Editorial 9.10, October 2007, by Deirdre Helfferich

Fairbanks Needs IRVing
October 12, 2007

Northeast of the People’s Republic of Ester, the metropolis of Fairbanks, in its recent municipal election for mayor, demonstrated quite clearly why instant runoff voting (IRV) is a good idea here in the not-quite-yet-frozen North: elections that rely on plurality voting may have to be held twice. That can get expensive, and Fairbanks has been having to tighten its metaphorical budget belt lately; the expense of an additional election isn’t helpful to the city’s finances.

Plurality voting means that a person running for office can win an election without actually having a majority of the votes—the candidate might get more votes than anybody else, but still, as in this case, not have 50 percent +1 vote, i.e., a true majority of the votes. Neither Terry Strle nor Vivian Stiver got even 40 percent of the vote, which is the threshold that must be met to win in the Fairbanks mayoral race. (This threshold is better than none, but even so, 60 percent of the votes can still be cast for somebody other than the winning candidate.)

There are other problems caused by this situation, as Stefan Milkowski pointed out in his October 3 article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

A runoff race would cause a glitch in city government by delaying the swearing in of a new city mayor. The current city mayor, Steve Thompson, was elected Tuesday to the Fairbanks City Council, but can’t hold both seats at once. A runoff would force him to stay on as mayor and leave his City Council seat temporarily vacant, he said.¹

The absentee and question ballots have now been counted, and a special runoff election is in the works. This will cost the city many, many thousands of dollars, which could have been used for something else. Runoff elections tend to have low turnout, too, further reducing the actual percentage of voters selecting the holder of the city’s highest office.

Doesn’t look very sensible, does it? Of course, it has to be done, or Fairbanks will have no mayor (or will be short a councilman, with an unelected officer heading its city government).

Instant runoff voting would get rid of the extra election problem and allow for a true majority of the electorate to choose their leader. It’s a pretty simple system:² voters rank their choices in the order of their preference. If (and only if) no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the first-place votes, the instant runoff kicks in: the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and those voters’ second-place choices for their vote are assigned to the other candidates. As the Sante Fe New Mexican said in its September 26 editorial,

The process goes on until one candidate gets a majority. It’s done by computer, so it really is an instant runoff. It’s working in other places—and, as we’ve noted, voters are spared the damage that “spoiler” candidates and assorted whackos can do to the process, while allowing every dog his day.³

This bears thinking about for future Fairbanks elections (which are not, it must be admitted, free of “whackos”). It’s too late to do anything this time, but Fairbanksans could avoid the colossal waste of time and money that runoff elections cause, and build them into the process cheaply while at the same time making the results better reflect the voters’ preferences. A measure implementing this system could be put on the ballot next year, and Fairbanksans could save themselves a lot of trouble and expense in future elections by passing it.

This idea has been proposed before: back in 2002, Chip Wagoner (a Republican) and Jim Sykes (Green) wrote an opinion piece on this that appeared in the News-Miner.⁴ They wrote in support of Alaska Ballot Measure 1, which would have implemented IRV in most state elections and would have given municipalities the option to use it. The measure failed, and Fairbanks hasn’t enacted its own IRV system since then, so now the city has to shell out the mackerels to find out who its mayor is. So the state, and Fairbanks, missed that chance to improve its democratic institutions and save a lot of money to boot. (Interestingly, the News-Miner itself came out against⁵ Measure 1.)

Cities across the country are using or implementing IRV systems now. Why not the Golden Heart?

Notes:

1. “Mayoral runoff? Strle, Stiver, Seeliger garner most votes,” Stefan Milkowski, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 10/3/07. http://newsminer.com/2007/10/03/9179. Accessed 10/10/07.

2. The Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) has good detailed explanations of how IRV works, plus a nifty little animation about it, and a lot of archived news and opinion pieces.

3. “Charter changes: some good, some, uh…” The New Mexican, 9/26/07. http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Opinion/Our_view_Charter_changes_ _Some_good_ _some__uh_ _ _ _. Accessed 10/10/07.

4. “Measure 1 gives voters more choice,” Chip Wagoner and Jim Sykes, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 8/21/07.

5. “Vote no on Ballot Measure 1,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 8/26/02.

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