Election Reform on the November Ballot

Walter OlsonOn November 8 voters will consider a wide range of state and local ballot measures. Here are some that relate to voting and election reform.Nevada voters inQuestion 3 will decide whether to join Alaska in adopting the innovation known as Final Five voting (Final Four in Alaska), in which a single all ‐​party qualifying‐​round primary is followed up by a ranked choicevoting (RCV) general election. As I ’veargued, while RCV tends toget more attention, it ’s the first of these paired reforms that could pose the more systematic challenge to current practice by offering a way to sidestep “some of the manifest problems with today’s party primary system, in particular the dominant role of zealously motivated base voters.”Ranked choice voting standing on its own, in what I call its plain ‐​vanilla or “instant‐​runoff” version, will beconsidered by voters in ten jurisdictions, among them Seattle, Evanston, Ill., Portland, Me., and Fort Collins, Colo., as well as two populous counties spanning the Columbia River, Multnomah (Portland), Ore., and Clark County, Wash. In general, RCV has been popular with voters in the jurisdictions that have adopted it in recent years, including New York City and Maine.Voters in Portland the Oregon city, as distinct from the surrounding county, will consider adopting a different RCV format, multi ‐​winnersingle ‐​transferable‐​vote (STV) for city council seats. Long e...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs