Frequently
Asked Questions
Section I. The Current System
1. What's wrong?
2. Vermont historical problems
3. Problem now-a-days
4. Majority required during most Vt. history
5. If it ain't broke - don't fix it.
6. Isn't plurality good enough?
Section II. What is IRV?
7. What is instant runoff voting?
8. How would instant runoff voting work in Vermont?
9. Change for Voters?
10. Where is IRV used?
Section III. Support for IRV
11. Do Vermonters support IRV?
12. Do Vermont leaders support IRV?
13. How did the League of Women Voters decide to support IRV?
Section IV. Concerns about Implementation of IRV
14. Is IRV too complicated for voters?
15. Is IRV a burden for local polling officials?
16. What if I don't have a second choice?
17. Will the ballot be unwieldy?
18. Will IRV cost more or require new voting machines?
19. Can Secretary of State handle IRV?
20. Can Elections Director handle IRV ballot requirements?
21. Is the statewide IRV recount unwieldy?
22. Is the time needed for IRV tabulation a problem?
23. Is IRV constitutional?
24. How did the Vt. Supreme Court interpret the relevant section?
Section V. Concerns about the logic of IRV
25. Is IRV an accepted voting system?
26. Is the IRV winner a true majority winner?
27. Do only some voters get two votes?
28. If candidates are sequentially dropped, do the most fringe voters decide the election?
Section VI. Other advantages of IRV
29. Will IRV make officials more accountable?
30. Will IRV increase voter choices?
31. Will IRV reduce negative campaigning?
32. Will IRV increase voter turnout?
33. Why not use a two-election runoff?
1) Q. What's wrong with the way Vermont's statewide elections are done?
1) A. If no candidates receives at least 50% of the votes for governor on Election Day, the legislature, not the voters, picks the governor. Vermont's founders believed it important for our statewide leaders to be a legitimate representative of the state's majority - someone who has shown the ability to reach out to most of us rather than win with a mere plurality share of the vote. Under the current rules, a candidate the majority of voters think is the worst choice can be declared elected. The League of Women Voters believes that the majority of voters should directly elect their leaders. The governor has been chosen by the politicians in Montpelier in a secret vote, rather than by the voters, 21 times in Vermont history. If no candidate gets a majority in November, the potential for costly political deal-making to win the secret votes of legislators is also a serious concern.
Even for offices where the legislature cannot step in, such as U. S. Senate, or Attorney General, a problem exists. If several candidates split the vote, a candidate actually opposed by most voters can be declared elected. That is undemocratic.
2) Q. Has Vermont had a problem with elections with no majority winner?
2) A. Yes. In 37% of all Vermont election years, at least one state or federal race had a split vote with no majority winner. Seventy times the legislature, rather than the voters had to elect some statewide office -- 21 times they had to pick the governor. On one occasion the legislature couldn't agree on who should be governor, and they finally gave up. So Vermont had no governor for that term and the Lt. Governor had to serve as acting governor. Another time, in the Treasurers race, the legislature was again stuck, so they compromised and selected the candidate who had come in third in the popular vote with just 3%. That candidate then refused to serve, and the state faced a constitutional crisis.
3) Q. But is this a problem now-a-days?
3) A. With many races having more than just two candidates these days, such scenarios are more likely. Also, there is a serious concern about how a new administration can be pulled together if nobody knows until January which candidate will take office. The governor-elect normally assembles an administration and prepares a budget between November and January. This delay could substantially lengthen the legislative session.
4) Q. Vermont's done fine with our current voting system for over 200 years, why should we change it now?
4) A. Actually, Vermont has NOT used its current "plurality" voting system for very long. For most of Vermont's history, an absolute majority was required to win any single-seat election. If there was no majority, rather than giving the office to the plurality leader, there was either a new election, or the general assembly would fill the office - also by an absolute majority requirement. It wasn't until the 1940s that the candidate with the mere plurality in November would be declared elected to Congress or the general assembly, and 1978 for the rest of the statewide offices other than governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer.
5) Q. Well, maybe Vermont hasn't used plurality election rules for that long, but it still doesn't seem like that big of a problem. "If it ain't broke - don't fix it." Right?
5) A. As long as there are only two candidates in a race, there is no problem - as the top vote-getter will automatically also have a majority. The problem arises when there are three or more candidates. Plurality rules allow the majority of voters to be cheated out of their rightful representation. It is unwise to wait for an electoral disaster to occur, before fixing a problem (like waiting for the rainstorm before fixing the roof.) The phrase "If it ain't broke - don't fix it." was probably uttered by Florida election officials prior to the 2000 elections.
