Moving Forward After Election Day

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Tuesday’s election did not turn out nearly as well as we had hoped.

It was a tough day for Independent and Third Party candidates in nationally watched races in New York and New Jersey.

It was also a very tough day for Instant Runoff Voting.

The voters of Pierce County, Washington voted overwhelmingly to repeal Ranked Choice Voting in their municipal elections.

In a blog post, supporters of RCV in Pierce County placed the blame for the defeat squarely on the shoulders of an Elections Department that didn’t want to put forth the effort to make RCV work:

“It appears as if the Election Department’s poor implementation soured the voters on RCV to the point, they did not want to use the system any more. The Elections Department far over spent on systems implementation and blamed RCV for the high expenses. The Elections Department did not look for ways to leverage the investment in RCV software/hardware and thus ended up costing the county more money. The Elections Department did a poor job of educating the voters as to the benefits of RCV in terms of more candidates in November and eliminating the primary. The Elections Department understaffed the polls in 2008 and blamed the long lines at the polls on RCV.”

Another Instant Runoff Voting measure failed in Lowell, Massachusetts, although by a much closer margin.

There was one bright spot on Tuesday: The voters of St. Paul, Minnesota voted to implement Instant Runoff Voting.

And now, of course, opponents of IRV in St. Paul have filed what could be described as a frivolous lawsuit to overturn the will of the voters.

We here at The Free & Equal Elections Foundation are disappointed in the results in Pierce County, Washington and Massachusetts, but we are also happy that the voters of St. Paul recognize an improvement in voting when they see one.  We will be sure to keep you up to date on the status of the St. Paul lawsuit. We’ll also have much more on this past election day next week.

If this election has told us one thing, it is that we need to dig in and work even harder next year! Why not send us a donation so that this time next year, we can be celebrating the successes of Independent and Third Party candidates nationwide?

Donate to the Free & Equal Elections Foundation today, and ensure that you have a real choice on the ballot tomorrow!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 1:51 pm. It is filed under Free & Equal, IRV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.