May 22, 2003
-
On the Minnesota politics discussion list, the Democrats are still kvetching about the Green party costing them elections. Someone brought up an interesting point:
The DFL is really upset at Governor Pawlenty’s actions. During that election, the Green Candidate, Ken Pentel, got 3%. Moe (DFL) lost by more than 10% – obviously Pentel didn’t take the election from Moe (not to mention, I personally probably would have ranked the Ballot Pentel -> Penny -> Moe -> Pawlenty).
Penny got more than 10%, so it is possible that he did make the difference, however, you don’t hear the DFL complaining about the Independence party, just the Green party.
Hm.
Anyway, a perennial issue of mine that has come up during this thread is Instant Runoff Voting. It is a bit more complicated than what we’re used to, but avoids many of the problems of our current plurality system. It completely eliminates the concept of a “spoiler” or a “wasted vote” or having to make the choice of voting for the lesser of two evils so the worst candidate doesn’t win. My first exposure to it was when I visited the Republic of Ireland – they use the system there, and the end results seem really good.
Here are two web sites about it:
instantrunoff.com
www.fairvote.org/irv/
And here’s a flash introduction that shows how it might have worked in the 2000 presidential election:
www.chrisgates.net/irv/
