Guest MINDSETTER™ Tony Jones: The Case for Instant-Runoff Voting
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Instant-runoff voting (or IRV) is a voting system used for single winner elections in which voters can rank candidates in order of their preference.
In an IRV election, if no one candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated, and ballots cast for that candidate are then redistributed to the remaining candidates according to the ranked preference that the voter has indicated. When the votes are tallied, should no candidate reach the required 51 percent of votes that would ensure an actual mathematical majority then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and those votes are reapplied to the remaining candidates based on the number 2 choice as indicated by the voter.
With IRV no longer is the voter asked to select one the "lesser of two evils" or in the case of the major party, often times low-turnout, primaries we would be left with a candidate that best represents the choice of the people.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTInstant-runoff voting would invigorate the election process, as it would afford the voter the chance to vote by picking the candidate they honestly feel would be the best person for the job and not get caught up in worrying about a wasted vote or who they think is actual going to be the winner. This would be a great way to get people back into the political process.
Instant runoff voting is much fairer than the current "vote for one" system. It would surely shake-up Rhode Island’s political landscape.
