You’d think that if Barack Obama and John McCain backed something, it would dominate the political landscape.
But both have spoken out in reforming our voting system to include instant runoff voting, whereby voters rank candidates 1-2-3 rather than only voting for one candidate.
And while IRV is making some headway, as documented by the group FairVote, is it hardly as well known as it should be.
With IRV, if you prefer independent or third party candidates, you can make them your highest choices and as well as list whichever you prefer of the two major party candidates.
There are IRV polls online — for riveting questions like “what is the cutest animal” and “how would you invest $100,000” — but incredibly, none until now for the presidential election.
I’ve set up CandidateChooser.org — which features an IRV poll that lists Obama, McCain as well as the independent candidate Ralph Nader, Bob Barr (Libertarian Party), Cynthia McKinney (Green Party) and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party). These are the candidates that — according to Ballot Access News — are likely to be on enough state ballots to have a chance at winning the presidency in November.
Using IRV could give us a wealth of information about people’s preferences. I hope IRV polls will proliferate online, people can link to the one I’ve set up or set up their own, it’s all good.
In the past, I have suggested changing the wording on the presidential polls from “if the election were held today, who would you vote for” to ”
Considering all the polling and all the reporting on polling, it’s remarkable that no poll is asking people who they want to be president.
As a state Senator in Illinois during the 2002 session, Obama introduced SB 1789 which would have adopted instant runoff voting for congressional and state primary elections in Illinois and authorized IRV for local elections. McCain has said: “Instant runoff voting will lead to good government because voters will elect leaders who have the support of a majority.”
In a May 2007 Washington Post 58 percent of the public said that they would “very seriously” or “somewhat seriously” consider voting for an independent candidate for president. (Though, after all the media coverage focusing on the major party candidates, that number has dropped to about 40 percent in 2008.) A month later, Fox found that 45 percent said it would be “good” for the country to win the presidency, 25 percent said it “depends on the candidate.” The same time, Gallup found that 72 percent of respondents said that the possibility of an independent candidate winning the presidential election was “not too likely” or “not at all likely.”
Thus, at the same a strong majority have had a hunger for an independent candidate, a strong majority doesn’t think it could happen.
Moreover, the heads of the Commission on Presidential Debates have basically asked for the “who do you want to be president question” to be asked. When some suggested that one criterion for inclusion in presidential debates should be whether a majority of people in the U.S. wanted them to be in the debates, the heads of the CPD rejected the effort.
CPD director and former Republican senator Alan Simpson said: “The issue is who do you want to be president. It’s not who do you want to do a dress rehearsal and see who can be the cutest at the debate.” Similarly, Paul Kirk, the co-chair of the CPD and former head of the Democratic National Committee, said: “It’s a matter of entertainment vs. the serious question of who would you prefer to be president of the United States. Otherwise you get into ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have X, Y, Z?'” So for the Commission on Presidential Debates to fulfill the very criteria it has set for itself, the question “Who do you want to be president” needs to be asked as the basis for inclusion in any debates that group sponsors.
Sam Husseini is the founder of VotePact.org — which encourages people from either side of the two party divide to pair up and vote for the independent candidates they most prefer.