Somerville for IRV

The race for State Representative of the 35th Middlesex District in nearby Medford and Malden is underway and will be decided in the Democratic Primary on September 16th. The race includes two challengers, Patrick McCabe and Jim Caralis, both of whom are ostensibly running to the left of incumbent State Rep Paul Donato. A clear recipe for a spoiled election.

Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that progressive Democrats will split their vote between McCabe and Caralis, ensuring Donato’s re-election. Whenever there are three or more candidates running for a single seat under our plurality voting system, chances are the winner won’t get a majority of the vote. The “winner” of a plurality election could very well lose in a head-to-head match with every other candidate in the race! Our current system simply doesn’t function when more than 2 candidates run.

If we had Instant Runoff Voting, then progressives in the 35th Middlesex district could rank: 1. McCabe, 2. Caralis, 3. Donato; or 1. Caralis, 2. McCabe, 3. Donato. Such voting would prevent the two challengers from splitting the vote with one another. Of course, if a majority prefer Donato to the two challengers, then he would rightfully still win re-election. Regardless of a candidate’s ideology, IRV requires the winner to demonstrate a majority of support.

Imagine how difficult it must be for a voter who is temporarily overseas, particularly a member of our armed forces, to vote absentee in a Somerville local election. Between the preliminary and general election is a six week window in which the absentee ballot must be: prepared and mailed by the Elections Commission; transported to its foreign destination; filled out and mailed back by the voter; and transported back to Somerville City Hall by the day of the election. The tight turnaround isn’t a problem only for Somerville, but for all local cities and towns in Massachusetts with preliminary elections.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) of the U.S. Department of Defense recommend ballots be mailed to overseas voters at least 45 days before an election. The six week window the preliminary and general elections — that’s 42 days even before the ballots are printed, assembled, and mailed — puts Somerville in clear violation of the federal recommendation. Plus, the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) that provides for write-in absentee ballots does not apply to local races.

In Somerville, the problem facing overseas voters is more than hypothetical. A short drive by our veterans posts and war memorials tell a history of dedication and sacrifice from our city. For example, see this April article on Military.com entitled "Somerville Marines," which highlights the extensive contributions of Somervillians in the Marine Corps. It’s ironic that those fighting in the name of democratic principles abroad should be so hindered from fulling engaging in the democratic process back home.

Fortunately, the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina and the city of Springfield, IL have already solved the problem. These jurisdictions have elections where, if no candidate receives a majority in the initial election, the two top vote-getters compete in a runoff election. Instead of performing a separate mailing of the runoff ballot, they include an IRV ballot in the initial mailing that allows oversease voters to rank their choices in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority, then the ranks are used to determine who the voter would prefer in the runoff. For more information, see IncludeEveryVoter.org.

Mailing IRV ballots to overseas voters is a decent solution, but an even better solution would be to enact IRV for all local elections, eliminating the preliminary election altogether. As we have argued, this would mean far greater convenience for all Somerville voters, not just those overseas.

Lots of IRV news in recent weeks . . .

• London - On May 1, London held its third Mayoral Election in history, all three of which have used a variant of Instant Runoff Voting. Under a system known as Supplementary Vote, Londoners rank two candidates and all but two candidates are eliminated after the first round. In the first mayoral election in 2000, Ken Livingstone was elected as an independent, and he went on to win re-election in 2004 as a member of the Labour Party. On May 1, he lost his seat to Conservative Party member Boris Johnson.

• Colorado - The Colorado legislature has passed a bill that would allow municipalities to adopt IRV (and Choice Voting) for their local elections. Basalt and Aspen, CO already use IRV to elect their mayors.

• Los Angeles, CA - The effort to pass IRV in Los Angeles is heating up. It is now endorsed by the LA League of Women Voters, the LA Chamber of Commerce, former Republican Mayor Richard Reardon, 5 Members of the LA City Council, and SEIU Local 721.

• Memphis, TN - The Memphis Charter Commission has unanimously voted to add Instant Runoff Voting to the list of ballot measure voters will decide upon in November. Memphis is the largest city in Tennessee and the 17th largest in the U.S. If passed, the measure would save the city $250,000 each election cycle by eliminating runoff elections.

Last week, Tufts University held their annual election for president of their student government, and like every year, Tufts used Instant Runoff Voting. Colleges across the US have been at the forefront of adopting IRV in the US and have provided great demonstrations of its success on a small scale. Half of the Ivy Leagues — Harvard, Princeton, Darmoth, and Cornell — already use IRV, and a recent op-ed in the Columbia University newspaper argues for its adoption there as well. IRV was actually invented down the road at MIT in the year 1870 and is naturally used for student government elections there too.

