Runoff Voting Could Improve Democracy in America

Terry McAuliffe, Brian Moran and Creigh Deeds recently faced-off in the Virginia primary to choose the Democratic candidate for governor. Although Deeds received less than the majority of votes, since he did receive more votes than any of the other candidates he was declared the winner.

In the United States there is a distinct dislike for our leaders to be picked by virtue of receiving the “most” votes. We want ruling mandates to be bestowed by “majorities.” If not we feel we are not really choosing our representatives, rather they are being picked “for us.”

There is a relatively simple solution to this problem, by conducting runoff elections.

There are two ways of conducting runoff elections.

Less financially efficient, not to mention prolonging the time we are engaged in the unpleasant communal pastime of “election season” is to have a runoff vote at a later date after the initial elections. Not a pleasant prospect, its enough to dissuade most people from promoting such a solution.

However, it is possible to conduct what is known as “Instant Runoff Voting”, or IRV, which has already been tried in San Francisco and Vermont in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

In IRV voters rank the candidates according to their first, second and last choices. Not only will this allow two candidates to go head to head for the majority of the voters, but it has been shown that IRV actually increases voter turnout by giving the feeling that what the voters want and do really can make a difference.