From the Portland Daily Sun:
… Read more ...Portland this year embarks on an elected-mayor campaign that replaces a council-appointed mayor with one elected to an at-large seat. Through a city charter change, voters also will choose their next mayor through rank choice voting, where if any candidate falls short of a majority, then the “second choice” votes come into play in the tabulation.
San Francisco is famous for its left-wing politics. So how does a Tony Hall, a moderate/conservative/libertarianish candidate eke out a win in the city’s mayoral contest?
Many races in San Francisco become pitched battles between moderates and progressives, sometimes contributing to a theme of ‘establishment’ versus insurgent. Hall seems to be angling primarily for insurgent status, creating a David versus Goliath situation to rally voters to his cause.… Read more ...
By way of Green Party Watch:
MAINE GREENS CONGRATULATE CANDIDATES FOR RUNNING STRONG CAMPAIGNS, STRENGTHEN THE CALL FOR ELECTORAL REFORM
Maine Green Independent Party Candidates who ran for the office of state house and state senate ran strong campaigns, often finishing a close second in the race Tuesday night. Fred Horch, of Brunswick, ran a close second with 34% of the vote in District 66.… Read more ...
From the Milford Daily News via TPID:
Independent candidate for Secretary of State Jim Henderson today said he would be in favor of implementing ranked choice voting in Massachusetts. Also known as instant runoff voting, the method involves asking voters to rank candidates on the ballot instead of choosing just one.… Read more ...
Eric Black has an interesting article about a recent poll on the Minnesota gubernatorial race. The whole thing is worth a read, but here are some relevant excerpts.
The poll, taken by St. Cloud State University (SCSU) and partially sponsored by MinnPost, suggests that if the election was conducted (as it will be) by the traditional plurality-vote-wins system, Dayton leads among likely voters as follows:
Dayton: 40 percent
Emmer: 30 percent
Horner: 19 percent
Other, don’t know, refused: 11 percent
The findings are probably good news for Horner.… Read more ...
On August 31, the MPR News-Humphrey Institute released a poll for the Minnesota gubernatorial race. It shows: Republican Tom Emmer 34%; Democratic-Farmer-Labor Mark Dayton 34%, Independence Party Tom Horner 13%, undecided or other 19%. See this story.
Horner, the Independence Party nominee, is already higher in this poll than Jesse Ventura was in similar polls at this point in the 1998 election cycle.… Read more ...
With the entrance of Tom Tancredo into the Colorado gubernatorial race as the Constitution Party candidate, pundits have suddenly turned their attention to potential solutions to “vote-splitting”. We recently reported about the preferred solution for Colorado LP candidate Jaimes Brown. However, Eric Fried, the Secretary of the Colorado Green Party suggest a different reform:
… Read more ...How does ranked choice voting work?
Two interesting stories have floated their way out of the Vermont Secretary of State race.
Peter Cooper is the Progressive Party nominee for Secretary of State. He recently interviewed with the Brattleboro Reformer:
… Read more ...Cooper said he would like to see communities around Vermont take a second look at instant runoff voting (IRV).
From a new, interesting piece in The New Yorker that reads like a few-page version of William Poundstone’s book “Gaming the Vote,” which is also worth reading (the full thing can be read here):
… Read more ...Why are the effects of an unfamiliar electoral system so hard to puzzle out in advance?
Last night former Independence Party Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura made an appearance on Bill Maher’s show Real Time, which airs on HBO. They talked about many topics, including Ventura’s refusal to support the two party system, electing independents, and “alternative voting,” which is more commonly known as instant runoff voting or ranked choice voting (they described it somewhat inaccurately, so go here for more info).… Read more ...
In an oped piece in today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman calls for the formation of a new moderate third party and some form of ranked choice voting across the nation to “break the oligopoly of our two party system.” It’s notable that Friedman is calling for these two things. … Read more ...
Although official results are not available yet, it is expected that in Tuesday’s election in Burlington, Vermont, city voters got rid of the instant runoff voting system they had been using since 2006 and voted one Progressive Party politician out of office. The Progressive Party has two seats on the city council, as do two independents. … Read more ...