Instant runoff voting

The GOP South Carolina Primary is tomorrow and the quest for the nomination is not yet over. Several candidates have dropped out but four remain in the race. At this time, there are usually calls for the minor candidates to get out of the running so they do not ?steal? votes from candidates who have a chance.

The theory is that since voters can only choose one candidate, the more candidates there are the greater the vote will be split among them. This is detrimental to a candidate who is similar to another candidate in the field. If candidate A and candidate B have essentially the same platform, they could each get 30 percent of the vote but lose to candidate C with a different platform who got only 40 percent of the vote. Even though 60 percent of the voters preferred the platform of candidates A and B, they end up with candidate C.

The most recent example of this playing out was the 2000 presidential election. The election featured Republican George W. Bush, Democrat Al Gore and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. When Nader received 2.74 percent of the vote, many Democrats blamed him for taking votes away from Gore and costing Gore the election since they believed many of Nader?s supporters would have voted for Gore had Nader not run.

You?ll notice that election results do not necessarily reflect the wishes of voters. If voters want candidate A to win, but prefer candidate B to C, they cannot express their preference for B over C since they only have one vote. There is a way to solve this problem that does not require third party candidates to exit the contest.

The solution is known as instant runoff voting (IRV). Under IRV, voters rank the candidates by preference. This allows them to vote for their preferred candidate A while still having an influence on the selection of candidate B over C.

After the voting is complete, the election officials count all the first place votes and rank the candidates accordingly. If one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the first place votes he is declared the winner. However, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, then things get interesting.

The candidate who received the fewest first place votes, let?s say our hopeless candidate A, is eliminated. The ballots of the voters who ranked candidate A first are then examined to see whom the voters chose as their second favorite candidate. The second place votes are then awarded to those candidates just as if they were first place votes and the votes are re-tabulated. The process continues until one candidate has received a majority of the vote.

Instant runoff voting has already caught on in the Australian House of Representatives and in the presidential elections in India and Ireland. What?s holding the U.S. back?