The Instant Runoff Voting/Ranked Choice Voting in Washington blog points to an article about the King County (my home county) Charter Review Commission which considers improvements to the county’s constitution every ten years, and it is currently considering moving King County to some form of ranked choice voting.
There are a number of interesting things in this article:
- I didn’t know that the King County constitution got reviewed every ten years; I think that’s pretty cool. I will note that this sort of thing supports John M’s claim that more local governments simply govern better.
- The article author is woefully uninformed about ‘proportional representation.’ As the commenters note, he fails to differentiate between the result of elections (proportional representation) and the method (ranked choice, which does not even produce proportional representation).
- I think this bit from the local Democrats was just asinine:
We’re against ‘instant runoff voting,'” Weiss said on behalf of local Democrats. He warned that proportional representation “will blur party lines.”
“It’s meant to cut in on the two-party system. The two-party system has worked pretty well,” Weiss said. “We’ll do everything possible to drive a stake in the heart of instant runoff voting.”
I am glad the King County is considering ranked choice voting, it would certainly be an improvment over first-past-the-post voting, especially for single-seat offices. Establishing local electoral systems where third party and independent candidates can win is an important step in moving towards a country wide political system where the major political parties can actually change over time. Local third party successes will allow third parties to build reputations for being able to win and eventually allow them to seriously contest more important offices.
I will point out that Direct Representation would be a much better approach to proportional representation for multi-seat offices, especially since by-district ranked choice voting does not produce proportional representation.
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July 25, 2007 at 5:25 am
Hallett Weaver
It may be that the terminology soup around this set of issues that confused the writer. There’s “choice voting” , which indeed is a kind of proportional voting (it’s a name used to describe what has been called “the single transferable vote” — the voting method used in Ireland, Scottish cities, Cambridge Mass. and various other places). There’s “ranked choice voting,” which is the name San Francisco election officials and now Pierce County WA officials use for instant runoff voting, a winner-take-all variation of choice voting.
Bottom line is that it is pretty nifty that the King County charter commission has the opportunity to debate and propose such changes. The Clallam County commission recently approved a proposal for the November ballot to allow instant runoff voting (aka ranked choice voting), as Pierce County did last year. Doing so puts all the choice in November and gives voters a free rein to consider their options and vote freely.
July 25, 2007 at 10:52 am
Clay Shentrup
If you are math students, you might be interested in Range Voting, the beast (feasible) voting method, based on extensive Bayesian regret calculations. (The Center for Range Voting was co-founded by a Princeton math Ph.D)
http://rangevoting.org/vsi.html
It essentially doubles the effect of democracy.
And if you want a better form of proportional representation than the archaic STV, check out Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting.
http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html
http://rangevoting.org/Asset.html
It is incredibly unfortunate that we are currently seeing so much public support for Instant Runoff Voting (one of the worst alternative voting methods), based on numerous myths about it. Those are discussed here.
http://rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html
Seattle’s Madison Market has used Range Voting for their inside trustee elections. 🙂
Regards,
Clay Shentrup
Electopia, Founder
clay@electopia.org
415.240.1973
July 25, 2007 at 10:53 am
Clay Shentrup
s/beast/best
July 25, 2007 at 10:55 am
Clay Shentrup
And you’ll notice, I said RV was the best “feasible” election method. Here’s one, invented by economists, that is “perfect” (if you equate money with utility).
http://rangevoting.org/CTT.html