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v t e

Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a voting system used for single-winner elections in which voters have one vote, but can rank candidates in order of preference. In an IRV election, if no candidate receives an overall majority of first choices, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated, and ballots cast for that candidate are redistributed to the continuing candidates according to the voters' indicated preference. This process is repeated until one candidate obtains a majority (more than 50%) of those votes cast for candidates not previously eliminated. The term 'instant runoff voting' is used because this process simulates a series of run-off elections.

IRV is also referred to as alternative voting or the Alternative Vote (AV) in the United Kingdom, the preferential ballot in Canada, preferential voting in Australia, and sometimes ranked choice voting in the U.S. It is also referred to as the Hare system or Hare method, after Thomas Hare, an inventor of single transferable vote (STV) because IRV is the same as STV for a single seat election.

At a national level IRV is used to elect the Australian House of Representatives, the President of Ireland, the national parliament of Papua New Guinea and the Fijian House of Representatives. In the United States, it has been adopted in at least ten local jurisdictions, including three large population cities and counties during the 2006 United States general elections. In the United Kingdom, a form of IRV is used to elect the mayor of London.

IRV is used by various non-governmental organizations, including the American Political Science Association, which uses it for the election of its national president.

Terminology

Instant runoff voting has a number of other names. In the United States it is called instant runoff voting primarily because of its resemblance to runoff voting, which is also used in that country and many presidential elections around the world. It has occasionally been referred to as Ware's method, after its U.S. proponent, William Robert Ware. Writers differ as to whether or not they treat instant runoff voting as a proper noun.

When the single transferable vote (STV) system is applied to a single-winner election it becomes the same as IRV. For this reason IRV is sometimes considered to be merely a special form of STV. However, because STV was designed for multi-seat constituencies, many scholars consider it to be a separate system from IRV, and that is the convention followed in this article. IRV is usually known simply as "STV" in New Zealand and Ireland, although the term Alternative Vote is also used in those countries.

Ranked choice voting

In IRV (as well as other ranked election methods) the voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference. Under the most common ballot layout, ascending cardinal numbers are used, whereby the voter places a '1' beside their most preferred candidate, a '2' beside their second-most preferred, and so forth. In the ballot paper shown at the top-right of this page, the preferences of the voter are as follows:

Each voter casts only one vote, but during the process of counting votes, his or her vote may be redistributed and counted for the next sequential preference allocated to any remaining candidate that has not been earlier excluded from the count. The voter need not mark a rank for all of the choices.

Counting the votes

In an IRV election, every voter has one vote, but can express more than one choice in order of preference. Each ballot is initially counted as one vote according to its expressed first choice. If no candidate achieves a majority of votes (more than half of the first choices) then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated. Ballots allocated to excluded candidates are redistributed and recounted for the remaining candidates according to the expressed preference sequence marked on the ballot. If retabulation of the ballots fails to produce a candidate with a majority of votes, then the candidate with the lowest tally of votes after this round of counting is eliminated and any allocated ballots are once again redistributed and recounted in the same way, according to the voters' expressed preferential sequence marked on their ballot. This process of re-distribution of ballots allocated to excluded candidates continues until a candidate has obtained a majority of votes (more than 50% of the ballots expressing a choice among remaining candidates) in the final round of counting.

IRV with batch exclusion describes a two-round method of IRV where if no candidate receives a majority of the first round choices, all candidates but the top two are eliminated and all ballots are counted for whichever of the two runoff candidates is ranked highest on that ballot.

Example

Imagine an election in which there are three candidates: Andrew, Brian and Catherine. There are 100 voters and they vote as follows (for clarity, third preferences are omitted):

The first choices are counted, and the tallies are:

• Andrew: 39
• Brian: 19
• Catherine: 42
• Total: 100

No candidate has a majority of votes (51 votes), so Brian is eliminated as he has the fewest votes. The 2nd choices on Brian's ballots are 10 for Andrew, 5 for Catherine and 4 exhausted (no 2nd choice). The ballots become

The new top choices on each ballot are counted:

• Andrew: 49 (gained 10)
• Catherine: 47 (gained 5)
• Total: 96
• Exhausted: 4

Andrew has a majority (51% of the remaining ballots) so is declared the winner. If the voting system had been plurality, Catherine would have won since she has a higher first preference total. However, Andrew is preferred to Catherine by 49 votes to 47. Andrew is only explicitly supported by 49% of the voters. As in a traditional two-round runoff, some voters did not participate in the final round. Since the four Brian supporters didn't give their 2nd choice, it is impossible to know who their 2nd choice would have been.

