Some IRV considerations on a slow election day

The debate on Instant Runoff Voting should be heating up locally shortly. I am still trying to keep an open mind. Some critics [think Joe Soucheray, for one] seem so sense partisan [or at least ideological] agenda behind the effort. Based on who seems to be supporting the move in this region, it is easy to see how he has reached that conclusion. But it seems to me that there are plenty of places where IRV, if adopted, could work for different ideologies differing from the ones that Soucheray suspects.

Full disclosure: IRV is not my favored way of addressing our ongoing situation of minority winners. I favor a two-step process, but nobody else seems to favor the process I do.

After finding out this last year how many people could screw up something like ballot marking using our present system, I have found myself wondering whether we might just be asking for a whole lot more problems with the necessarily more complicated IRV ballot. I guess that before adopting it here, it would be nice to see how Minneapolis handles it, but since we are making our decision simultaneously to their beginning their IRV experiment, we will not have that chance. And, with this year’s decision out of the way, we will probably lose whatever opportunity to make a decision on what system to use with their experience to consider.

In my precinct where 1124 people voted for electors for President of the United States, I was voter number 21 at approximately three in the afternoon today.

It would seem that our community is not committed to our two-stage election process. I just wonder how IRV might change that.