PDX needs IRV with VOE

On Wednesday afternoon, the Portland City Council will refer to voters a ballot measure to determine whether or not Voter-owned elections (VOE) will be retained for City elections. While VOE is an important part of campaign reform, by itself it is insufficient. Other steps need to be taken to eliminate the influence of money and established power from elections in America. VOE is step one.

Instant runoff voting (IRV) may be step two.

IRV is a simple idea: Everyone can vote for their favorite candidate, and the winner will always have a majority of the vote. These two considerations are, in many elections, closely connected; both are intrinsically important, on their own, to the legitimacy of our political system. IRV is not the only possible solution to many of the problems facing American elections, but it’s one we need to consider and one which, I believe, Portland should adopt. Let’s look at IRV and the two considerations I mentioned.

Here is how IRV works. In a two-person race, the IRV system is not used. As currently happens, everyone votes for one of two candidates (or for neither) and the winner will have a majority (and for now, we’ll ignore the problem of an undervote that leaves neither with a majority). If there are more than two candidates, then IRV is utilized.

A grid of candidates and rankings is created. Each voter lists their first choice of candidate, then second choice, then third and so on (stopping when they feel they can longer support any remaining candidates). Ballots are counted; if one candidate has a majority, the counting stops. There is a winner. However, if no candidate has a majority, the one with the fewest votes (or any who fail to reach a certain level, for example, 10%) is eliminated.

And this is where it gets cool.

Those ballots which were cast for the eliminated candidate(s) are counted a second time; this time, their second choice is applied. Those voters do not get their first choice, but they are still part of the process. If the new tally produces a majority for a candidate, the election ends. If a majority is still not reached, then the process is repeated, with eliminated candidates’ ballots recounted and second choice (or by now, third) votes counted. Eventually a majority winner will emerge.

Under this system, voters who do not want to vote for a “major party” candidate, or an assumed non-partisan winner, can vote for a minor party/independent candidate who has little hope of winning. They can do so knowing that they’ll then have a second chance for their vote to count. At that point, they may vote for a more-likely-to-win candidate — and if enough people take that same route, voting first for a no-hoper and then for a potential runner-up, the incumbent or (otherwise presumed to be the winner ahead of time) candidate may be deprived of a majority. This becomes even more likely if the system of balloting gets more people to vote.

IRV is especially valuable when two similar candidates, each closely aligned to the views of the majority of voters, threaten to split that vote and turn the election over to a candidate who is out-of-touch with the majority but scores a plurality win. This is exactly what happened in Hawaii this past weekend: two Dems split 60% of the vote and let a Republican win with only 40%. Come November, with only one Democrat on the ballot, this result is likely to be overturned — but IRV could have solved that in the first place. Presumably, those who voted for one of the two Dems would have chosen the other as their second place (and not voted at all for the R). In the second round, whichever Dem had finished ahead of the other would likely be the overall winner — a result matching the voting preferences of the district.

In the United Kingdom, the Liberal Democrat Party received 25% of the overall vote in the recent Parliamentary elections but ended up with only 6% of the seats. This is clearly not a democratic, much less fair, outcome; as part of the arrangement for supporting a minority Conservative government, a referendum will be placed before the British people to seek a form of proportional representation: a means to translate the will of the voters, a quarter of whom preferred the Lib Dems (and perhaps more, but with the system being what it is, too many voters consider a vote for them a wasted vote), into actual seats.

IRV seats to implement proportional representation in the United States: electoral outcomes that more closely reflect the will of the voters. Under our winner-takes-all system, in many elections, a majority is not required for victory — just more votes than the other candidates. Worse, we discourage candidates who have no chance to win from even running, or voters from giving them a vote. We can encourage third parties (so-called) to participate, and voters to cast ballots for them, with IRV: those candidates may lose the election, but voters won’t waste their ballot. Their next choice is counted, and that means they can vote their heart in round one knowing a second round is likely and a more strategic vote will then be cast.

We simply cannot keep heading down the path we are on. Money is a massive problem in elections, and VOE reduces that issue. Candidates who qualify do not have to fight for funding and can instead concentrate on campaigning directly to the voters. Candidates who can raise money from special interests are virtually forced to spend no more than the publicly financed candidates or risk looking like they are trying to buy the election. But as well as fixing the money problem, we have to give voters real choices. In an election, a real choice is the chance to cast your ballot for the candidate you most believe in and yet feel as if your vote actually matters. With multiple candidates, and an increased turnout, IRV can accomplish that.

The Portland City Council needs to appoint a body to prepare recommendations on IRV, or one of its variants, so that the voters in our city can reaffirm VOE knowing additional means of fixing our elections are being sought. Fixing campaign finance through VOE is important, but it’s not enough. We need to look very carefully at IRV.