Does Kerry support the notion of runoff elections?

I ask this because I heard Howard Dean talk about this Sunday when he was here in Salt Lake City. He supports runoff elections, as does the Green Party. Anyone know where John Kerry officially stands on this issue? Has he released anything? Or has he even talked about it?

Thanks.

Since Kerry is a member (in the best possible standing now) of one of the two parties I doubt that he supports run-off voting to any great degree.

Although I could be wrong.

Well thanks anyway.


Anyone else?

which is why third parties should be backing something like condorcet voting.

Since there is no establishment in the constitution for establishing run off elections for federally elected seats, you could not amend the constituion to allow it, but would have to call for a constitutional convention for a re-write of the constitution in order to do it. The way the constitution is set up, you can only amend, that is add things that were not defined in the body of the constitution, such as term limits, but you cannot change the basic rules set up for electing senators, congressmen, or presidents by amending the constituion. Terms limits are different, as the cnstitution does define the number of years a president is elected for, and the means of selecting a president, and all that the amendment does is add a condition to the office of president and the number of terms served. But if one were to try to amend the constitution to lengthen the number of years each president is elected for, from four to six, a change to the constitution would be necessary. as the years each office is held for is embedded in the constitution itself. Since the conditions for running for federal offices is set in the constitution, and the terms for that are set for winning, a change that required run offs could not be created by an amendment, since the constituion sets clearly defined rules for election to such offices. Partys like the Green Party have argues for run off elections, but they cannot be taken into consideration given the means that the constitution has established for elections. The founding fathers purposely set the bar high for being elected in order to avoid the sort of problems inherent in parliamentary styles of government, in order to be able to form longer lasting, stable governments over a longer period of time, without the need to form coalition government and to prevent very small parties and groups of people to hold larger groups of people representing larger groups of voters from holding that majority hostage to its demands before the larger groups can pass legislation or make decisions. There seems to be a coninual battle between states who try to get election laws requiring run off elections to be run in their states for federal offices (they try to tag on run off clauses on elction laws they are establishing for locally elected officials, but hit problems regarding calling for run offs for the presidency, who is not selected by any one state, but nationally) While laws regarding how elections are ceded to the states, the conditions for election of federal officials are mentioned in the consitution and thus the ability to make this change is not given to the states (only things that have been left out of the federal constitution can be taken up by the states) This is one of those fuzzy areas of shared powers. At the presidential level, this becomes extremely difficult, becasue in some states a candidate may pull 80 percent of the vote, but in another state, no one candidate may pull more than 50 percent. Senate and House positions are a little easier to deal with, but there is still the problem of co-ordinating the U.S. constitution rules regarding elections, and the states. At the federal level, the whole thing is subject to the rules of amending the constitution, or writing a new one. And the issue of differnt states setting different rules for essentially federally controlled positions. Some states have run off situations, like the 2000 elections in Louisiana, but they have caused more problems than they solved. Since the presidency is selected nationally, and the constitution has pretty much established that whoever gets the most votes, wins, this is an area that would be rather difficult, to change.

So legally, Kerry, as a lawyer, would likely oppose run offs for federally elected positions, as it does not meet the terms set in the constitution for doing so. Even amneding the consitution was purposefully made a difficult process in order to prevent too frequent changes to the constitution.

State constitutions, for the most part have established different methods of changing the rules embodied in the text of the constitution.

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how Senators were elected. They did not used to be elected by popular vote and it was an amendment that changed it.

The Twelfth Amendment replaced the original system where elctors cast two votes with the winner becoming President and the runner up VP after the 1800 election resulted in a tie between Jefferson and Burr.

Runoff elections happen all the time when a candidate does not have the required % of votes to win. IIRC, Louisiana had one recently for a congressional seat (sorry, I don't remember the candidates' names).

Instant runoff voting (IRV), OTOH, simplifies the voting process for races where there are multiple candidates and the winner needs over 50%. In Minnesota, the Kucinich caucuses in at least two congressional district conventions and the state convention used IRV to elect its delegates for the national convention. AFAIK this was the first time in the history of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party that IRV was ever used for this purpose.

The main reason we used it was because DK supports IRV, and it's part of his platform. Dean has also said he supports IRV, as well.

IRV was also proposed for a special election for a city council seat in Roseville, MN, a suburb of St Paul, MN. However, it was shot down by our GOP governor, who said IRV violated the "one person, one vote" rule in our state constitution. Lame excuse, IMHO.

Legislation has been introduced to adopt instant runoff voting in every session of the Vermont legislature since 1998.

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/vt2003/index.html

Do you know?

I'm for IRV but haven't seen a Kerry position on it, for or against.

Have you read "Fixing Elections" by Steven Hill? If not, I'd highly recommend it.

http://www.fixingelections.com/

Kerry's views on this is irrelevent.

but as busy as he is I never heard back. So I dunno what he thinks of ranked voting.