Also, in the case of the governor's race, leaving the decision of who will be governor up in the air until January, when the legislature elects a governor (when there is no popular majority winner), creates a whole new set of problems. Imagine the deal-cutting that could occur with pork-barrel spending commitments as prospective governors lobby 180 legislators for their vote. It would also be hard to get citizens to leave their private sector jobs during November and December, to join an administration that might not take office at all, leaving such critical matters as budget preparation, which must occur then, in limbo.
6) Q. But it isn't necessarily a disaster to let the candidate with a mere plurality take office, is it?
6) A. Not necessarily a disaster, but possibly very undemocratic. The candidate with the most votes (but less than half) in a race with three or more candidates is often not the candidate preferred by the majority of voters. In fact, with plurality rules, a candidate preferred by a majority of voters can be defeated by a candidate the majority consider unacceptable. Having a benevolent king or dictator might not be a disaster either, but a basic principle of democracy is majority rule. Robert's Rules of Order rejects the plurality threshold for electing officers.
7) Q. What is instant runoff voting?
7) A. It is a voting method that determines the majority winner, no matter how many candidates are in a race. In a single election, it combines a regular election with a runoff between the top vote-getters. This avoids the added cost and lower voter turnout, typical of a separate runoff election. It is also called "preferential voting" in Robert's Rules of Order, which recommends it over the "plurality" voting we currently use for most offices.
8) A. This voting procedure was invented in the U.S. and is used in English-speaking countries around the world, such as Australia and Ireland. It was recently used to elect the Mayor of London, England, and was just adopted in San Francisco for city elections on the same date that 51 Vermont towns passed the advisory question urging the Vermont legislature to adopt it. While IRV is not that common in the U.S., it has been used in municipal and state primary elections. The Utah Republican Party uses IRV for both internal elections and for nominating their candidates for U.S. Congress. IRV is also used by many U.S. non-governmental organizations. One of those organizations is the American Political Science Association -- political science professors. They use IRV to elect their national president because they've concluded it is the simplest and fairest way to elect a majority winner in a single election.
9) Q. How would instant runoff voting work in Vermont?
9) A. Voters would mark their ballot exactly as they do now. But they also would be allowed to indicate their runoff choices in case counting just the first choices doesn't determine a majority winner, and their favorite doesn't make it into the final runoff. They would be allowed to do this on the same ballot where there would also be a space for them to rank additional candidate if they want to. On election night only the first choice votes are counted, just the same as currently. When the Secretary of State gets all of the totals, under current law, and under the IRV law an unofficial canvassing committee appointed by the major parties prepares a summary of the results for the official legislative canvassing committee. Now here's where the IRV law differs from the current law... If the Secretary of State and this unofficial committee can't determine a majority winner for some statewide race, they would call for an instant runoff count. The court would appoint a recount committee (actually one for each County), just like under current law, and they would perform the instant runoff tabulation. The candidates at the bottom, with no chance of winning would be eliminated, and all of the ballots would then count as one vote for whichever of the finalists was ranked highest on each ballot. In nearly every case that will mean all of the candidates except the top two will be eliminated, unless there are several candidates bunched together at the top, inc which case those top candidates would be dropped one at a time. So if your favorite candidate makes it into the runoff, your ballot still counts for your favorite. But if your favorite has been eliminated, you have to settle for whichever of those candidates you prefer over the other, just like in a regular two-election runoff, but without the waste of time and money, not to mention the extension of the campaign season and likely lower voter turnout resulting from having two elections.
10) Q. What change would instant runoff voting mean for how Vermonters vote?
10) A. You can still vote in exactly the same manner as presently, but you also have the option of indicating your runoff choices when you vote in November. You are allowed to do this by ranking candidates in order of preference, 1, 2, 3. Because only the first choices are counted by the local poll workers, there is no added burden, and no need to get special voting machines, or anything.
11) Q. Do Vermonters support this reform?
11) A. Yes. 52 out of 55 Vermont town meetings (roughly 95%) voted overwhelmingly for this reform -- many of them unanimously. Numerous Vermont organizations, with many thousands of members, are advocating for instant runoff voting, including the League of Women Voters, the State Grange, Common Cause, the American Association of University Women, VPIRG, The Older Women's League, and many others. Many of Vermont's leading newspapers have also editorialized in favor of IRV, including: The Burlington Free Press, The Rutland Herald, the Caledonian Record, and USA Today.
