Updated on December 2, 2019.
A group of Progressive Burlington city councilors wants to resurrect ranked-choice voting, a controversial election method that Queen City voters repealed nearly a decade ago.
Councilors Jack Hanson, Brian Pine and Max Tracy will introduce a resolution on Monday that seeks to place a question on the March 2020 ballot to reinstate the election system. If approved, the topic will go to the council’s Charter Change Committee for consideration.
Councilors Perri Freeman (P-Central District) and Sharon Bushor (I-Ward 1) have also signed on as cosponsors of the measure.
Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant runoff, allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If none wins a majority, the last-place finisher is eliminated. Votes for that candidate are then assigned to voters’ second choice until one candidate gets a 50 percent majority.
Under the current system, a candidate can earn just 40 percent of the vote to win an election for mayor, city council or school board. The system puts independent and non-major party candidates at a disadvantage, the resolution says, and forces voters to choose the candidate who is most likely to win instead of who they favor most.
“In Burlington, there’s alway been a long tradition of being … a multiparty city,” said Pine, a Ward 3 prog. “This is a well-tested way to ensure that you can have a more pluralistic political system.”
Burlington used instant runoff from 2005 until 2010, when voters repealed it by a 52 to 48 percent margin. Current City Council President Kurt Wright (R-Ward 4) led the effort to change the system after he lost the 2009 mayoral race to incumbent Bob Kiss, despite besting the Prog in the first few rounds of ranked-choice voting.
Wright remains opposed to instant runoff and thinks the Progressives are introducing “a major, controversial change” far too late in the year. Charter changes require a public hearing before they can be added to the ballot, which has to be finalized in January, he said.
“There is no perfect voting system, but I think that the flaws in this system that’s being proposed are significantly greater than what we have now,” Wright said.
The Progs argue that ranked-choice voting has numerous benefits. Hanson said it encourages third-party hopefuls to run for office without fear of splitting votes between similar candidates. Many voters also feel like their vote is wasted on a third-party candidate, even if that person best aligns with their ideals, he said.
“It’s not right. It’s a very flawed system that we’re operating under that discourages more than two people from running,” said Hanson, the council’s East District representative. “Voting is a fundamental right, and your vote should be able to relate your values and what you want to see. It should not be a strategy of harm reduction or preventing your most hated candidate from getting in.”
The ranked system would also discourage negative campaigning because it “encourages candidates to focus on their positive vision for voters” as they compete for second and third-round votes, according to the resolution.
The proposal already has support from a cadre of current and former politicos, who wrote a letter this week urging the council to advance the measure.
“Ranked choice voting is a non-partisan issue that is fundamentally about improving and expanding access to our democratic process,” reads the letter, which was cosigned by state Sens. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden) and Chris Pearson (P/D-Chittenden), plus a handful of House representatives from Burlington and former governor Howard Dean.
The Vermont legislature is considering its own move to implement ranked-choice voting. H.444 would permit the method in primary elections for statewide offices but not for legislative seats. If passed, it wouldn’t take effect until 2024.
The Vermont bill is modeled after one passed in Maine, which adopted the system in 2016. Other areas — including cities in Massachusetts, California and Minnesota — have switched to instant runoff voting, and earlier this month, New York City voters supported a ballot item to implement ranked-choice voting by a three-to-one margin.
Hanson thinks times have changed since Burlington voters repealed instant runoff.
“It’s time to give voters another opportunity to weigh in on it,” he said.
Read the full city council resolution here:
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If we are suggesting different scenarios for candidate selection, how about no elections, but rather, required service? As a resident, put your name in and when called, it’s matched to openings. Maybe you’ll be Mayor or City Council, but maybe you’ll be on the Cemetery Commission. Takes the ego out of it, and the desire to control outcome based on ideology and power. Everyone serves. To the best of their ability. Whatever role you are assigned to. Rather than what your ego wants you to do.
“U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker, appointed by President Donald Trump, roundly rejected Poliquin’s suit in a 30-page ruling. Poliquin and the other plaintiffsa couple of Poliquin votershad argued that Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution calls for plurality voting.
