Instant Runoff Voting for the City of San Jose:“One Election, Not Two”By Blair Bobier, Steven Hill, New America Foundation New
America Foundation June 2009...Besides San Francisco, IRV is currently being used in Burlington, Vermont; Takoma Park, Maryland; Aspen, Colorado; in a number of cities in North Carolina; for overseas voters from Arkansas, Illinois and Louisiana; and has been used for decades in Ireland and Australia, and more recently to elect the mayor of London (United Kingdom). Cambridge, Massachusetts has been using a form of IRV to elect its city council since the 1940s.
Is this just sloppy work or deliberate misleading? The New America Foundation, a DC think tank (who knows what is best for us) - is flat out misleading the public when claiming that IRV is being used in "a number of cities in North Carolina". The truth is that IRV is retreating in NC, and only one town is going to experiment with it this year. Not "a number of cities".
FairVote NC was just as bad in their attempt to mislead and paint a rosy picture of what is a harsh reality for them. IRV is on the retreat in North Carolina. The fact is, there were only two volunteers for IRV in 2007, and in 2008 there will only be one. Efforts to spread IRV have failed. Another blow to IRV was when the City of Fayetteville said NO. See Inside Politics: Council rejects instant runoff voting FayObserver.com - Jun 13, 2009
IRV advocates don't talk about Cary, North Carolina any more . The Cary Town Council made their decision on April 30th, 2009, to ditch IRV leaving Hendersonville NC as the sole guinea pig. Cary actually had to count the IRV votes in 2007, so they tried it and didn't like it. Hendersonville has not had that "interesting" experience yet. The rest of the New America Foundation's claims about IRV have been proven incorrect too. See The Truth About Instant Runoff Voting - It Does Not Work As Advertised and Here is Proof
