IRV Oregon


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* WHAT IS IRV?

* BENEFITS OF IRV

* IRV VOTE COUNTING SYSTEMS

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* REPLIES TO ARGUMENTS

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* LOCAL CONTACTS:
       --IRV-Ashland
       --IRV-Lane County
       --IRV-Portland Area



 Replies to Arguments against IRV



IRV violates the "one person, one vote" rule.

The "one person, one vote" rule came out of the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Gray vs. Sanders, in which it ruled that electoral districts had to be drawn so as to represent equal numbers of citizens; the ruling had nothing to do with voting procedures. Under IRV, every voter's ballot is equally weighted and counts as one vote in each round of counting. If a voter's second choice is counted, that voter's first choice is cancelled; there is no disadvantage to voters whose first choice candidate is still in the race. In 1975, a Michigan circuit court considered these issues and determined that the use of IRV was constitutional, and in January 2009 a county district judge dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop IRV from being implemented in Minneaoplis MN, ruling that "there is insufficient evidence to conclude that IRV causes any citizen to be deprived of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws."


WIth the possibility of multiple rounds of counting under IRV, election results could be delayed for weeks.

How long vote counting takes in an IRV election depends upon a number of factors, including the vote counting method chosen, the number of candidates, and so on. Although the election results could be delayed, it should usually not take weeks to finish the vote counting. Even under the usual electoral method used in the U.S. there can be delays in results for close elections; for example, the count for the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota dragged on for a half a year.


IRV is subject to strategic voting, in which the choice of a minority of voters can change the results of the election.

This is a hypothetical possibility, but extremely unlikely to actually happen. Two contradictory conditions would have to hold: (1) there would have to be three or more candidates with nearly equal support from voters, and (2) a minority of voters would have to vote against their true preferences in order to change the order in which candidates would be eliminated. These are contradictory conditions because if support for the candidates was nearly equal, no one could be sure what the likely outcome was going to be and so no set of voters could know in advance whether changing their vote would alter the outcome. Under the common plurality method of voting used in the U.S., however, strategic voting often happens because the "spoiler" dynamic influences citizens to vote against their true preferences.


IRV may not produce a true majority winner if many voters do not indicate ranked choices beyond their first choice.

There is not a true majority winner in any U.S. election if "true majority" is taken to mean a majority of all registered voters, because nearly half of registered voters choose not to vote. If a voter does not make a second choice in an IRV election, it is the equivalent of that voter choosing not to vote in the instant run-off if his or her first choice came in last and has been eliminated.


In September of 2001 voters in Eugene, Oregon decided against the use of IRV in city elections.

Much has changed since 2001. Successful use of IRV has been demonstrated in several localities across the United States, including San Francisco CA since 2004; Burlington VT since 2006; and Takoma Park MD, Cary NC and Hendersonville NC in 2007.  The experience of these cities shows that fears raised about IRV are unfounded.