St. Paul City Council threatens to block IRV vote

• My parents had a RV when I was a kid. But I never heard of an I-RV. Is that like an internet thing, or something?

• IRV is one of those classic boutique issues unconnected to people's lives that make liberals look bad. This whole thing is driven by flakes in South Minneapolis and West St. Paul who are convinced that the one-person-one-vote system unfairly disadvantages their favorite fringe candidates, and if only voters were allowed to rank their choices instead, Ralph Nader would be President, Peter Hutchinson would be Governor, etc. That <i>must</i> be why their candidates never win anything! Of course, Jesse Ventura won without IRV, Paul Wellstone and Keith Ellison won DFL primaries without IRV, R.T. Rybak placed 1st in the 2001 mayoral primary without IRV, but, uh, *mumble, mumble, cough, cough*...yeah, unconventional candidates totally can't catch a break in Minnesota. BTW, in areas that use IRV -- Australia and London, England, for example -- voters don't behave much differently than they did in the old systems. 3rd-party challengers still do poorly in the 1st preference votes, and legislative bodies elected by IRV are still dominated by the two major parties. To the extent that 3rd and 4th parties hold any seats in those countries, it's in legislative bodies elected by proportional representation. And even there, those parties mostly score in the single digits.

• What electoral crisis would IRV solve? Are people being denied the right to vote? Are candidates being denied the opportunity to get their message out? Why in the hell would we want to make the electoral process more obtuse, convoluted, or open to legal challenge? The only thing this does is add uninformed legitimacy to the Sharon Andersons and Dick Fransons of the world.

• St. Paul should wait and see what happens in Minneapolis. There is no sense in spending time and money on something that is currently being challenged in Court. This, by the way, was predicted to happen by a staff attorney in Minneapolis.

• The St. Paul city council has every reason to let the voters make the decision here -- it's a conflict of interest for it to suggest that the voters should be denied the right to weigh all the arguments and make up their own mind.

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