By at least one important measure, Election Day’s statewide experiment with instant-runoff voting was a success. North Carolinians voted in large numbers in the race among 13 candidates for one seat on the state Court of Appeals.
When Judge Jim Wynn resigned from the court this summer to take a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals, a recent state law kicked in. Rather than conduct a general election and then a possible runoff after, the state used the new law to implement an instant runoff. For voters in all but a few communities, this meant a new form of voting. With 13 candidates on the ballot, voters had their choice of three. It was apparently a more difficult task to explain than to actually put into practice, and nearly two million voters ranked their three selections in order of preference.
There were considerable concerns that voters would not vote in this contest, that they would avoid the mad scramble among 13 candidates who were, with only a few exceptions, mostly unknown to the general public. That concern proved unnecessary.
After Election Day, a national voting-rights group quickly counted the total number of votes and found that the race in question drew the second largest number of voters of all the judicial races. Thirteen candidates would have to have a lot more relatives out hustling votes for them than would the traditional two candidates in a general election race. Voters might have enjoyed the novelty of the process, too.
The process isn’t complete, and challenges lie ahead. First, the votes must be accurately counted. This will be time consuming in counties that did not have equipment adaptable to this process. Then the state might have to weather lawsuits. Critics of instant-runoff voting have been saying all along that the process is illegal and that it is certain to raise a lawsuit from at least one of the 12 defeated candidates — all lawyers, no less.
North Carolinians voted in considerable numbers in this race. But whether the instant runoff achieves a second goal, saving money, is yet to be seen. The process of counting the votes will take county election boards a great deal of time. And when the cost of that time is calculated, we’ll see if this process turned out to be more or less expensive.
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