IRV for the United Kingdom?

The British House of Commons yesterday approved a bill authorizing an electoral reform referendum by 365 to 187 votes. That bill now must pass the House of Lords before the present parliament expires. If the Lords do as the Commons have, a referendum on the alternative vote (AV, also known to Americans as instant runoff voting, or IRV) will be due by October 2011.

More from the UK Electoral Reform Society; ERS’ Twitter feed; the Twitter feed of FairVote, ERS’ sister organization in the US; a FairVote blog post; and a spirited discussion in the comments of Fruits and Votes on the merits of AV for minor parties.

Institutionalist observers have speculated a lot on Labor’s self-interested reasons for finally pursuing electoral system reform in the United Kingdom. See, for example, Fruits and Votes once again on earlier, broken promises to do the same. One line of thinking holds AV is a compromise that Labour can use to buy Liberal Democrat support for a minority government after elections this year, which are expected to go badly for Gordon Brown’s government. Another line of thinking sees the potential for preference-trading among LDP and Labor supporters to boost the parties’ shared seat total.¹ ERS’ official position can be summarized thus: it’s not proportional representation, but AV is a step in the right direction.

Notably, according to the BBC, Parliament rejected 476-69 a LDP proposal for an earlier referendum on proportional representation by the single transferable vote.

1. Note, however, that some British observers have projected AV to benefit the Tories instead. What’s more, any such effect would be moot, as electoral system change would come long after this spring’s elections.

US Election Day’s unsung races

Beyond several “off-year” and special elections with or without predictive significance for major future races, there were several ballot measures or elections today involving STV/IRV, including:

• One on a new IRV implementation (at time of writing, it looks good);
• One on a new STV implementation (at time of writing, it doesn’t look good;
• One on whether to keep IRV;
• One advisory vote on whether to keep IRV;
• One first-time use of IRV;
• Three uses of IRV for the second or more times;
• And two uses of STV in the same town, continuing an almost 70-year run with the system.

Over the last decade, we’ve accumulated quite a set of referenda on these systems. That set does not include legislative votes (probably several) or statewide referenda (one). It would be interesting to identify patterns in support for these measures.

Preference voting for El Sal?

The other day I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Juan Carlos Sanchez from the Foundation for the Study and Application of Law (FESPAD), a civil society organization that seeks to reform El Salvador’s electoral system.

He opened by arguing, quite bluntly, that El Salvador has “one of the worst electoral systems in Latin America.” To demonstrate this, he pointed to a number of specific facets of the system, such as the lack of absentee voting, the politicization of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the laissez-faire approach to parties and campaign regulation, and feckless mechanisms for enforcing the rules of the game.

What struck me most about Mr. Sanchez’s talk was what he did not address: the actual processes by which voter preferences are translated into political representation.

El Salvador utilizes a system of closed-list proportional representation (CLPR), a system known for encouraging strong, platform-oriented, but sometimes also deeply ideological and polarized parties, not unlike those found in El Salvador. Briefly, a closed list allows the party leadership to select candidates with little or no input from the electorate, while proportionality provides opportunities for parties to garner substantial representation without necessarily having to reach across the political aisle or even into the center aisle in order to acquire district-wide majorities/pluralities. While it must be recognized that the two main parties – Arena and FMLN - have made considerable strides in moderating themselves since the days of the civil war, they nevertheless remain deeply divided, so much so that many question whether they will uniformly recognize the legitimacy of a loss in the upcoming presidential election.

Of course, in a country where civil war wounds have not yet fully healed, and where substantial socioeconomic disparities remain a potent political reality, it would be silly to attribute full blame for the country’s polarized politics to its electoral institutions. Yet, it seems reasonable to begin to question the degree to which this system may be exacerbating, or at least failing to ameliorate, the nature and dynamics of existing political divisions.

To be sure, PR has its virtues and it has been proposed as a means to alleviate the effects of deeply divided societies in a number of contexts. However, such proposals are almost always tied to the caveat of parliamentarianism and the assumption of several relevant political parties - two additional factors that would presumably contribute a more conciliatory executive, legislative coalition building and, by extension, a more consociational political dynamic overall.

