More on IRV in Vermont

Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker has written a blog post which contains a very clear explanation of instant runoff voting and an excellent criticism of Vermont Governor James Douglas' veto of that state's IRV proposal.

Here's a little of it:

Instant runoff voting, as you (being a reader of this blog) probably know, eliminates the “spoiler” effect in the one-winner elections standard in the United States; guarantees that the winner has at least grudging support, of a majority; and guarantees that a candidate whom most voters really, truly don’t want can’t get elected. The way it works is this: (a) You list your choices in order of preference. (b) If someone gets an outright majority of first choices, that’s it. (c) Otherwise, there’s an “instant runoff”—the biggest loser gets dropped from the counting and his or her voters’ second choices get counted along with everybody else’s first choices. (d) Repeat (c) till someone has a majority, though this is almost never necessary. I.R.V. is used in Australia and Ireland, where voters like it fine, and in several American cities—including Burlington, Vermont.

...

Third-party candidates often run in Vermont, and usually they’re Greens or other leftish types. In Vermont, therefore, I.R.V. would probably help Democrats more often than Republicans. Governor Douglas is a Republican. So he vetoed it. This was expected.

Also expected was that he would not mention partisan considerations in his veto message. What was unexpected was the message’s laughably abysmal intellectual quality.

For Hertzberg's analysis of Gov. Douglas' defense of his veto, please read the full article.