Handling ties

Exact ties can happen in any election; although the odds remain very low when many votes are cast, the multiple rounds of counting used in IRV create more opportunities for a tie than there are in some other voting systems. If there is a tie for last place in the elimination process, various rules can be used to break it:

1. One candidate, from among those tied, is eliminated at random (e.g. by a coin toss).
2. In Australia the candidate, from among those tied, with the fewest votes in the previous round is eliminated. If there is still a tie those counting votes then look back to the next most recent round and then, if necessary, to further progressively earlier rounds until one candidate can be eliminated.
3. In Irish presidential elections, the candidate, from among those tied, with fewest first choices is eliminated. If this cannot break the tie, ballot-counters look forwards, first to find the tied candidate with fewest votes in the second round and then, if necessary, to the third, fourth and subsequent rounds.
4. In some private elections the method is to 'conditionally eliminate' candidates from the tie and recount to see if either (or any) can survive. Usually the full set will become eliminated in any order. However this option is not allowed in a political election because it would allow some voters to have two simultaneous votes.

In practice, before any of these methods are used, the first step is to see if a tie has any chance of actually affecting the result. If the total of all the combined votes of any grouping of the candidates with the fewest votes is fewer than the votes cast for the next weakest candidate, then all those bottom tier candidates can be eliminated simultaneously.

Ballot paper

As seen above, voters in an IRV election rank candidates on a preferential ballot. IRV systems in use in different countries vary both as to ballot design and as to whether or not voters are obliged to provide a full list of preferences. In elections such as those for the President of Ireland and the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, voters are permitted to rank as many or as few candidates as they wish. This is known in Australia as 'optional preferential voting'.

Under optional preferential voting some voters may rank only the candidates of a single party, or of their most preferred parties. A minority of voters, especially if they do not fully understand the system, may 'bullet vote', expressing only a first choice. Allowing voters to rank only as many candidates as they wish grants them greater freedom but can also lead to some voters ranking so few candidates that their vote eventually becomes 'exhausted'–that is, at a certain point during the count it can no longer be counted for a continuing candidate and therefore loses an opportunity to influence the result.

To prevent exhausted ballots, some IRV systems require or request that voters give a complete ordering of all of the candidates in an election - if a voter does not rank all candidates her ballot may be considered spoilt or an informal ballot. In Australia this variant is known as 'full preferential voting', and is used in elections for the federal House of Representatives. However, when there is a large set of candidates this requirement may prove burdensome and can lead to "donkey voting" in which, where a voter has no strong opinions about his or her lower preferences, the voter simply chooses them at random. Partly to overcome these problems, in elections to the Australian House of Representatives many parties distribute 'how-to-vote' cards (right), recommending how to allocate preferences on the ballot paper.

The common way to list candidates on a ballot paper is alphabetically or by random lot, a process whereby the order of the candidates published on the ballot paper is determined by lottery. In some cases candidates may also be grouped by party.

Any fixed ordering of candidates on the ballot paper will give some candidates an unfair advantage, because voters, consciously or otherwise, are influenced in their ordering of candidates by the order on the ballot paper. The random ordering of candidates is intended to overcome this. The most effective form is Robson Rotation, a system where the order of candidates on the paper is randomly changed for each print run of the same election's ballot papers. This means that any one ballot paper is almost certainly different from the next.

History and current use

Instant runoff voting was invented around 1870 by American architect William Robert Ware. He evidently based IRV on the single-winner outcome of the Single Transferable Vote, originally developed by Carl Andrae and Thomas Hare. The first known use of IRV in a governmental election was in 1893 in an election for the colonial government of Queensland, in Australia. The system used for this election was a special form known as the contingent vote. IRV in its true form was first used in 1908 in a State election in Western Australia.

