The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a good critique of Douglas’ veto message. Hendrik is probably right that partisan calculations decided the matter, but the governor gave other reasons. Some were factually incorrect (e.g. the current system is 200 years old). Others were tired spin (e.g. bastardized understandings of “one person, one vote” that IRV somehow violates).

One novel argument stood out:

Moreover, voters should not be asked to cast their ballots based on a wide range of hypothetical, theoretical or imaginary outcomes.

I take it to mean: IRV raises the information costs of strategic voting. Douglas earlier had fed this argument to the Burlington Free Press, which editorialized against IRV on March 25:

While backers tout instant runoff voting — IRV for short — as a way to increase the voters’ say, what it really does is mess with the process of marking the ballot, forcing people to vote in both a real election and, as the governor said, a hypothetical one [...] Many voters might play the “what if” game in choosing whom to vote for when there is more than two candidates in the race, but that kind of conjecture has no place on the official ballot.

While technically correct under certain conditions, this is a bad argument against reform for at least three reasons. One, those conditions are rare. Two, no voting system is strategy-proof. Three, strategic voting is less important under IRV than under plurality.

Why do governors even bother explaining vetoes of election reform bills?