12) Q. Do Vermont leaders support it?
12) A. Yes. The Secretary of State (the top state election official), and Governor Howard Dean support it. Republican Ruth Dwyer was a sponsor of the instant runoff bill when she was a member of the Vermont House. Progressive Anthony Pollina has endorsed it. The Independent candidate Con Hogan also supports it. Fully one third of the Vermont Senate, from across the political spectrum, have co-sponsored legislation. And I mean from across the spectrum, from Republican Senator Julius Canns, to Democratic Senator Dick McCormack.
13) Q. How did the League of Women Voters come to support it?
13) A. The League participated in a study in 1998 called for by the Vermont House of Representatives. The House set up a special citizens' commission to study the issue. It was made up of 11 people from all political perspectives, including former Democratic, and Republican legislators, (including the late Representative Lisa Martin, former Republican chair of the elections committee ), a Libertarians, a Progressive, young people, and members of the League and Common Cause. This diverse group UNANIMOUSLY recommended adoption of instant runoff voting for all statewide elections. There final report, titled "As Easy As 1, 2, 3" is very interesting, and can be gotten on the internet at www.FairVoteVermont.org.
Section IV. Concerns about Implementation of IRV
14) Q. I've listened to a description of how instant runoffs are tabulated, and it seems complicated. Is instant runoff voting too complicated for voters?
14) A. In fact, the voters' task is very simple. Voters can simply mark their ballots in exactly the same way as they always have in the past. However, the voter has the option of ranking alternate choices, in case there is no majority winner and the voter's favorite candidate doesn't make it into the final runoff count. Voters no longer need to fret about whether their favorite candidate has a good chance to win, or if they are "wasting" their vote, or even helping their least preferred candidate. There is no way to "game" the system with tactical voting or "bullet" voting. For many voters this makes it actually easier to vote.
Hundreds of Vermonters participated in mock IRV elections, conducted in over a dozen schools, as well as at senior citizen centers. People had no difficulty voting, and there were almost no "spoiled" ballots. The participants were surveyed and overwhelmingly favored adoption of IRV for Vermont elections.
Two nations with the highest voter participation rates in the world, Australia and Malta, both use instant runoff voting. The intelligence and literacy levels of their populations are not superior to Vermont's.
The only "complicated" aspect of instant runoff voting is the tabulation that occurs if there is no initial majority winner. But the voters don't need to absorb these details. A voter can dial a telephone without understanding the intricacies of the internal electronics (or vote for president, without understanding the intricacies of the electoral college with provision for election by the House of Representatives in the event of a lack of a majority).
15) Q. Well what about those polling officials? Are they going to have to learn a whole new way of counting votes? Remember they're often exhausted from working the polls for twelve hours straight.
15) A. No problem. The Vermont bill is drafted such that these polling officials don't do the IRV tabulations. In fact they don't have to do anything different than they have in the past. They just count the first choice votes and send those results off to the Secretary of State as usual. This is a major reason why the legislative committee of the Vermont Clerk's and Treasurers' Association has twice testified to House committees that they have no opposition to the bill. The IRV tabulation only comes into play if there is no initial majority winner. The IRV tabulation is treated just like a normal court petitioned recount under existing law. As under existing law, the Court would appoint a recount committee, which would be trained to use the IRV tabulation method.
16) Q. I would find it hard to rank all those candidates, I might not know much about some of them. What if I only like one candidate?
16) A. That's fine. Remember, ranking alternate candidates is optional. Your ballot will count even if you only choose to vote for one candidate. In the IRV system, your second or third choice selections are not even considered unless no candidate has a majority (over half the votes) and your first-choice candidate happens to be eliminated in the runoff. For most voters, their second choice will never be looked at, because their favorite candidate is going to make it to the final runoff. If you have no preference among the other candidates, and your favorite does get eliminated in the runoff count, your ballot counts the same as under current law, in a situation where you happen to pick a losing candidate.
17) Q. If there are a bunch of candidates running for an office, won't the ballot become unwieldy by needing room to rank all those candidates?
17) A. Cambridge, Massachusetts uses rank-order ballots for their municipal elections, and allows voters to rank all candidates (for city council races that could be over 20 candidates). But ballot design needs to be done carefully, especially for certain older voting machines. That is why the Vermont IRV bill allows the Secretary of State to limit the number of choices voters may make to three, if the ballot design requires it. Three choices are enough for virtually all real-world elections. If in the future we are voting on computer touch screens or over the Internet, there would be no physical ballot to limit the space available for alternate rankings, but that is not necessary for instant runoff voting. A memo from the head of Vermont's Election Division, Kathy DeWolfe to the Senate Committee, she states that "...several possible ballot designs have been generated for each type of machine used in Vermont, as well as hand-counted paper ballots that I believe can address my concerns regarding both space constraints and clarity of layout."
