The recent primary election demonstrates just how sorry our system is, and how poorly it serves the voters. Take for example the race for the Republican candidate for governor. The final results were:
Bill Brady 20.3%
Kirk Dillard 20.2%
Andy McKenna 19.3%
Jim Ryan 17.0%
Adam Andrzejewski 14.5%
Dan Proft 7.7%
Bob Schillerstrom 1.0%
No matter who the eventual winner is, we can be sure that he got only about 20 percent of the vote and 80 percent of the voters preferred someone else. Three candidates are virtually tied for first, and two more are not far behind.
There must be a way of electing candidates that ensures the winner is preferred by a majority of the voters. Runoff elections are expensive and have a poor turnout. Also, in this case it would eliminate McKenna, who might actually be the preferred second choice of many voters. There is a solution and it’s called “instant runoff voting” or IRV. This allows voters to rank their choices first, second, third, etc., and takes these preferences into account if no candidate has a majority.
Here is how it works. If no candidate has a majority, IRV eliminates the candidate with the fewest votes and redistributes his votes to the other candidates based on the voters’ second choices. For example, if a voter ranked Schillerstrom first and McKenna second, his vote would be transferred to McKenna. After all of Schillerstrom’s votes are redistributed and still no one has more than 50 percent of the vote, then this process is repeated, eliminating Proft and redistributing his votes. This process continues until someone has a majority.
This simple method ensures that the winner is preferred by a majority of the voters, eliminates the spoiler affect, and provides an incentive for cleaner campaigns because candidates would not want to annoy voters who may make them their second choice. To learn more about IRV, visit www.fairvote.org. Now that all elections are tallied by computers, all it would take is a simple software upgrade to implement it. IRV has been adopted in a dozen states and local governments, including in Illinois, starting in 2011, for overseas voters.
IRV is supported by President Obama and in September, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it will use instant-runoff voting to choose its honoree for best picture.
I think it’s time for a change to using IRV so that everyone’s vote is counted, not just the 20.3 percent it takes to win a plurality of the votes.
Ted Sowinski is a 25-year resident of Oak Park who became interested in election reform after the 2000 presidential election. He is a former board member of the Midwest Democracy Center.