This model, however, does not reflect the political realities of El Salvador, where holdover Cold War manichaeism and deep class divisions have encouraged the emergence of two dominant parties, which are currently involved in a bitter, winner-take-all struggle for the powerful presidency.*

With this background in mind, I asked Mr. Sanchez whether anyone has ever recommended a move away from CLPR, towards a system that provides incentives for existing parties to moderate the selection of their candidates, and for individual candidates to soften their rhetoric, such as the Alternative Vote (AV) or the Single Transferable Vote (STV) (the latter would seem a more likely option for a country already accustomed to proportionality and multi-member districts). The virtue of these systems is that they allow voters to select not only their first choice, but their second, third, or however many candidates decide to run. If their first choice does not receive enough votes to win a seat, their second choice candidate then receives their vote. For this reason, AV and STV systems are both referred to as forms of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). This can create strong incentives for parties and candidates to attract votes outside their traditional base by moderating their platforms, campaigns, and rhetoric, as they begin to recognize the value of being voters’ “next-best choice.” Given that upwards of 14 percent of the electorate remains undecided going into tomorrow’s presidential election, it seems plausible that there is a substantial underrepresented “center,” whose voice could serve as a force of moderation if amplified through one of these preferential systems.  

To Mr. Sanchez’s knowledge, despite the near-universal recognition of the need for a less polarized political dynamic, no one has made such a recommendation. In fact, he confessed that he - ostensibly one of the foremost domestic experts on reforming the Salvadoran electoral system – was unaware of any electoral alternatives for diminishing polarization.

This response surprised me, and I was thus wondering if anyone out there on the “www” with knowledge of El Salvador or electoral systems has any insight with respect to this issue, especially since our computer time at the hotel is rationed, and opportunities for even basic research are extremely limited. Has anyone proposed a preferential model for El Salvador? Might it help temper the country’s polarized politics? Is it even a plausible option? To what degree are current power holders’ interests tied to existing procedures? Are there potential unintended consequences that one should consider? Might a simple shift from CLPR to open-list PR offer a less drastic means of achieving greater moderation, or might this have the opposite effect? Perhaps what is really needed is a focus on reforming the executive branch vis-a-vis other organs of the state, whether this means a move toward parliamentarianism or simply a curtailment of executive authority.

So many questions. With any hope, the conduct of the parties and their supporters during and after tomorrow’s election will make them all seem a little less relevant.

*Although the president of El Salvador is selected through a two-round system, which in other contexts has been credited for the success of more moderate candidates (according to the same logic of the aforementioned IRV systems). However, in tomorrow’s election, because none of the smaller parties have put forth candidates, it is understood that there will be no opportunity for a second round of voting.

DemoChoice application for Facebook

DemoChoice.org is a useful website where you can conduct STV (and IRV) elections among pre-defined electorates. They’ve just released an application you can add to a Facebook profile. To find it, log in, and search “demochoice.”

They offer two levels of security. For general use, feed DemoChoice a list of e-mail addresses for the voters you want to allow. For more “serious” elections, request that site keys be sent to your voters.

Or just run a public poll for fun.

How the Iowa caucuses mirror preferential voting

Now that Putin has stolen an election and the Venezuelans will keep democracy, TDP can return to more important topics.

The Iowa caucuses are a peculiar institution. Seen globally, primary elections are anomalous enough. Yet Iowa’s delegates to the parties’ nominating conventions are chosen by people walking around a room and revealing their preferences to everyone else. Two features of the Iowa caucuses strikingly mirror the logic of preferential voting systems: iterative preference flows and strategic coordination among rivals.

My old friend at FairVote wrote this overview of how the caucuses work. In a nutshell, candidates must achieve threshold levels of support to win delegates. “Support” or “votes” are the number of people standing in a part of the room that represents a given candidate.

