At this summer’s convention, most Colorado Leaguers will be focused – appropriately enough – on gaining LWVUS concurrence with our new state position on Election Security. However, we wanted to let you know that our very own local LWVBC will also be co-sponsoring two caucuses on voting methods.
We are happy to co-sponsor caucuses on different voting methods because, from our position statement, the “League supports gaining on-the-ground experience with alternative voting methods.” We want to educate ourselves and others about any voting method that we have reason to think is better than the traditional plurality methods.
The caucus topics and co-sponsors so far are listed below:
- “Can Your League Improve Democracy by Working for Approval or STAR Voting?” Approval Voting has been adopted by St Louis and Fargo, and a campaign is collecting signatures to get on the ballot in Seattle. STAR Voting has been on the ballot in Lane County, Oregon. Caucus co-sponsors include LWV Metro St Louis and LWV Red River Valley (includes Fargo).
- “Advocating for Ranked Choice Voting in Municipal Elections” where RCV refers to both instant-runoff voting/IRV and single transferable vote/STV/proportional RCV. (If the issue comes up, we will point out the problems with the Utah multi-winner form of RCV called preferential block voting.) Caucus co-sponsors include LWVME, LWVOR, and LWV Sacramento.
What’s so bad about plurality voting? Here are two problems: In single-winner contests, voters sometimes bypass their sincere favorite candidate and “vote for the lesser of two evils” to avoid vote-splitting. In multi-winner plurality (block) voting, a slate of candidates with only plurality support can win all the seats, depriving groups, who supported other slates, of representation.
Please tell LWVUS convention-goers about our caucuses and our webpage where you can find out more about the different forms of RCV, Approval, and STAR. We hope to see you in Denver in late June!