Today IRV is used in Australia for elections to the Federal House of Representatives, and for the lower houses of all States and Territories except Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, which use STV. It is also used for the Legislative Council of Tasmania. In the Pacific, IRV is used for the Fijian House of Representatives, and Papua New Guinea has adopted it for its parliamentary elections. IRV is also used to elect the President of Ireland and for municipal elections in various places in Australia, the United States, and New Zealand.

A method similar to IRV is described in "Robert's Rules of Order" as an example of "preferential voting; however, the method differs from what is described in this article as IRV in the matter of how the majority is determined; Robert's Rules prefers actual repeated balloting until a majority is obtained, but describes preferential voting as an example to be used where repeated balloting is considered impractical, as with voting by mail.

United States

• Minneapolis, MN in November 2006 passed instant runoff voting with 65%. Implementation is scheduled for the 2009 municipal elections.
• North Carolina adopted a pilot program for instant runoff voting for certain judicial vacancies and municipal pilot programs starting in 2007. "The State Board of Elections shall closely monitor the pilot program established in this section and report its findings and recommendations to the 2007 General Assembly." The city of Cary will use IRV for mayor and city council elections in October 2007, and the city of Hendersonville will use IRV for city council elections in November 2007.
• Pierce County, WA passed instant runoff voting by 53% to 47% in November 2006 for implementation for most of its county offices in 2008.
• Takoma Park, MD adopted instant runoff voting for city council and mayoral elections in 2006 after an 84% win in a 2005 advisory ballot measure. It held its first IRV election to fill a city council vacancy in January 2007.
• Oakland, CA voters passed a measure by 69% to 31% in November 2006 to adopt IRV for its city offices.
• Burlington, VT held its first mayoral election using IRV in 2006 after voters approved it in 2005.
• San Francisco has used instant runoff voting annually to elect its Board of Supervisors and major citywide offices since 2004.
• Ferndale, MI passed instant runoff voting with 68% in 2004 pending necessary implementation.
• Berkeley, CA passed instant runoff voting with 72% in 2004 pending necessary implementation.
• Dozens of American colleges and universities use IRV, including as of November 2006 more than half of the 30 universities rated most highly by U. S. News and World Report.

Application in absentee voting

Instant runoff voting and variations have been proposed as a solution to the logistical problems of overseas voting in states with runoff provisions. In the event of a runoff, election administrators would have to print new ballots, mail them to far-flung places, and receive them again. In the short window between the first election and the runoff, there often is not enough time. With a ranked instant runoff ballot, the votes of overseas citizens can count even if their first choice does not make the runoff, all on a single ballot. Arkansas, Louisiana and South Carolina all use this form of instant runoff voting on ballots for military and overseas voters.

Similar systems

Bucklin Voting also involves ranking candidates, and proceeds in rounds, but uses a different method of treating alternative votes. If there is no majority winner in a Bucklin count, any second choices indicated by voters are added to the totals of all first choices. Bucklin was used in several states in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. In the Duluth, Minnesota implementation, the third rank votes could be for as many candidates as desired, but the first two ranks allowed votes for one candidate only.

Runoff-voting

The term instant runoff voting is derived from the name of a class of voting systems called runoff voting. In runoff voting voters do not rank candidates in order of preference on a single ballot. Instead a similar effect is achieved by using multiple rounds of voting. The simplest form of runoff voting is the two round system. Under the two round system voters vote for only one candidate but, if no candidate receives an overall majority of votes, another round of voting is held from which all but the two candidates with most votes are excluded.

Runoff voting differs from IRV in a number of ways. The two round system can produce different results due to the fact that it uses a different rule for eliminations, excluding all but two candidates after just one round, rather than gradually eliminating candidates over a series of rounds. However all forms of runoff voting differ from IRV in that voters can change their preferences as they go along, using the results of each round to influence their decision. This is not possible in IRV, as participants vote only once, and this prohibits certain forms of tactical voting which can be prevalent in 'standard' runoff voting.

A closer system to IRV is the exhaustive ballot. In this system -- one familiar to American fans of the television show American Idol -- only one candidate is eliminated after each round, and many rounds of voting are used, rather than just two. Because holding many rounds of voting on separate days is generally expensive, the exhaustive ballot is not used for large scale, public elections. Instant runoff voting is so named because it achieves a similar effect to runoff voting but it is necessary for voters to vote only once. The result can be found 'instantly' rather than after several separate votes.

