On Instant Runoff Voting

Last week I noted a column by Phillip Kiesling about the prospect of nonpartisan primaries. This morning, the New York Times published some Letters to the Editor about it. Go read the letters, but they reflect two general criticisms: 1) parties will run "fake" candidates in order to split the vote of the other party so their top two candidates can get through to the runoff, and 2) we should take one of Thomas Friedman's ideas to do instant runoff voting where voters would rank the preferences of their candidates. As support for Point #2, a few of the letters cite the voting in this year's Academy Awards and how well the system worked.

First, if one party can run "fake" candidates, so too can the other. I'm fairly unconvinced that because the Republicans might hypothetically put up a bunch of fake (D)'s on the ballot that it's going to do anything that gives them an unfair advantage. Let's keep in mind that these candidates still have campaign and get their message out there. Sure, the more local the elections get, the less we know about the candidates, but the idea that we're not going to have any idea who these candidates are and will just randomly pick somebody from our party....and that the other party wouldn't have thought of the same thing just seems really implausible. And, if you're not careful, one of these "fake" candidates might just beat you.

Secondly, it's interesting to me that the other point expressed against the qualifying/runoff election is that it would be better to just have one election with an instant runoff ranking system. So, if I get this correctly - people aren't capable of knowing who the real candidates are, but they are capable of ranking the order from to top to bottom in which they prefer all of the candidates? Very impressive.

I have to admit that when I heard the idea of instant runoffs as a senior in high school during my AP Government class, I was skeptical. While I still am not sure how it could be made to work logistically in a world where we can't even seem to make clear who our top choice is, I'm really coming around on it as a way to allow people to vote for their top choice without feeling like they're throwing their vote away. Most importantly, it's going to put the people in office who hold the viewpoints that best favor the majority (not the plurality) of the electorate. So, let's get the technology right first, then let's fix the electoral system so those we send to represent us more accurately represent our preferences.