New York City is to use Alternative Voting (what U.S.-ians call Instant Run-off Voting) for city elections starting in 2021 - the election of mayors and election of city councillors, held in single-member districts.
This will be a major advance for Preferential Voting in North America.
On Nov. 5, 2019, 510,000 voted in favour of the change, while less than 200,000 voted to retain the First past the post system. (This info was found in the "Ballotpedia Local Ballot Measures" website.)
Years ago, NYC Council in 1936 adopted Single Transferable Vote after a positive plebiscite vote. STV was challenged though. And its retention put up for a vote.
The first two plebiscites held on its abandonment saw majority vote for its retention.
Unfortunately, a plebiscite in 1947 led to a reversion to First Past The Post. This is said to be a McCarthyite reaction to the election under STV of two Communist Party councillors to the 26-member council. Not a majority or even enough to force through measures that were against the will of the others, but enough to give voice to those of that persuasion. Apparently even that was seen by many as too much democracy.
Under the AV system to come into use in 2021, to lighten load for voters, each NYC voter's preferences will be arbitrarily limited to five.
An STV newsletter points out that this is a great improvement of the limit of one previously used under FPTP, i.e no transfers at all. It will be similar to the Papua-New Guinea system, which has an arbitrary limit of three preference indications. (Source of this info is "Plebiscite could help towards restoring New York City’s use of PR-STV voting," Quota Notes, Newsletter of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia.)
The 2018 London, Ontario city election was the most recent use of AV in Canada. It also allowed a limit of three preferences. This was the first government election in Canada to use preferential balloting since Calgary's last STV election in 1971.
In London's 2018 election, as mentioned in another blog, with 15 candidates running for mayor, many votes - more than 20 percent of the total - were exhausted by the time one candidate accumulated a majority of the votes still in play to secure the mayor's seat. This was likely caused by the limit of three choices. Thirteen eliminations occurred, to thin the field of candidates to only two. In each one, about a third or quarter of the votes were exhausted, rising to the one half level in the 13th round after many votes had used up their three preferences.
To make things worse, when the field thinned down to two, 21,000 votes were exhausted and only 13,000 separated the two remaining candidates. (from "City of London, Ontario, Municipal Election - certified results" website)
It must be difficult to know, with that many exhausted votes, whether the correct person won the election.
Let's hope that the five preferences allowed on each ballot in future NYC elections will be enough to avoid such mass wastage and ambiguity.
Thanks for reading.
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