The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

What sort of mainstream publicity has there been about the IRV? I haven't seen anything in the Strib, Pio Press or any of the neighborhood papers. I missed it probably.

I don't know about main stream media, but it has been endorsed by practically everyone. Dems, Green and Ind. parties, Mayor RT, most city councilpersons, most of the neghborhood groups and state Senators and Reps. Only the Republicans are against it, it looks like. And I don't think anyone is really campaigning against it. I haven't seen any lawn signs or anything against it.

Has anyone seen any anti-IRV campaining?

It's pretty hard to find a Republican against it when the entire city is run by Democrats, leftists, extreme leftists and closet communists. Except I oppose it. Cause it's stupid. Just pick somebody.

What I'm saying is when the average voter goes to polls, will they be like "WTF is IRV?" I've asked a number of Minneapolitans about it and they don't know what iti s.

Barry- Sue Jeffers, that "republican," yes.

kwatt- "Just pick somebody" out of a group of candidates that have been weeded out by the big parties and party activists for you. "Just pick somebody" even though you know they can't win in our two-party system. That's what's stupid, not IRV.

I wish we had this IRV for the gubernatorial election this year. I wonder how many people will vote for Hatch just because they don't want Pawlenty, when they really want Hutch?

re: jeffk s4xton kwatt

Last I checked I lived in Minnesota were we do have a pretty strong third party system for better or for worse (ventura anyone?). The point of the instant runoff is to "more accurately reflect the will of the voters and strengthens democracy".

After reading through the description I fail to see how it does that. Vote for who you want and the person with the most votes wins. With IRV - it still appears that that person would win anyways so what's the point? To "send a message?" Someone help me here....

re: acalhoun

Then just vote for Hutch then. Why is this difficult?

Then just vote for Hutch then. Why is this difficult?

Yoshi: The reason it's so difficult is that under the current system, voting for your first choice, if they're not really viable to win -- think Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Tim Penny, or Hutch -- takes votes away from your second choice, and often hands victory to someone with the support of less than a majority of voters.

This is called the "spoiler problem" and is the single biggest hurdle to third parties getting a real foothold. I can't tell you how often supporters of Greens, Libertarians and Independents hear some version of "I'd love to vote for _____, but I don't want that other guy who I really don't like to win." IRV eliminates that problem.

With IRV, voters can vote more sincerely (as opposed to strategically), and the eventual winner always ends up with some degree of positive support from a majority.

If we'd had IRV in '98 and '02, we may well have seen the same results. (Though I'd wager that Moe would've gotten most of Penny's 2nd choice votes and Pawlenty would've lost. It's possible, too, that enough people would have felt free to cast their first choice for Penny that he could have won. But that's all idle speculation now.)

Anyway, in those contests Jesse and T-Paw would have at least won with the support of a majority of voters, giving them a real mandate to govern. As it is now, you could say that nearly 2/3 of voters voted against them. How democratic is that?

I miss Bob Dole. These days, comparatively and all.... yep, I miss Bob Dole.

Let's be honest. The IRV movement is being driven by lefties who are tired of having to vote for a moderate democrat just to prevent the republican from winning. Ironically, even though the republicans have been burned by third-party spoilers (Perot being responsible for Clinton's win in '92) they oppose IRV because it encourages extremism and goes against the winner-take-all tradition that some would say contributes to political moderation. When a party, either left or right, has to compete against a centrist element in the campaign, they can't get too extremist or they will lose those voters to the moderate. Many will argue that that's a good thing.

We were hired to make this animation but when we started to get into fact-finding, we all became big IRV fans. It's not about left, right, and center and it's a little silly to look for that bias. (since the major party affected by third parties varies from election to election) I've never been into third parties, I consider myself moderate, but while IRV does potentially benefit third parties...what it really does is make for better democracy. I care about democracy.

-It increases over-all voter participation in the areas that use it. People feel that they have a better chance to have their ideas represented are more likely to vote. Higher voter turn-out equals better democracy.

-Majority rules. No one wins with a minority of votes. Also democratic.

-Due to the viability of third parties, the issues tend not to be spoiler based and negative. This has been one of the key benefits in places that have implemented IRV. For example, the tendency of both major parties to bring up hot button topics that raises some debate about gay marriage or global warming during an election would come to an end. The candidate talking about issues that matter to the majority of the people...health care, education, protection, taxes...will win the day. I'm all for issues oriented campaigns.

-There would be no public-sponsored primary elections. This will save money and not have an initial election where only a small percentage of the party faithful vote for who is on the real ballot.

-It's not about Al Gore, George Bush, Patrick Buchanan, and Ralph Nader. That ballot is a result of of our current system. An IRV ballot would have more people on the right/left and center..maybe something like Al Gore, John McCain, George Bush, Ralph Nader, Wesley Clark etc..

It's interesting that the communist threat in the era of McCarthyism ended a swing to this kind of voting earlier last century when women, blacks, urban republicans started winning seats. This kind of democracy that actually reflects the constituents is a hard pill for some people to swallow. Almost always people that history has to make apologies for.

I wish there were a list of cons...but this is just good democracy.

Hey mazasapa - I hate to rain on your parade, but our current system is hardly "one man, one vote." Ever heard of The Electoral College? So in Minnesota, it rounds out to about "one man, 1/491,948th of a vote."

Yes. And?

Because the two votes in your example are in two elections, not one.

No, Eddie is describing two elections, the primary and the general.