The Vermont legislature has adjourned. The legislature did not pass any of the bills relating to Instant Runoff Voting, nor did it pass same-day voter registration, nor did it pass the bill to move the primary from September to August.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Burlington Vermont’s last mayoral election was the poster child for the flaws in Instant Runoff Voting. That was a lesson of how even in a very small election, IRV is like Russian Roulette.
See
Burlington Vermont 2009 IRV mayor election
Thwarted-majority, non-monotonicity & other failures (oops)
By Anthony Gierzynski, Wes Hamilton, & Warren D. Smith, March 2009.
http://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html
That election suffered from nearly every pathology in the book! Non monotonicity – where with instant runoff, a voter can hurt their preferred candidate by ranking them first. A spoiler effect – in this election, Kurt Wright was the spoiler. The “no show” paradox – Wright supporters who also supported Montrol would have helped him if they hadn’t shown up to vote at all. Majority failure -the candidate supported by the most voters did not win. Incumbent protection thanks to name recognition. Centrally counted votes – instant runoff opened up the election to fraud because votes were not counted where cast.