IRV, and the 2006 Mesplay Mystery

History repeats itself in weird ways; the California Green primary for US Senate has a final tally with a winner who received less than 50% of the vote. Sound Familiar?

Green

Todd Chretien 9,964 45.5%
Tian Harter 8,245 37.6%
Kent P. Mesplay 3,724 16.9 %

Fascinating situation. Todd Chretien did not win with a majority, although he clearly has a plurality; he will win the nomination by virtue of having had the most votes, no matter how few that might be. What would the result have been under IRV?

Just 1,719 votes separate the winner and second place; more than twice that many votes went to Kent Mesplay.

Of course, we can never know how IRV would have played out, given that the state lacks a Ranked Choice voting option. But there are some interesting numbers.

The magic point of irreversible-change-of-the-outcome would occur if slightly less than 3/4 of the Mesplay voters had cast an IRV ballot for Tian Harter as a second choice. In that case, there would have been a 51% majority for Harter. (Just 2,722 votes or about 73.1% of the Mesplay vote .)

Now this analysis is simplistic. For example if the second-choice Mesplay votes split a single vote or percentage point the other way, then Chretian would have the 51% majority. Or if all the Mesplay votes went to Harter, then Harter wins with a nearly 55% majority. Or if all of the Mesplay voters put Chretian in the number two spot, the results would have been a 63% majority win versus a 45% plurality for Chretian. And don't get me started on the permutations with No Other Candidate as a choice. The possible other outcomes are, and must remain a mystery.

Still, it would be unsettling to have won an election knowing that 55% of the voters did not vote for you, and that one will never know the ultimate voter preference for a Green nominee for this office.

Note: Under no circumstance am I suggesting a "spoiler" factor; the only spoiler is the candidate who should run but doesn't, or the voter who won't vote. But I am suggesting that this kind of result should redouble Green efforts to support and implement simple Ranked Choice Voting.

By the way, the mystery and the urgency for IRV only deepens when one looks at the state election map. On a county by county basis, Harter carried more counties and real estate then Chretian. The strength of the "conservative" (as in energy conservation) Harter vote was rural counties; the social liberal Chretian played better in the denser populated urban counties.

So, whatever is a voter to do? Push for IRV, starting with local and non-partisan elections! These races seem likely to be helpful in making voters aware of IRV, and stand a chance of displaying it's virtues to voters beyond those already on board.

UPDATE: Comments in response to an earlier (partly garbled) version of this post on the State Party email-list point out that the GPCA is crafting a GP Election Code section which calls for IRV in our primaries as soon as appropriate voting machines are available in California.