Judge upholds instant runoff voting in Minneapolis

[AllHereTruth]

Source: MPR

Minneapolis — The city of Minneapolis has cleared a major hurdle on its way to using instant runoff voting for city elections this fall. A Hennepin County judge has rejected a lawsuit seeking to halt the process.

The ruling comes in the midst of a lengthy recount and court case involving the U.S. Senate race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, who holds a 225-vote lead.

Backers of IRV, which eliminates primary elections and allows voters to rank candidates for office in order of preference, have said the recount may have been avoided under their system of voting.

In 2006, Minneapolis voters approved the use of IRV by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, 65 percent to 35 percent. The Minnesota Voter's Alliance sued in an attempt to halt IRV from being used in Minneapolis elections, arguing that it's an impractical system that attracts large fields of candidates, which in turn makes it harder for third party candidates to get recognition.

Read more: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/01/14/irv_ruling/

[NewsDrunk]

1. It's about time

We need to try alternate forms of voting in this country. Too many of our elections are ending in the courtroom. We should at least act like a properly representative republic.

[Political_Junkie]

2. Sure hope this catches on!

K & R

[merwin]

3. It attracts too many candidates?

If everyone who was on the ballot in the Primary elections were on an instant runoff general election, how would that cause any more confusion than a the primary ballot?

[Bjorn Against]

4. The Minnesota Voters Alliance is a Republican front group.

Check out their Board of Directors and you will see it includes Mary Kiffmeyer, who is a very partisan Republican former Secretary of State. If you read what they want to do it has nothing to do with protecting third parties (in fact IRV would greatly benefit third parties which is why third parties have been instrumental in pushing the system in this state), rather they want to make voting more difficult.

[Ken Burch]

5. Just did

They want to require photo ID for voting(which of course makes it harder for the poor and the elderly to vote)
They want to make municipal elections partisan again in St. Paul(I assume this is because they think the GOP would do better in local voting there than it once did). They're against IRV and they want judges to be elected(which would mean that sentencing would be based on what will get the judges reelected, rather than on the merits of the case.