without any of the recount legal madness.

Can anyone tell me why we don't have this, or why we shouldn't?

[GiovanniC]

1. I Hate to Kick My Own Thread

But this thing sank off the first page in less than 10 minutes. It's just a question that I was wondering about, and I figured if anyone could answer it, it'd be someone from DU.

:kick:

[fsbooks]

2. How about instant runoffs - like Australia

Here is one quick link I found on it (though I have seen better). I believe some local jurisdictions use it (the article mentions Ann Arbor, I may have heard Baltimore) in this country.

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/vt_lite/history.htm

IRV, however, is not a system of proportional representation. Instead, IRV uses the STV innovation in a winner-take-all context. Instant runoff voting, using a preference ballot, was invented by an American, W. R. Ware, a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, around 1870. The first known use of IRV in a governmental election was in 1893 in Queensland, Australia. However, this was a modified version of IRV in which all candidates except the top two were eliminated in a batch rather than sequentially, as in the pure form of IRV. The "staggered runoff" concept that we understand today as IRV was first used in Western Australia in 1908.

BTW, I believe Australia uses computer voting systems to aid this process, but the software is all open-sourced and linux based. I could be off on this of course.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. It'd be a hard job changing the electoral system

To do so, I think they need majorities in the House, Senate and approval from a certain number of individual states (I can't remember how many).

The "Run-off" system would certainly be an improval on the Electoral College though.

[Solon]

6. Actually that is not necessary...

As long as the actual Electorial College is not affected, no Amendment is needed. The Constitution left the HOW of elections, federal or not, to the states, hence the reason many states vary greatly in even how electorial college is chosen, look at Maine for example.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Scientific American had some stuff on this...

a month or so ago, with some followup arguments in the letters section.

A quick search of their website came up with this:

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000055AE-B864-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7&catID=3

or this, if that doesn't work:

http://tinyurl.com/2m2jz

Like so many other things, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Run-off voting is one of many schemes that have been suggested or tried, and has its own problems.

[MGKrebs]

7. My opinion on problems with the Sciam article:

Saari assumes that being the second choice of more people than anyones' first choice means that that candidate is the "preferred" candidate. I disagree. Saari uses as an example the grade system in schools. But I see a big flaw in that argument. Elections are not grades, it is all or nothing. Only one can win.

In the example, Saari claims that Candy is the preferred choice, but Candy was the LEAST favorite first choice.

Add in less negative campaigning, savings in not having to have seperate runoff elections, empowerment of non-anointed candidates, it all adds up to more power for the people!

[TreasonousBastard]

10. That article was but a few mathematical...

opinions about just one aspect of approval voting. Several people chimed in, and there was a fair amount of further discussion in the magazine itself, and there are other systems around to pick apart.

Candy may have been the least favorite first choice, but was also the least disliked as third choice, making her a reasonable compromise candidate, and that is pretty much the point of approval voting.

I was more interested in the analysis of Perot's chances under that sort of voting-- Perot would still have lost, but it started me thinking about Wallace or T. Roosevelt under that system. They had far more support, and might have won.

The biggest problem that we really have, aside from fundamental flaws in vote counting nationwide, is that we are stuck in a two-party system. The bicameral legislatures, electoral college, and history, seem to be keeping us there.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Click the link in my sig for information about all kinds of

preferential voting. :)

As to why we don't have it in place yet, it'll never come from top down. The big guys in politics stand to lose too much from letting little third party candidates on an even footing with them. Which is why we need to get our reform done at the grassroots level. Make the case for preferential voting at the municipal and state level, no matter how many election officials fuss over the extra work it might make for them. (Yeah, that's the main reason we don't have it here in Maine.)

[ISUGRADIA]

8. It would likely hurt Democrats

looking at the elections since 1948:

Dem wins with less than 50%: 1948, 1960, 1992, 1996

Rep wins with less than 50%: 1968, 2000

[GiovanniC]

13. Honestly, If That's the Will of the Voters...

I honestly don't think it will hurt Dems too much, but I don't think that any party should win if the majority of people don't want them.

[ContinentalOp]

9. I used to think Instant Runoff was a good idea...

But recently someone posted a link here that explained some pretty major flaws with IRV. It would arguably be worse than what we currently have though there are some voting systems (approval is what I would go for) which would be an improvement. Here's the link which explains...
http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.htm

[MGKrebs]

11. I'm going to defend IRV against this criticism.

I don't have time to go into much depth right now, but,

- The primary "problem" that that site seems to be trying to solve is to allow more than two legitimate parties. Although traditional IRV should help this process along, it is not the primary goal of IRV. Ballot access laws have MUCH more to do with keeping other parties down. This site is judging the merits of IRV based primarily on this criteria. IRV is more about eliminating seperate runoff elections and giving every vote a chance to count.

- The "condorcet" system that they are advocating seems very complicated, definitely NOT "transparent" to voters, and involves a seemingly random "pairing" function, which I cannot see how would be any different in principle in eliminating lesser voter-getters than IRV. You can eliminate all but 2 vote getters in the first round and then recount (IRV), or you can eliminate lesser vote getters in a series of "parings", and then recount. Big deal. Who gets to decide the "pairings"?

I know I need to read more about this, but I can't until this evening, but I at least wanted to get an IRV viewpoint in here for now.

en garde!

[GiovanniC]

12. I Feel Pretty Stupid

I had some difficulty understanding the website's explanations. I don't see how runoffs would be worse than what we have now.

This is the way I see it... let's use this year's election as an example.

I'm a Democrat, but let's just say for a moment that I liked Green Party Candidate Cobb better than John Kerry. Ralph Nader would be my third choice.

GIOVANNI'S VOTING PREFERENCE
#1 Cobb
#2 Kerry
#3 Nader

Now, my Republican grandmother would probably have a different take on it. She'd probably vote for Bush first, then maybe some of the third-party conservative parties. So her ticket would look like this.

GRANDMA'S VOTING PREFERENCE
#1 Bush
#2 Moore
#3 Peroutka

Now, my more moderate father might have a ticket like this.

DAD'S VOTING PREFERENCE
#1 Kerry
#2 Cobb
#3 Badnarik

Now, say that in one state that Cobb gets 7% of the vote, Kerry gets 40% of the vote, Nader gets 8% and Bush gets 45%.

I realize that's pretty unrealistic, but bear with me.

Now, under our current system, Bush wins. However, the voter intent is pretty obvious... they want someone to the left of center. Therefore, Bush doesn't represent the people of that particular state, yet he'll take all of the state's electoral votes. If it's a traditionally left-leaning state, especially with a lot of electoral votes, that could be disasterous and could secure a Bush win nationwide.

But if there were some kind of runoff system, then the contest would come down to just Bush and Kerry, and since Kerry will probably be an alternate choice of the Nader & Cobb voters (and Bush likely would not), he would likely take most of their combined 15% of the vote and beat Bush by something like 55-45% or 54-46%, winning the state.

This will allow more people to be able to vote third-party without automatically handing the election to Bush. It allows the intent of the voters to be heard. And in the event that Nader or Cobb finishes ahead of Kerry and goes to a, say, Nader vs. Bush race, Nader is probably more likely to be an alternate choice for Kerry voters than is Bush, allowing Nader to win as well.

I realize that this also gives the same advantage to right-leaning third parties, but I'm all for more choices, whatever the ideology is.

Does this make sense or am I barking up the wrong tree here?