When candidates fail to reach the threshold, deal making and cajoling begins, and things get complicated. In 2004, Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards agreed that if either of them failed to reach threshold in any precinct, their supporters would line up with the other…

In other words, rival candidates bargain for second choice support. When one is eliminated, voters walk across the room, casting “votes” for successive preferences.

Equally interesting is that, depending on the size of the precinct, the threshold to win delegates is about 15-20%. That means the caucuses use a rough form of quota-based proportional representation in which each candidate winning delegates (i.e. “seats”) is analogous to an effective party.

Modeling tomorrow’s Australian federal election

This fascinating election is just around the corner. Not only have psephologists modeled how the aggregate “two-party” vote plays out in individual districts; the media actually pay attention! (If your average US newspaper paid attention to district-level margins and two-party votes, people would take presidential and congressional elections for the uninteresting, predictable “contests” they really are.)

What’s more, Australia uses IRV (alternative vote, etc.) to elect the House of Representatives. So the best models have to take into account which of the two major coalitions/parties will receive preference transfers from small party candidates. Malcolm Mackerras – I met him in 2006 while working in electoral reform – developed just such a model, which is the basis for this calculator at the ABC. His “electoral pendulum” doesn’t work so well in the US, where the big challenge is controlling for incumbency, not vote transfers.

Fruits and Votes, who has numerous Australian readers, has been following the election. He reports a tightening projected margin, but Labor is projected to win the “two-party preferred” vote 52-48 over PM Howard’s Coalition.

After he was written off as a ‘has-been’, John Howard’s last week of campaigning will give the Coalition hope of pulling off a miraculous victory tomorrow.

Labor is still in front and favourite to win the 2007 election but the latest Newspoll survey is showing a late surge to the Howard Government, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia.

Newspoll’s two-party preferred figure, based on preference flows at the 2004 election, has the Labor Party in front by 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.

The sample size was larger than average – 2614.

Last week the two-party preferred figure was 54 for Labor and 46 per cent for the Coalition.

Yes, there’s been some tightening of the margin, and I’m a fairly new observer of Australian electoral politics, but this looks like a Labor win. By American standards, 52-48 is a big spread. In fact, that’s how well the Republicans did in 2002, just 14 months after 9/11. (That says something about what the Democrats’ 54% in 2006 meant – and what any GOP nominee faces in 2008.)

Big Election Day for STV and IRV

While some jurisdictions had off-year elections yesterday, four others voted on instant runoff voting (aka IRV, alternative vote, single transferable vote applied to a single-winner election). Three others used IRV for public elections, and one other used STV (aka choice voting), crème de la crème of candidate-based, multi-winner methods.

On implementation/retention

In Pierce County, WA, IRV survived a veritable repeal attempt 66% to 34% just one year after its passage. Charter Amendment 4 would have restored the closed primary and delayed implementation until 2010.

Sarasota, FL voters passed IRV 78% to 12%. Implementation is pending compatible equipment at the county level.

In Aspen, CO, 77% approved IRV for mayor and a “multi-seat” variant for two at-large council seats. This was an advisory referendum.

In Clallam County, WA, IRV failed 55% to 45%.

Overall good news for the reform movement, which passed IRV and/or STV in four jurisdictions last November.

In public elections

Hendersonville, NC used “multi-seat” IRV for the first time.

Takoma Park, MD used IRV city-wide for the first time. Some voters had a first exposure last January in a special vacancy election. Takoma Park passed IRV in November 2005.

Once again, San Francisco voters ranked up to three choices on optically scanned IRV ballots. It passed there in 2002.

Finally, Cambridge, MA used STV to elect nine city council members and six school committee members. The quota: Droop. The surplus transfer: Cincinnati method. The count: electronic. (Yes, electronic. And surplus transfer might be fractional if not for politics over voting equipment and the city’s grandfathering post-statewide repeal.)

Cambridge has used STV since 1941. It’s the lone survivor of 24 (some say 22 or 23) Progressive Era municipal implementations, the rest of which faced racially and politically charged repeals through the 1950s. (However the NYC school board lasted until 2002). Cambridge itself survived several repeal attempts.