The League of Women Voters of Great Bend and the Women for Kansas of Barton County will team up Sunday, July 16, for an informational program on “alternative election methods,” LWV President Janice Walker told the Great Bend City Council Monday night, inviting the members to attend the session.
The Zoom event is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, July 16, at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center, 592 NE K-156. The PowerPoint presentation will take approximately 45 minutes.
She also plans to invite the Barton County Commission and local school boards. The general public is also welcomed to attend. “Election methods can influence who runs, who wins and whose votes matter,” said Walker, who belongs to the state LWV Board. “Some cities and states are examining and using different voting methods for a more representative democracy.”
“The (Kansas) league is halfway into a two-year study of election administration and is studying alternative voting methods,” she said. The program is based on this early research.
“We will practice some of these voting methods during the presentation as we meet as a group,” she said. “The pros and cons of each method will be examined,” and participants are encouraged to bring their electronic devices such as laptops, cell phones.
The election methods to be discussed include (see related sidebar for an explanation of each):
• Instant runoff voting as is used in Alaska.
• Single transferable vote as used in Cambridge, Mass.
• Ranked choice voting.
• Proportional representation.
• Single winner plurality (most used and is what is used locally).
“We’re both a nonpartisan group,” Walker said of the league and W4KS, noting she is working with W4KS Director Pam Martin. “That means we don’t encourage people to vote for anyone just to vote. You can belong to whatever party you want to, but we do want people to understand the issues and that’s part of the league’s drive is voting and understanding the issues.”
Education of the voting public is important to increase voter turnout and to increase voter confidence, she said.
Below is an explanation of the different electoral methods up for discussion during a joint League of Women Voters of Great Bend and the Women for Kansas of Barton County presentation on Sunday, July 16, at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center:
• Instant runoff voting (IRV) as is used in Alaska.
This is a type of ranked preferential voting. It uses a majority voting rule in single-member districts in which there are more than two candidates.
Voters in IRV elections rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially counted to establish the number of votes for each candidate.
If a candidate has more than half of the first-choice votes, that candidate wins. If not, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the voters who selected that candidate as their first choice have their votes added to the total of the candidate who was their next choice.
That process continues until one candidate has more than half of the votes, and that person is declared the winner.
• Single transferable vote (STV) as used in Cambridge, Mass.
This is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes.
This means their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running.
• Ranked choice voting (RCV).
This is a system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner.
If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, and counting the next-preference choice indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes.
The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.
• Proportional representation.
This refers to a system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (political parties) among voters.
The essence of such systems is that all votes cast contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone – not just a bare plurality or the majority – and that the system produces mixed, balanced representation reflecting how votes are cast.
In other words, each representative in an assembly is elected by a roughly equal number of voters. In the common case of electoral systems that only allow a choice of parties, the seats are allocated in proportion to the vote share each party receives.
• Single winner plurality (most used and is what is used locally).
In single-winner plurality voting, each voter is allowed to vote for only one candidate, and the winner of the election is the candidate who represents a plurality of voters or, in other words, received the majority of votes.