After the first round of counting in the Tufts election, no candidate mustered a majority of support. The leading candidate, Duncan Pickard, garnered 42% of the first-choice ballots, followed by C.J Mourning with 32% and Elton Sykes with 24%. Our current plurality system would have been satisfied with electing a candidate who demonstrates only a minority of support, but fortunately IRV does not. After all, with plurality how would we know if Sykes spoiled the election for Mourning? With instant runoff, Sykes was eliminated in the first round, and Pickard prevailed over Mourning in the second round, 56% to 44%.

College students around the nation are increasingly becoming accustomed to preferential ballots, which bodes well for the future of IRV in the U.S.

The second in a series of posts highlighting a benefit of IRV for Somerville in greater detail. Each of these posts will become a permanent page on the left-hand side under “Why IRV?”

IRV encourages voters to honestly rank candidates on the ballot instead of gambling on strategic “bullet votes”.

Upon entering the voting booth in an election for Alderman At-Large, every voter must unwillingly play a game. The name of the game is “How many candidates should I vote for?”. The rules allow every voter to vote for up to four candidates — the same as the number to be elected — but figuring out whether to use one, two, three, or all four votes can be a complicated and error-prone task.

Consider my dilemma if my four favorite candidates are A, B, C, and D, in that order. If I vote for all four I might cause B, C, or D to win a seat at the expense of my top choice A. Or I could put all my eggs in one basket by voting only for A — also known as “bullet voting” — leaving my three other votes unused. Or I might be best served by voting for only A and B or only for A, B, and C. In sum, I have four separate strategies and determining which is my best option requires an accurate prediction of how everyone else is likely to vote.

As a result, our voting system benefits political “insiders”, who are best positioned to predict the likely winners in advance, and puts average voters, who don’t have the time to research the optimal strategy, at a disadvantage. Regardless of the election outcome, we are left with the impression that some are gaming to the system to the detriment of others. Perhaps this helps explain why municipal elections see such low voter turnout.

But under Choice Voting (IRV for electing multiple candidates), I can honestly rank candidates on the ballot in order of preference — A, B, C — without worrying that a later rank could hurt the chances of an earlier rank. If candidate A needs my full vote to get elected, my vote will count towards A. If A lacks enough votes to win, my vote will instead count towards B; and if B lacks enough votes, then it will count towards C. Also, if A only needs half my vote to win, then the other half will count towards my remaining choices.

With Choice Voting, we can wave goodbye to rampant bullet voting and put everyone on a more level playing field in the voting booth. We can make the act of voting less like a casino game and more like an expression of our true democratic preferences.

Remember that IRV bill I told you about that was passed by both houses of the Vermont legislature? The one that would have enacted IRV to elect Vermont’s US Representative and two US Senators? Well, to the dismay of many, Governor Jim Douglas vetoed it.

Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor and staff writer for the New Yorker, deconstructs the Governor’s nonsensical arguments on his blog. It’s a good read. Given the Governor’s fallacious reasoning, Hertzberg is right to suspect Douglas’ partisan motives:

Nevertheless, the governor, James Douglas, nixed it. Third-party candidates often run in Vermont, and usually they’re Greens or other leftish types. In Vermont, therefore, I.R.V. would probably help Democrats more often than Republicans. Governor Douglas is a Republican. So he vetoed it. This was expected.

But he concludes by noting that the partisan motives can, and have, cut both ways:

. . . the Republican arguments against I.R.V. in Vermont (where Democrats have a Green problem) sound an awful lot like the Democratic arguments against I.R.V. in Alaska (where the Republicans have a Libertarian problem).

Update (4/15/08): Common Cause Vermont followed up recently with a strong editorial against the Governor’s decision.

This is the first in a series of posts in which I’ll highlight each benefit of IRV for Somerville in greater detail. If you have any suggestions for improving the wording or clarity of these arguments, please let me know in the comments below. Each of these posts will become a permanent page on the left-hand side under “Why IRV?”.

IRV will save us time and money by eliminating the preliminary election.

A preliminary election is required five weeks before the general election when the number of candidates in the race is more than twice the number of seats — when more than 2 candidates run for Mayor, Ward Alderman, or School Committee or more than 8 run for Alderman At-Large.

According to the Somerville Elections Department, a preliminary election raises the cost of an election cycle by an additional $50,000. It also costs every voter time and energy to show up yet again to the polls. Despite the high price tag, preliminaries experience extremely low turnout, bringing into question whether they are sufficiently democratic.

Nevertheless, the preliminary election serves a very useful purpose: to eliminate potential spoiler candidates prior to the general. For example, if Gore, Bush, and Nader were all running in a general election, liberal voters might split their support between Gore and Nader, spoiling the election and causing Bush to win. However, a preliminary election would first narrow the field to two candidates, Gore and Bush. They would then face off in the general, where Gore would have a fair shot at winning.

