Will you support a measure to bring instant-runoff voting into the electoral process in order to increase third party participation in government while at the same time avoiding the so-called third party "spoiler" scenario, thus advancing the democratic process as a whole in the United States?

Will you support a measure to bring instant-runoff voting into the electoral process in order to increase third party participation in government while at the same time avoiding the so-called third party "spoiler" scenario, thus advancing the democratic process as a whole in the United States?
Asked by: Caleb Brown from Los Angeles, CA

Asked of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on May 30th, 2008

Categories: Money & Politics. Tags: democracy · Election · Spoiler · Third Party · Two Party System.

Answer from: U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT)

One of the problems you have if your goals is democracy is usually runoffs, the history of runoffs, is they produce less people voting in a runoff elections than we’re voting in a regular election. So that people have won runoffs getting fewer votes than they had coming second in a regular election. So if your goal is actually expanding the so called democratic process, runoff elections both in the United States and France have not demonstrated they actually do that. You got to come up with a better way than that.

Answered on Aug 7th, 2008