Support the open primary initiative in California, since it would produce more moderate, pragmatic candidates (narrowing the ideological extremes in Sacramento and reducing wasteful gridlock) and help independents.
Here's a good analysis of the flaws of instant run-off voting (IRV), which some suggest as an alternative to the open primary initiative.
Trying to please everyone would likely end up pleasing no one.
Among the numerous flaws to IRV noted in this paper:
- IRV does not solve spoiler problem, except in rare instances.
- Requires centralized vote counting procedures at the state-level:
- Cannot be implemented without modification to the ballots or to the optical scan
machines or their software
- Encourages the use of complex voting systems
- Confuses voters more than plurality voting, and may be more confusing to voters.
- Confusing, complex, and time-consuming to implement and to count.
- Makes post election data and exit poll analysis more difficult to perform
- Difficult and time-consuming to manually count
- Difficult and inefficient to manually audit
- Entrenches the two-major-political party system: IRV has entrenched the two-party political system wherever it has been tried
- Ranking a voter’s first-choice candidate LAST could cause that candidate to WIN as
opposed to ranking the first-choice candidate FIRST, which could result in that
candidate LOSING!
- Delivers other unreasonable outcomes. For instance, according to Warren Smithxxvii
a. IRV is more likely to lead to ties and near-ties,
b. IRV can select a winner who is the pair-wise "lose to everybody except one" loser
, and
c. IRV favors extremists over centrists
- Not all voters’ ballots are treated equally
- Increases the potential for undetectable vote fraud and erroneous vote counts.
- Violates many election fairness principles
- Unstable and can be delicately sensitive to noise in the rankings.
The Post Partisan