Contingent vote

The contingent vote, also known as Top-two IRV, or batch-style, is the same as IRV except that all but the two candidates with most votes are eliminated after the first round; the count therefore only ever has two rounds. This differs from the 'two round' runoff voting system described above in that only one round of voting is conducted. The two rounds of counting therefore both take place after voting has finished. Two particular variants of the contingent vote differ from IRV in a further way. Under the forms of the contingent vote used in Sri Lanka, and the elections for London Mayor in the United Kingdom, voters are not permitted to rank all of the candidates, but only a certain maximum number. Under the variant used in London, called the supplementary vote, voters are only permitted to express a first and a second preference. Under the Sri Lankan form of the contingent vote voters are only permitted to rank three candidates. The supplementary vote is used for mayoral elections while the Sri Lankan contingent vote is used to elect the President of Sri Lanka.

While superficially similar to IRV these systems can produce different results. If, as occurs under all forms of the contingent vote, more than one candidate is excluded after the first count, a candidate might be eliminated who would have gone on to win the election under IRV. If voters are restricted to a maximum number of preferences then it is easier for their vote to become exhausted. This encourages voters to vote tactically, by giving at least one of their limited preferences to a candidate who is likely to win.

Conversely, a practical benefit of the 'contingent vote' counting process is expediency and confidence in the result with only two rounds. Most apparent in smaller elections, like with under 100 ballots among a dozen choices, confidence can be lost in a bottom-up elimination due to cumbersome ties on the bottom (or near ties affected by counting errors). Frequent and even multiple use of tie-breaking rules in one election will leave uncomfortable doubts over whether the winner might have changed if a recount was performed.

Practical implications

Instant runoff voting is more complex, both in terms of casting votes and counting them, than simpler systems such as 'first-past-the-post' plurality. Voters have the power to rank candidates in order of choice rather than merely write an 'x' beside a single candidate. Changing from plurality to IRV may therefore require the replacement of voting machinery, although several nations count ballot by hand.

IRV has been implemented in cities using optical scan machines, as in San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT). A hand count also is possible under IRV and is the method used in most non-American jurisdictions; however it is usually more time-consuming than a quick plurality count, and may need to occur over a number of rounds. It is nonetheless simpler than the count under some other preferential voting systems like the single transferable vote. IRV is typically less expensive than runoff voting because it is only necessary for voters to go to the polls once. For this reason it may also be less likely to induce voter fatigue.

Under IRV, unlike some other preferential systems, the record of votes cast in a particular area cannot be conveniently summarized for transfer to a central location in which they can be counted. If areas were to report the number of votes cast for each possible order of candidates where all voters were required to vote for all candidates, as in the examples above, the permutations can be very large as the number of possible orders is equal to the factorial of the number of candidates. Three candidates would produce only six combinations but five candidates would produce 120 and ten candidates 3.6 million. But the voters do not have to vote for all candidates. So three candidates actually produces 16 possible choices (i.e., abstain, A, B, C, AB, BA, AC, CA, BC, CB, ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA). This unwieldiness could prolong the counting procedure, provide more opportunities for undetected tampering than in more easily summable methods, and make recounts more costly. What happens in practice in Australia is a simplified count is sent through to the central location on the night with the actual ballot papers transported securely to the central location for the final count. In Ireland's presidential race, there are several dozen counting centers around the nation. Each center reports its totals for each candidate and receives instructions from the central office about which candidate or candidates to eliminate in the next round of counting.

Effect on parties and candidates

Unlike some other preferential voting systems, IRV puts particular value on a voter's first choice; a candidate with weak first choice support is unlikely to win even if ranked relatively well on many voters' ballots.

In Australia, the only nation with a long record of using IRV for the election of legislative bodies, IRV produces representation very similar to those produced by the plurality system, with a two party system in parliament similar to those found in many countries that use plurality. If the first preferences of Australian voters were counted on a First Past the Post basis, their elections would produce the same victors about 94% of the time.