18) Q. Will IRV cost more or require buying a bunch of new voting machines?
18) A. No. With a simple modification of the ballot and some voter education efforts, the transition cost would be negligible. There are no additional costs associated with voting. In the event there is a result with a lack of a majority, the only additional cost would be the minor cost of transporting the ballots to the county courts and paying the court appointed ballot counters. IRV does not require any upgrade of voting equipment in Vermont. While there are some kinds of voting machines that are incapable of accommodating rank-order ballots (such as lever machines and punch card readers - of the sort that were used in Florida), fortunately none of these antiquated machines are currently being used in Vermont. Card ballots read by optical scanners work fine for IRV. The staff of the Center for Voting and Democracy have worked with Kathy DeWolfe, head of the elections division of the office of the Secretary of State, to design IRV ballots that work for every model of voting machine used in Vermont. And hand-count paper ballots work just fine. That's how instant runoff voting has been conducted in Australia for over 80 years. The reason no upgrade is needed, is that the Vermont bill treats the IRV tabulation like a court petitioned recount. On Election Day, the first choices on ballots are counted the same as presently. If there were no initial majority winner, the ballots would be manually counted, which is just as easy for the optical scanner type of ballot as for a regular paper ballot. In the future, Vermont may move to computerized voting equipment that will allow integrating data by modem directly from the many polling places, but this is not necessary.
19) Q. What does the Secretary of State say about whether we can do an IRV election smoothly?
19) A. A memo from the Secretary of State to the Senate Government Operations Committee dated April 19, 2001
"In an effort to convey my continued support for S.50 and S.94, the instant runoff preference voting bills, I want to make it clear that, while I agree that implementation of this law would require a strong voter education effort, I believe that the Secretary of State's office can provide the necessary voter education, with the cooperation of various civics groups such as the League of Women Voters, the news media, and public service announcements, with no significant adjustment to our budget.
...
"The bills currently require that this office design the ballots in such a way that voters are able to indicate their first choice in a given race in the same manner as the do currently. We believe that this can be done.
...
"We are confident that, with a reasonable voter education effort, Vermonters can easily adapt to using a rank-order ballot."
20) Q. What does the director of elections say about whether ballots can be made easy to understand?
20) A. A memo from Director of Elections Kathy DeWolfe to the Senate Government Operations Committee dated April 4, 2001
"...several possible ballot designs have been generated for each type of machine used in Vermont, as well as hand-counted paper ballots that I believe can address my concerns regarding both space constraints and clarity of layout.
...
"While we need to continue to work to develop the particular ballot design, after consulting with our ballot printers, I can now say that there are no purely technical printing obstacles to adopting rank order ballots as proposed in H.175, S.50 and S.94."
21) Q. What about the issue of bringing all the ballots to Montpelier for the IRV count...Isn't that unwieldy?
21) A. A memo from Washington County Clerk Claire Mee to the Senate Government Operations Committee dated April 2, 2001
"It has come to my attention that bill S.94 in the Senate Government Operations Committee would utilize a statewide recount of ballots using an instant runoff methodology to determine a majority winner in the event an initial count failed to reveal which candidate in a state wide race were preferred by a majority of the voters. It has also come to my attention that some people are assuming that a statewide recount would entail transporting all ballots to the Washington County Superior Court, because the existing statute refers to a petition being made to Washington Superior Court in the case of any statewide recount request. I would like to inform the committee and interested parties that this is NOT the procedure we would use. The various County Clerks have discussed the procedure to be used in the event of a statewide recount. Although the Washington Superior Court would take overall charge of the count and the Washington Superior Court Judge would sign the final order, each County Court would count the ballots from that county. Thus, the concern that a statewide recount would result in an unwieldy logistical challenge (transporting all ballots here, without sufficient secure storage space, etc.) can be allayed."
22) Q. What about the delay in finding out who won, by waiting for a court instant runoff count? Isn't that a problem?