IRV has all the benefits of holding both a preliminary and general election, but streamlines the process into a single election with one trip to the ballot box. An IRV election winnows the field of candidates automatically, rendering the preliminary unnecessary. Returning to the example race between Gore, Bush, and Nader, under IRV Nader supporters could rank Nader first and Gore second, voting their conscious while still indicating a backup in case Nader is eliminated.

Admittedly, there are many phrases in the lexicon of electoral reform that have been used to describe IRV and IRV-like voting systems. The terms preferential voting, single transferable vote, and choice voting are a few examples. Some have also asked how IRV relates to the proportional representation system used by our neighbor, the City of Cambridge. This post hopes to clarify any confusion about what all these terms mean and how they differ (or not) from one another.

Let’s start by understanding the distinction between a “single-seat” and “multi-seat” election. In Somerville, the elections for Mayor, Ward Alderman, and School Committee members are “single-seat”, because each of these offices is held by a single individual. However, the Aldermen At-Large election is “multi-seat”, because it elects multiple candidates (four, in our case) to the same office. Unlike much of the world, nearly all of our elections in the U.S. are single-seat, with at-large city councilors being the most common exception.

The term preferential voting can be used to describe any voting system in which voters rank candidates on the ballot in order of preference. There are many preferential voting systems, some of which can only be applied to single-seat elections, and others which can be used to elect any number of candidates. Although all preferential voting systems are similar to one another in the look of the ballot and the voting instructions, they differ in how the votes are tabulated and can therefore disagree as to the winner of a given election.

By far the most common type of preferential voting system in the world is the Single Transferable Vote (STV). STV is applicable to both single- and multi-seat elections, and it is promoted by the world’s leading electoral reform organizations, including the Electoral Reform Society in the UK and FairVote here in the U.S. STV is held in high regard by academics and reformers alike.

When STV is applied to a single-seat election, it is commonly known in the U.S. as Instant Runoff Voting, but that name is far from universal. Some U.S. cities that use IRV call it ranked choice voting. Elsewhere you may hear it called the Alternative Vote or the Hare method. Other places simply know it as “preferential voting” — an ambiguous phrase considering the variety of systems that involve ranking candidates in preference order.

When STV is used for multi-seat election, it is commonly known in the U.S. as Choice Voting. The City of Cambridge uses Choice Voting for all its City Council and School Committee elections. Conceptually, you can think of Choice Voting as a version of IRV that has been amended to elect multiple candidates at once.

The goal of “Somerville for IRV” is to enact the Single Transferable Vote for all municipal elections in Somerville. We want to use IRV for the Mayor, Ward Alderman, and School Committee elections, and Choice Voting for the Alderman at Large election. For the purposes of simplicity, we are proposing the entire reform under the more familiar phrase “Instant Runoff Voting”.

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I wrote this op-ed for a new newsletter covering campaigns and elections around the state. Here’s my submission in full.

Mass cities and towns should adopt Instant Runoff Voting

What if I told you that a simple change to our local elections in Massachusetts could boost voter turnout, yield fairer results, discourages strategic voting, and depress negative campaigning, all while saving us time and money? That simple reform is known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), and it’s quickly being adopted by cities and towns across the country. Under IRV, voters rank their candidates on the ballot in order of preference. If Abby is your first choice, Bob your second choice, and Carl your third, you simply indicate that ranking on the ballot: (1) Abby; (2) Bob; (3) Carl. It’s literally as easy as 1, 2, 3.

When the votes are counted, if any candidate has a majority of the first-choices, naturally, that candidate is elected. If nobody has a majority, then the candidate with the fewest first-choices is eliminated from contention, and a series of runoffs is automatically simulated between the remaining candidates. A ballot that ranked the eliminated candidate first is now counted as a vote for the second choice. If there is still no candidate with a majority of votes, the candidate with the fewest first choices is again eliminated, and this process continues until a candidate reaches the majority needed to win.

IRV would help municipal elections in a number of ways . . .

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Steven Hill, director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation and author of “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy“, recently published this Op-Ed, that I reprint here in its entirety . . .

A Way Out of the Nader Dilemma

With Ralph Nader in the race, Democrats are fuming and no doubt preparing to use the same legal tricks they used in 2004 to keep Nader off the ballot in many states. Republicans are cackling with glee.

But Republicans shouldn’t cackle too loudly. They’ve also been hurt by the spoiler dilemma. In fact, the GOP lost control of the U.S. Senate due to Libertarian Party candidates in Montana, Washington, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota spoiling things for Republicans. And many observers believe that Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992 only because Ross Perot drained away enough votes from Bush.

The problem is that the winners of our highest offices are not required to win a majority of the vote, either nationwide or in each state. Without a majority requirement, we can’t be certain in a multi-candidate field that the winner will be the one preferred by the most voters.

How ridiculous: We can map the human genome, and send an astronaut to the moon, but we can’t figure out a way to hold elections that guarantee the winner has a majority of the vote?

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