| In his post Joe made the case against IRV by claiming it could actually help third party candidates. In practice IRV tends to help the major party candidate with the most broad support. Third party candidates don't tend to have broad support because they don't always have the resources to get their message out. You may have a few voters get the courage to vote for third party candidates because of IRV, but ultimately the effect will be that these people's second or third choice will be the one that counts.
Because of this need for a broad support among the electorate, and candidates needing to appeal to as many voters as possible, IRV reduces negative campaigning. When you have to build a majority coalition to win, even if it's based on second-choice votes, there is much less of an incentive to attack your opponent because you want his supporters to put you down for number 2.
The end result of IRV, is that the winner will have received the support of a majority of voters, not just a plurality. Regardless of who emerges from the recount as the winner, we will have a Senator who received only 42% of the vote. Jesse Ventura won with 37% of the vote. Having the support of a majority of voters will only help the winning candidate to govern more effectively, as well as encourage them to work for all of their constituents, not just their base.
These are all good reasons to give IRV a try, in fact they were all issues that appeared in this election cycle. It can be argued that Bob Anderson cost the DFL a house seat. It's certainly conceivable that Tinklenberg could have won that race with IRV. We suffered through one of the most vicious Senate campaigns the state has seen, not to mention all the Madia/Paulson and later Bachmann/Tinklenberg ads. It was a truly vile election season. And all of those races, the Senate, CD6 and CD3 resulted in a plurality winner.
After this election cycle, IRV looks better and better.
I'll end on this. One of the first points Joe made in his post was:
Why would we want to give people any reason to consider a candidate from a party other than our own?
To that I say; are we so unsure of our ideas that we think people will run from the DFL if given another choice? |