22) A. Not compared to the wait that can occur under the existing system for the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer, which may go unsettled for two months, until the Legislature convenes in January, if there is no majority winner in November. On election night we would know just as much under an IRV system as we know under existing law. But if there was a race with no majority winner, rather than simply waiting till January for certain offices, or settling for a candidate with a mere plurality, the IRV bill would allow us to know who is really preferred by the majority of voters and is the rightful winner. Under the IRV bill, the court would be petitioned to conduct the instant runoff tabulations as soon as the state canvassing committee determines there was a lack of an initial majority (the week after the election). the IRV tabulation done at each county court might take a few days.
23) Q. Is instant runoff voting constitutional for statewide elections?
23) A. Yes. As far as the federal constitution goes, states have general discretion in how they conduct elections and in how members of congress and presidential electors are selected. The only question arises for the three offices which require a majority vote by section 47 of the state constitution: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Treasurer. Legal opinions from the Legislative Council (the staff lawyers for the Vermont General Assembly), as well as the Brennan Center (affiliated with NYU law school) confirm that the way the IRV bill is crafted, it is doubtful there is any conflict here either. The constitutional law professor from Vermont Law School, Peter Teachout, testified to the Senate Government Operations Committee that he also thought the IRV bill complied with the constitution. He said "I cannot see, and at this moment cannot conceive of any constitutional objections to that proposal."
The Vermont constitution only gives the full legislature the job of electing a governor when there is no election by the majority of voters. With instant runoff voting, everyone, including the legislators, will know which candidate is the choice of the majority of voters. The state constitution gives a special committee of the General Assembly the responsibility of sorting and counting the votes and declaring the candidate with the "major part of the votes" (majority) elected. So while the election is held in November, the official declaration of the winner is not made until the new legislature is in session, in January. The IRV bill leaves this responsibility where it is, and simply provides the Committee with additional information in determining which candidate is the choice of the majority of voters. An opinion from the Attorney General's office also suggests the IRV bill should be crafted as it is to comply with this constitutional requirement. By leaving the ultimate responsibility in the constitutionally mandated hands of the legislative committee, the bill is in accordance with the constitution.
Technically, under the existing procedure the legislative committee receives an "advisory" report from the Secretary of State, or the court (in the case of a recount), and then they are required to declare the person with a majority of votes elected, or if the report says there is no majority, they refer it to the full legislature. Constitutionally, however, this committee has the right to ignore that report and insist on physically sorting and counting the ballots themselves. The IRV bill does not change this situation at all. Again, it is technically only "advisory" and the committee could sort and count the ballots themselves. But since everyone will by then know which candidate is preferred by a majority of voters, this is essentially a formality.
24) Q. What has the Supreme Court said about how to interpret this section of the constitution?
24) A. Here is what the Vermont Supreme Court wrote in the only case ever dealing with this section of the constitution, Temple v. Mead in 1832:
"in giving a construction to a constitution which was to secure the rights and liberties of the citizens, and which was intended to present a frame of government and a mode of election for future generations, as well as for the one then on the stage, we are to regard its spirit, and endeavour to give effect to its provisions, without regarding too strictly the literal meaning of the terms made use of...We ought not to believe that it was intended that voting for those officers should always continue in the same particular manner, or that the votes should be of the same materials, or in the same way which was then in use, without any regard to the changes which might take place, or the improvements which might be made. This limited view of the constitution would wholly destroy the statute passed in 1815, under which our elections are now made."
Section V. Concerns about the logic of IRV
25) Q. I'm not sure that instant runoff voting really works. Is it an accepted system?
25) A. It is a recommended voting procedure in current editions of Robert's Rules of Order, called "preferential voting." It is also used by the American Political Science Association (college professors), who know a thing or two about elections, to elect their national president. It was originally invented by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology around 1870, and has been used for governmental elections around the world for generations, especially in English-speaking countries, including Australia, England, and the Republic of Ireland.
26) Q. But is the IRV winner a true majority winner, or does it sort of manufacture a majority out of thin air?
26) A. Since IRV uses the exact same logic of a regular runoff election, you might as well ask whether a candidate who wins a runoff election is a real majority winner. Of course he or she is the majority winner. The Michigan court decision that upheld the constitutionality of IRV in Michigan was clear that IRV was a system to determine a majority winner in a single election. That is why the American Political Science Association uses IRV to elect their own national president. The judge in that case wrote in his decision:
"Each voter has the same right at the time he casts his or her ballot. Each voter has his or her ballot counted once in any count that determines whether one candidate has a majority of the votes. . . . Far better to have the People's will expressed more adequately in this fashion, than to wonder what would have been the results of a run-off election not provided for."
27) Q. But it seems like some voters are getting two votes, while others are only getting one. Am I right?
