Why Connecticut Should Consider Ranked Choice Voting System

Kudos to Steve Hill Open Forum writer at the San Francisco Chronicle.

His article The New Politics of Local Elections should go a long way to ending the interminable partisan smear campaigns that we in Connecticut are subjected to.

The answer is ranked choice voting or instant runoff voting which he himself fathered.

Here's how it works. The voter is asked to rank his top three choices for the position of Mayor. Assuming that no one candidate achieves a majority of votes cast, then the numbers two and eventually the number three choice(s) of the eliminated runners are distributed accordingly until one of the two top runners achieves a majority of the votes.

In the Oakland, California mayoral election, the eventual winner after many rounds was Jean Quan-- simply because she broke new ground in bipartisanship; as she campaigned she urged all voters to write in her name for first choice and also urged them to place her name for number two or number three ( if they planned to rank an opponent first.)

She had something good to say about all the runners; in other words, she reached out to other candidates.--thus spreading cooperation and good will for her opponents.

This good will worked in her favor.

She told citizens: "In case I don't win, I think Rebecca [an opponent] should be your second choice." Thus Quan got three times more runoff votes from Rebecca's supporters than did her main rival Don Perata.

Perata ran a largely negative campaign. He was the front-runner and typically spent more money attacking Kwan. Perhaps, he should have spent more time forming coalitions and building ties with the other candidates. Then he could have stayed front-runner.

Oakland voters are more amenable to the new mode; in the June, 2006 mayoral election, 83, 000 voters visited the polls; this year the number jumped 43% as 119, 000 voters participated. And 99.7% cast a valid vote.

In addition to Oakland, San Leandro, San Francisco and Minneapolis are all employing ranked choice voting.

Shouldn't we in Connecticut consider ranked choice voting as a mode of ending the mud-slinging politics that dominates our elections and continues to drive voters away from the polls?