AP: Vermont city to elect its next mayor – immediately

[question everything]

Vermont city to elect its next mayor – immediately

In 'instant runoff,' voters rank choices

By Ross Sneyd
ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 5, 2006

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Runoff elections are typically cumbersome processes, taking weeks and sometimes months to determine a winner. Burlington is going to do it all instantly.

In an innovation known as “instant runoff” voting, the results of Tuesday's five-candidate election for mayor and whatever runoff is needed to settle it will all be known soon after polls close.

For the first time in a mayoral election in the United States, voters will mark their ballots for their favorite candidate, along with their second, third, fourth and fifth choices.

If none of the five gets 50 percent of the vote on the first round, the candidate with the lowest vote total will be eliminated. Then the second choice of the voters who made that candidate their initial pick would be counted, and so on.

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Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060305/news_1n5runoff.html

[gristy]

1. whoo hoo!!!

:woohoo:

[Rainscents]

2. HOOT!

[MADem]

3. Good ole Vermont, always ahead of the curve!!!

Betcha Diebold would have a heckovatime trying to game that system....

[northzax]

4. are you kidding?

it makes it easier, not harder, to rig an election. If there is a close race, and a couple of low placers, you simply need to change enough of the lowest vote getter's #2 choices, and you can pick up a few percentage points. People remember who they vote for, will they all remember the #3 place holder later?

[gristy]

5. Making the vote tabulation process transparent and accountable does not

depend on any voter remembering who they voted for. Further, instant runoff voting and electronic voting with no paper ballot are two different things. IRV good. DRE bad.

[GreenInNC]

6. my church

My church uses IRV when we vote on our vestry. Never had a problem and we know pretty soon who the new members are.

[Cascadian]

7. If any state is more likely to break off from the Union....

it would be Vermont.



John