….
Walker also rejected an argument by the Poliquin-voting plaintiffs that the system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by not treating their votes with the same “weight” as others.”
https://reason.com/2018/12/13/federal-judg…
Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff Voting (RCV/IRV) has not only been ruled constitutional by at least two different state Supreme Courts (Maine & New Mexico), but it also has the benefit of combining any necessary runoff elections into a single ballot session for the voter – thus everybody’s vote is counted equally in each election they participate in.
Hmmmm …. sounds pretty standard to me.
But it gets even better under RCV/IRV. Standard runoff elections that are held on separate days from the general election have notoriously low turn out. RCV/IRV obviously negates this extremely harmful issue.
RCV/IRV is also beyond easy to understand. As a matter of fact this style of voting has fewer decision making points then are required for an order at a fast food restaurant. Who’s your number one choice? And if that gal/guy isn’t available, then who would you pick? And who would you like as your final backstop?
Of course if the menu offers continued choices then you can keep selecting a replacement.
IRV is unconstitutional. The law of the land is simple: one vote ONE TIME per voter. Period. Counting votes twice thrice or fourfold is simply unconstitutional. The first time an IRV challenge gets to the U.S. Supreme Court it will be struck down forever. Thank God.
Hey r b-j, what you are claiming is totally and provably FALSE!!!
Proof here: https://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html – “In range voting, if any set of voters increase a candidate’s score, it obviously can help him, but cannot hurt him. That is called monotonicity. Two of IRV’s flaws are that it is not monotonic and dishonesty can pay.”
“Too high and I help him beat my first-choice.” FALSE, because regardless of how high a score you give your second choice, you can never help your second choice beat your first choice. By definition, your first choice will receive a score higher than or equal to the score you give to your second choice. If the two scores are equal (which is not even possible in IRV), then the first and second choices are helped equally. If the score given to the first choice is higher than the score given to the second choice, then the first choice is always helped more than the second choice.
“Too low and it helps my third-choice beat my second-choice.” FALSE, for the same reason. By definition, your second choice will receive a score higher than or equal to your third choice. If the two scores are equal (which is not even possible in IRV), then the second and third choices are helped equally. If the score given to the second choice is higher than the score given to the third choice, then the second choice is always helped more than the third choice.
Ufff, where does the Grownassman even start with this topic? Elections are sensitive topics so the rules that govern them have to not just be fair but more importantly never give up any perception of not being fair. By this measure the current system is better than IRV as IRV has too many rules to follow and can produce results that are not fully intended or perceived as fair or common sense. This is what happened in 2009 when Kiss got re-elected as he was not the winning candidate of the people in the first or second round of voting. No system is perfect but there is only one system that is the lesser of all evils and that its whoever gets the majority of votes wins. In a town with multiple parties 40% sounds reasonable as a threshold to win as it’s probably impossible not to have a split outcome where no one receives above 50% of the total votes. If there is less than 40% have a run-off election between the two largest vote holders which is a fairer way to determine a true winner, than blind allocation of votes in an IRV system which happens when you don’t know who actually won in the 2nd or 3rd round of votes. For a better breakdown of why IRV does not work click here https://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html
Oh, why couldn’t we have Mayor Wright, even the majority of the population voted against him? Mayor Wright would have prevented the 2008 finanicial crisis that led to the demise of BT. No wait, better stick to the script…it was that awful Kiss.
This is it Burlington Democrat’s and Republicans, if you don’t want to cede control of you’re city to the progressives, then you better voice you’re opinion and vote accordingly.
I am so glad I don’t live in Burlington.
Hay Ian, Score Voting (what you call “Range Voting”) sucks. It inherently presents the voter with a tactical question as soon as they sit down with their ballot: “How much do I score my second-choice candidate? Too high and I help him beat my first-choice. Too low and it helps my third-choice beat my second-choice.”
We are not Olympic figure skating judges. Voters should not be burdened with tactical voting. Both FPTP and Score Voting force the voter to vote tactically.
Whoever gets the highest amount of votes should be the winner like in the presidential race..