Where preferential voting is used for the election of an assembly or council, parties and candidates often advise their supporters on how to use their lower preferences. As noted above, in Australia parties even issue 'how-to-vote' cards to the electorate before polling day, and Australia's requirement that voters must rank all candidates contributes to some voters using them. These kinds of recommendations can increase the influence of party leaderships and lead to a form of pre-election bargaining, in which smaller parties bid to have key planks of their platforms included in those of the major parties by means of 'preference deals'.

IRV is an election method designed for single seat elections. Therefore, like other single seat methods, if used to elect a council or legislature it will not produce proportional representation (PR). This means that it is likely to lead to the representation of a small number of larger parties in an assembly, rather than a proliferation of small parties. Under a parliamentary system it is more likely to produce single party governments than are PR systems, which tend to produce coalition governments. While IRV is designed to ensure that each individual candidate elected is supported by a majority of those in his or her constituency, if used to elect an assembly it does not ensure this result on a national level. As in other non-PR systems the party or coalition that wins a majority of seats will often not have the support of an overall majority of voters across the nation.

Majoritarianism and consensus

The intention of IRV is that the winning candidate will have the support of an overall majority of voters. It is often intended as an improvement on the 'First Past the Post' (plurality) voting system. Under 'First Past the Post' the candidate with most votes (a plurality) wins, even if they do not have an overall majority (more than half) of votes. IRV addresses this problem by eliminating candidates one at a time, until one has an overall majority.

However, some critics argue that the majority obtained by the winner of an IRV election is not always a genuine majority, and that it is more accurate to say that IRV will elect the majority choice among the top two frontrunners. This is because there may be a candidate who is preferred by most voters to the winner of an IRV election, but whose lack of core first choice support led to elimination early in the IRV count. Advocates of this view argue that a candidate can only claim to have majority support if they are the 'Condorcet winner'—that is, the candidate voters prefer to every other candidate when compared to them one at a time. In fact, when IRV elects a candidate other than the Condorcet winner it will always be that the majority of voters prefer the Condorcet winner to the IRV winner. Defenders argue that first and other higher preferences are more important than lower preferences, and point out that the Condorcet winner may be a candidate with 0% of first choices.

Because of the value it puts in first choice support, IRV may be less likely to elect centrist candidates than some other preferential systems, such as Condorcet's method. For this reason it can be considered a less consensual system than these alternatives. Some IRV supporters consider this a strength, because an off-center candidate, with the enthusiastic support of many voters, may be preferable to a 'mediocre' compromise candidate, while still being acceptable to a majority of voters.

IRV at times produces different results to a Condorcet count because it does not consider the lower choices of all voters, only of those whose higher choices have been eliminated, and because of its system of sequential exclusions.

Tactical voting

Instant runoff voting, like some other alternative election methods, reduces the potential for tactical voting by eliminating the spoiler effect when there are two major candidates and one or more minor candidates. Under the plurality ("first past the post") voting system, voters are encouraged to vote tactically by voting only for one of the two major candidates, because a vote for any other candidate is unlikely to affect the result. Under IRV and some other election methods, this tactic, known as Compromise, is unnecessary.

Is IRV better than other systems?

In the U.S., there is extensive debate about the merits of IRV compared to existing plurality voting and two-round systems, and also to other possible reforms. Below are some of the arguments used in the IRV debate, in comparison to existing plurality, actual runoff systems, and other voting methods.

Pros

IRV allegedly:

• reduces the spoiler effect of plurality voting, making it much less likely for a voter to go against their own preferences by voting for a third party candidate who splits the vote against them;
• encourages sincere voting and reduces the need for tactical voting;
• Compared with the two-round system:
  • uses only one ballot to attain majority support of the winner;
  • saves time for voters, and the expenses of a runoff election;
  • reduces the cost of campaigning for candidates;
  • usually increases voter turnout (might also increase turnout when compared with plurality voting, if more voters believe that their votes aren't wasted);
  • may reduce the value of negative campaigning, by encouraging candidates to seek second and third choice votes from supporters of other candidates;
• Like the two round system, it doesn't help third parties win, but it can help them gain traction with the electorate by eliminating vote splitting.

