Instant Runoff Voting
Campaign for the Local Option

Alliance for Democracy - Portland Chapter
www.afd-pdx.org

All candidates for a office are listed on the ballot. The voter is asked to rank the candidates in order of preference:

In this example, the voter's first choice is the Green Party candidate followed by the Democrat and then followed by the Liberal Party candidate. This voter does not want either the Republican or the Libertarian. Note that the voter does not need to rank the candidates and could have voted for just a single candidate or could have ranked just two candidates.

All the votes for each candidate are tallied and the candidate, assuming that no one has a majority of the votes, with the least number of votes is eliminated. In our example, lets say that is the Libertarian candidate. Our above voter did not rank the Libertarian, so this ballot is not affected. Those who did choose the Libertarian will have their votes moved from their first choice to their second choice and the votes are tallied again.

In this next round, lets say that the Green Party candidate had the least number of votes. The Green Party candidate is eliminated and votes for that candidate are moved to those individuals voters second choice. In the example above, our voter's vote would be transferred to the Democrat.

This process continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes and is declared the winner.

Graphic Representation of the process....here
Muppets use IRV - powerpoint ...here Open Office...here
Fairvote Flash Animation...here