27) A. No. Every voter gets an equal vote. In every round of counting, every ballot counts as one vote for the highest-ranked candidate still in the running. If your candidate is still viable, your vote will continue to count for your favorite candidate. If your candidate has been eliminated, rather than getting zero vote, your vote automatically counts for your next favorite candidate. The misunderstanding that some voters get more votes than others was the basis for a legal challenge to IRV in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The court ruled that IRV fully complied with the principle of "one person, one vote," giving equal weight to each voter. The judge wrote in his decision:
"Under the [IRV system], however, no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a "M.P.V. System" is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."
28) Q. But what about the sequential elimination of candidates from the bottom? Couldn't eliminating candidates in a different order result in a different winner?
28)A. No. That is mathematically impossible (unless the rules perversely eliminated the first or second place candidate.) If there are five candidates and eliminating the fifth-place candidate gave the second-place candidate a majority (more than half the votes), that means there are not enough votes among the remaining candidates (together they have less than half the votes) to allow any other candidate any possibility of winning. Eliminating the third or fourth-place candidate first would necessarily give the same result. Sequential elimination of bottom candidates is a standard, and accepted procedure, used by U.S. Congressional caucuses for electing their leaders, and mandated in Vermont election law for party nominations by committee (Title 17 section 2384). In any event, the Vermont bill would eliminate all of the bottom vote-getters, with no mathematical chance of winning, in one bulk elimination. In most cases that would effectively mean eliminating all but the top two candidates.
Section VI. Other advantages of IRV
29) Q. Will IRV make elected officials more accountable to voters?
29) A. Yes. They would be elected by a majority of voters, not by either a minority of less than half the voters, or by a secret vote of legislators. This avoids the potential for secret deal-making between candidates for governor and legislators. In order to win, a candidate must have both strong core support and also reach out to a majority of voters.
30) Q. Will IRV increase voter choices?
30) A. Yes. Many voters complain that they don't have a choice that they really like in some elections. One reason for this is that plurality election rules discourage candidates from offering themselves, for fear that they may effectively "spoil" the chances of an acceptable candidate and help elect the candidate they consider to be the worst. Since IRV eliminates the "spoiler" problem, good candidates can run, even if they may be a long-shot, and voters will benefit from an enriched public debate.
31) Q. Will IRV reduce negative campaigning?
31) A. Possibly. Experience in countries that use IRV, as well as the logic of the system, suggests that the common American practice of using nasty character assassination TV ads is less likely with IRV. Candidates may need to seek to be the alternate choices of voters whose favorite choice is one of the other candidates. "Going negative," runs the risk of alienating these second-choice voters. IRV rewards candidates who differentiate themselves enough to garner strong first-choice support, but also reach out to the majority of voters as a trustworthy alternative to their favorite choice.
32) Q. Will IRV increase voter turn-out?
32) A. Probably. The U.S. ranks near the bottom among the world's democracies, in terms of voter participation. Vermont does significantly better than most U.S. states, but still quite poorly by international standards. The two countries with the highest voter participation rates in the world (Australia and Malta) both use IRV. However, there are so many differences in culture, history and other election laws, that it is unfair to assume this is due primarily to IRV. On the other hand, since IRV can increase the range of choices voters have on the ballot, it is logical to assume that more voters will find a reason to come out to vote. When the Vermont Commission to Study Preference Voting conducted mock IRV elections at high schools, they surveyed the students after and asked whether IRV would make them more or less likely to vote. 1% said it would make them less likely to vote, 46% said it would make them more likely, and the rest said it would make no difference.
33) Q. Why not just use a two-election runoff procedure?
33) A. While more democratic than our existing procedure, two-round runoffs have distinct disadvantages. For certain constitutional offices, such as governor, Vermont's constitution would need to be changed to allow a second election. (No change in the constitution is needed for IRV). A traditional runoff extends the campaign season and can be met with a collective sigh of "Oh no, here we go again." IRV increases the likelihood that the ultimate decision will be made at the election with the greatest level of citizen participation. Runoffs tend to have a lower voter turnout, though there are, of course, exceptions. Imagine the turnout for a runoff for a more minor office such as state Treasurer. The winner of a runoff may get fewer votes than an opponent got in the original election, leading to doubts about the "will of the people," hobbled legitimacy, and lack of a perceived mandate. Traditional runoffs are also costly, both to the taxpayer who must pay for the duplicate election and to the candidates who must resume campaign fund-raising and prolong the stress on their families and business lives. The cost of ballot retabulation in the case of IRV is a tiny fraction of the cost of holding a new election.
