May 30, 2006

Instant runoff voting to be demonstrated in Eureka on June 6

"The Humboldt Voters’ Association is holding an Instant Runoff Voting demonstration election on June 6 at Eureka’s Municipal Auditorium poll site, 1120 F St.

Voters will be able to cast a ballot using the Instant Runoff Voting ranked-voting system, where voters rank the candidates in order of preference rather than simply picking one from the list.

The HVA is focusing this demonstration on the Humboldt County 4th District Supervisor race. All voters eligible to vote in the supervisors’ race can vote in the demonstration, whether or not their assigned polling place is the Municipal Auditorium.

“The Neely-Flemming-Marks race is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how IRV works,” stated HVA co-founder Scott Menzies in a news release. “With voters being able to rank the candidates from 1 to 3, we can get a clearer picture of the will of the voters and determine a clear majority winner from that information.”

Instant runoff voting renders expensive primary and runoff elections — like the June 6 election — unnecessary, supporters say.

“We hope that voters will see that Instant Runoff Voting, and ranked voting in general, is a far superior voting system to the plurality system we currently use, which often results in winners being elected with less than majority support,” HVA co-founder Mark Konkler stated in a news release."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at May 30, 2006 09:05 AM