|
| graphic courtesy www.fairvote.org |
| FairVote Minnesota interim executive director Jeanne Massey says people won't have to worry that their votes for third-party candidates or less-populist major party candidates are "wasted."
|
|
Are we ready to change the way we vote?
Scott Nichols
news editor
Beaumont Street resident Troy Trooien won't reveal his political leanings, but freely admits to being a "foot soldier" for a Minneapolis group called FairVote Minnesota, an ever-expanding movement to change the way we vote.
FairVote Minnesota activists are pushing for our state and its communties to reconsider a long-standing election method now called "instant runoff voting" or IRV.
In a nutshell, IRV doesn't make voters choose just one candidate for a particular office. Instead, voters get to rank their choices, and candidates with the least number of votes are progressively eliminated in an "instant runoff" until a single candidate emerges with a majority of votes. While it has never gone out of fashion in some European countries, U.S. municipalities are starting to examine IRV methods for their elections.
Locally, Minneapolis voters approved the use of IRV last year by a two-thirds majority, and momentum has begun to swing across the river: Ramsey County elections manager Joe Mansky will give a presentation on IRV issues and costs to the St. Paul City Council on March 28.
So what are the benefits of instant runoff voting?
For one, say backers like Trooien, there won't be any more low-turnout primaries: voters go to the polls only once, and every candidate is considered together, which could lead both to greater voter turnout as well as cost savings for cash-strapped municipalities.
And there's another benefit, says FairVote Minnesota interim executive director Jeanne Massey: people won't have to worry that their votes for third-party candidates or less-populist major party candidates are "wasted."
Already, Ramsey County Commissioners have resolved 6-0 (with Commissioner Tony Bennett absent) that instant runoff voting is a "mechanism that can be used to ensure citizens the right to have their votes counted."
Massey brings up as a Minnesota example the 2004 gubernatorial votes for Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson. Would he have gotten more votes if people knew that their votes could have been transferred either to Gov. Tim Pawlenty or unsuccessful challenger Mike Hatch?
Cuts both ways?
Trooien also wonders if the initially unpopular Democrat Bill Clinton would have been ushered into the US. Presidency if so many Republicans hadn't liked Independent Ross Perot. Or whether Democrat Al Gore could have triumphed over U.S. President George Bush if so many voters hadn't liked Independent Ralph Nader.
While Minneapolis was the first city in Minnesota to vote to phase in IRV, it's not the first in recent memory to try. That honor goes to Roseville, which asked the Minnesota Legislature to allow it to utilize IRV in 2004. But that effort failed, says Massey, when issues advocacy group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life lobbied against it.
MCCL officials were unreachable before the East Side Review's deadline, but an MCCL political questionnaire sent to onetime St. Paul mayoral candidate Elizabeth Dickenson is now on the FairVote Minnesota Web site. Among the 12 questions submitted to candidates, 10 relate to MCCL's pro-life advocacy. But the 12th question reads as follows: "Do you oppose Instant Runoff Voting?"
MCCL's view on IRV, according to an explanatory paragraph after the question, is that it would "dilute" someone's vote as well as being "confusing to voters."
The concept of IRV wasn't so confusing to students in a social studies class at Maplewood's Mounds Park Academy, however, which ended up promoting the voting methodology in a paper they completed this January.
And unlike Roseville, which as a statutory city has to get approval from the Legislature to make IRV election changes to its system of governance, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Ramsey County are the three jurisdictions in the state that don't have to peddle favor at the Capitol to do so. All three have home-rule charters.
So while foot soldiers like Trooien are pushing their St. Paul neighbors to sign a petition calling for instant runoff voting, there are other avenues that proponents can take, too, if petitioning doesn't pan out. Either St. Paul City Council members or the city's Charter Commission can also call for IRV. Any of these three methods could get a question about IRV onto the next general election ballot. To be adopted, a simple majority of voters - 50 percent plus one vote - would have to approve it.
|