Cons

IRV allegedly:

• doesn't give voters a second chance to re-evaluate candidates as they would with a two-round runoff;
• is more work to count than plurality voting, requiring changes to vote counting procedures or voting equipment;
• takes more time to fill out a ballot than with plurality voting, if voters choose to vote more than their first choices;
• can elect a candidate without overall majority approval, if not enough voters choose to rank either of the final two candidates;
• can elect a candidate over another who would beat this candidate if they were the only two running, as in a traditional separate two-round runoff election.

Evaluation by criteria

Scholars of electoral systems often compare them using mathematically-defined voting system criteria. It is generally agreed by political scientists that, according to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, no voting system can meet all the criteria.

IRV passes the majority criterion, the later-no-harm criterion, the mutual majority criterion, the Condorcet loser criterion and, if the right tie-breaker method is used, the independence of clones criterion. IRV fails the monotonicity criterion, the consistency criterion, the Condorcet criterion, the participation criterion, reversal symmetry and the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion.

See also

• Australian electoral system
• Ballot Access News for occasional related news in the United States
• List of democracy and elections-related topics
• Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories
• Table of voting systems by nation

References

1. Australian Electoral Commission
2. Glossary: Exhaustive ballot
3. Australian Politics webpage on the effects of Preferential Voting
4. ^ John J. Bartholdi III, James B. Orlin (1991) "Single transferable vote resists strategic voting," Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 8, p. 341-354
5. ^ John R. Chamberlin (1985) "An investigation into the relative manipulability of four voting systems" Behavioral Science, vol. 30, p. 195-203

External links

Advocacy organisations

• Instant Runoff Voting at FairVote
  • History of IRV
• at New America Foundation
• Better Ballot Campaign IRV for Minneapolis (Hosted by FairVote Minnesota)
• instantrunoff.com, by the Midwest Democracy Center
• FIRV (Ferndale, Michigan for Instant Runoff Voting)
• Californians for Electoral Reform
• California IRV Coalition
• Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Florida
• Green Party (United States)
• History of Use in Ann Arbor

Opposition positions

• "The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting"
• IRV page at the Center for Range Voting
• Flaws in IRV compared to ranked pairs
• Minnesota Voters Alliance
• Straight Talk On So-Called "Instant Runoff Voting" or Why the "Cure" Is as Deadly as the "Disease"
• Instant Runnoff Voting Report Values and Risks Report by the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting
• Libertarian Reform Caucus "Anyone for a Bullet in the Foot? Instant Runoff!"

Analysis

• Nonmonotonicity in AV Article by Eivind Stensholt.
• Comparison with Condorcet Voting by Blake Cretney
• Voting methods: tutorial and essays by James Green-Armytage (for IRV, see e.g. 1 2 3 4 5)
• A Handbook of Electoral System Design from International IDEA
• Electoral Design Reference Materials from the ACE Project
• ACE Electoral Knowledge Network Expert site providing encyclopedia on Electoral Systems and Management, country by country data, a library of electoral materials, latest election news, the opportunity to submit questions to a network of electoral experts, and a forum to discuss all of the above
• Simulation Of Various Voting Models for Close Elections Article by Brian Olson.
• Preferential voting in Australia

IRV in practice

• San Francisco Department of Elections on its IRV elections
• City of Burlington, Vermont on its IRV elections
• Blog focused on implementation of IRV in Pierce County, Washington
• City of Takoma Park, Maryland on its IRV elections
• City of Cary, NC

Examples

• IRV Poll For 2008 U.S. Democratic Party Nominee at ChoiceRanker.com (formerly Indaba.org)
• IRV Poll For 2008 U.S. Democratic Party Nominee at demochoice.org
• IRV poll for U.S. President, 2004 by the Independence Party of Minnesota
• OpenSTV -- Open source software for computing IRV and STV
• Favourite Futurama Character Poll
• in Guatemala

Legislation

• Presidential Elections Act, 1993 - Republic of Ireland
• Commonwealth Electoral Act - Australia
• U.S. House Resolution 2690 - "Voter Choice Act of 2005"
• U.S. - Examples of U.S. IRV laws

Template:Electoral systems2

• Instant-runoff voting
• Single winner electoral systems
• Non-monotonic electoral systems
• Preferential electoral systems