Monday, July 25, 2005
Instant Run Off Voting
The flash video that walks you through instant run off voting is particularly suited for something like IRV, which confuses some people and which some people make up their own rules for, and then say they don't like it. I think that it could be a little clearer, and I hope it is accessible to those with disabilities.
It could benefit with a few pretend races - letting people mark their own ballots and showing how potential votes could be allocated. One of the big problems I see is it uses percents, which can confuse a lot of people. Imagine those without good math skills (people particularly have weakness dealing with percents) trying to solve this word problem:
Having some practice elections would help a lot of people out, because then they would be better advocates for IRV since they can explain it. That's the biggest question I've met when I talk about instant run off voting, is potential election questions, and people want to do it out on paper. If citizen advocates know how to do it out on paper (though this shouldn't be the focus!) they are more confident and can convince other people, too!
It could benefit with a few pretend races - letting people mark their own ballots and showing how potential votes could be allocated. One of the big problems I see is it uses percents, which can confuse a lot of people. Imagine those without good math skills (people particularly have weakness dealing with percents) trying to solve this word problem:
Gore got 48% of the vote and Bush got 49.5% of the votes. If Nader got 2.5% of the vote, and 60% of the votes he got went to Gore while 40% when to Bush, who won the election?And people are afraid of what they can't figure out. From my experience teaching general math to adults, I can tell you that people can get creative with the above type of problem.
Having some practice elections would help a lot of people out, because then they would be better advocates for IRV since they can explain it. That's the biggest question I've met when I talk about instant run off voting, is potential election questions, and people want to do it out on paper. If citizen advocates know how to do it out on paper (though this shouldn't be the focus!) they are more confident and can convince other people, too!
