I think you are 100% right, we need instant runoff voting!

I work for Damon K. Roberts in his run for City Council. Unless otherwise stated this and every comment by myself is the opinion of myself, and not of Damon or any other candidate, organization, committee, etc.

I will say I am not keen on the instant runoff idea. Not sure complicating voting ballots is the way to go. The country has problems as it is with voting, let alone making it multiple vote.

I could agree to the runoff idea though. That way an unpopular incumbent can be challenged by several new candidates and not have to worry about "taking votes away" from each other and letting the incumbent coast in.

If 50% of the population doesn't want the incumbent, but they are split over two other candidates, it doesn't seem logical to put the other in office.

Excellent post Aardhart. I made the point in a criticism of the plan to fix politics and government by Jonathan Saidel (remember that guy?). He spent some time talking about some very surface level things that could be done to fix the way elections work in this city. My specific point was:

We're facing a situation in which as many as 6 candidates are likely to be on the ballot in the Democratic primary in May. That means that the winner may only need 17% of the votes cast by 80% of all registered voters who happen to show up, just to win the election. With an overwhelming registration edge and a lack (so far) of any credible candidates from other parties, the winner in May's Democratic primary is almost assured a victory in November. If you do the math and assume a somewhat generous voter turnout of 50% for Primary Day and a fairly even split among the candidates (both pretty big assumptions), the next mayor of Philadelphia may be chosen by 64,700 voters in a city of almost 1.5 million. It's more likely that the winner will have about 35% of the vote or 133,200 voters - 9% of the city's total population. My point is, please don't use such lofty rhetoric of ensuring that "the people" select the leaders (rather than "the party people") until you make a suggestion that we have non-partisan elections in which all of the candidates - regardless of party - run together until a mid-September primary, after which the top two vote getters face off in November. Until then, you're just doing what I did when I was spent a summer as a painter and had a job painting the inside of a barn that served primarily as a residence for large flocks of birds. You're painting over the bird crap.

Clearly, the numbers have changed (5 candidates instead of 6 unless you count Uncle Miltie) and many of my numbers were just pulled out of the air. But you get the point. At the time I was talking about non-partisan elections that would result in a run-off by the top two vote getters. The more I hear about the IRV idea, the more I like it. If you want an example of a fairly large city that uses it, just look at San Francisco.

However - a big however - we've seen how difficult it is to regulate campaign finance absent enabling legislation by the state. This is true even though the state has no laws on the books that regulate campaign finance and therefore nothing to pre-empt. Clearly, the state has rules governing how elections are run. Doing anything to change either the date of the primary (for municipal elections) or the way the winner is determined would probably require the kind of enabling legislation that the state has been loathe to grant Philly. Though I'd prefer using both the non-partisan idea and the IRV idea culminating in one election in November, it may only be possible to have the IRV idea worked into the current system. The winner of the Democratic primary may still be de facto winner but at least he or she would have more than just a plurality.

Also given a lot of negative feelings towards the Democratic machine in this city, it may be a good thing to remove the (D) and (R) from behind people's names and let the election be about the candidate, not about the party - at least in municipal elections. The Democratic City Committee would essentially become just another voter turnout apparatus, albeit one with a long track record and lots of people.

It would be politically tough, but (as I just added in my own comments about this on thenextmayor.com blog) a non-partisan, everyone (yes, that means you, Mr. Taubenberger and you, Dr. Foster) included primary in May that results in the top two vote getters facing off in November could make for some interesting summers. Even if the top choice in May got over 50%, there may be plenty of folks who could be pulled away once the race focuses on two candidates.

IRV (not Irv) will just have to wait. It's unfortunate that if American Idol decided to institute a new way of voting, people would be a lot more willing to learn it.

I think IRV is the ultimate goal, but for now the non-patisan voting would be better. I mean, look, the GOP could barely get anyone to even run.

This came up in topic with someone elseand I thought of another scenario where IRV would fail.

The additional problem not mentioned is, what if the second choice picked isn't in the top 2 getters either? Still wasted votes. How do you know who to vote for in the runoff if you don't know who the candidates are? It may not always be clear who the top two would be.

As an example with this mayoral election ... Say Fattah, going into the election has 30% of the polls, but the other four are split pretty even around 20%. Presumably 60% of the second choice votes would be wasted on candidates that aren't in the runoff.

To do it correctly and instantly, you would have to preference the order of EVERY candidate. That has voting nightmare written all over it.

I can agree with runoff voting, but I think doing Instant would implement a broken system. I think the integrity and accuracy of elections would dictate having to do a second election for the runoff.