Reality: IRV significantly increases voter participation.

IRV has the immediate and desirable affect of increasing voter participation when it replaces two-round runoff systems with single elections.

 In San Francisco, the increase in effective voter participation has been significant, due to the elimination of low turnout runoffs. Under the former runoff system, the November voters would narrow the field and then a much smaller number of voters would return in December to make the final decision. Under IRV, all voters help determine the winners in the decisive November election. With much greater participation in the November elections, this means that more voters participated in the final round of the IRV election than in the December runoff. For example, the runoff turnout in 2000 ranged from 53 to 64 percent of the November turnout. In 2004, the final round of IRV turnout ranged from 75 to 90 percent of first round turnout, meaning winning candidates received more votes under IRV than the former runoff system (http://www.fairvote.org/sf/SF_EvaluationRCVsuccess.pdf)

As an example in one Supervisory District: The last time a December runoff was conducted in this race in 2000, voter turnout in the December election was 59 percent of the turnout in the general election a month earlier. Under the first IRV contest in this District in 2006, 88 percent of the people who voted in that race particpated in the final and decisive round.

And, the most dramatic rise in participation has been in predominantly ethnic minority neighborhoods. Before IRV, San Francisco’s most diverse neighborhoods had the lowest turnout rates in the runoffs. Under IRV, voter participation in the city’s six most socio-economically diverse neighborhoods has increased the most dramatically--by up to 300 percent in some districts.

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In Burlington (VT), both the 2006 and 2009 mayoral IRV elections saw both higher turnout than the two previous non-IRV mayoral elections as well as significantly higher effective voter participation rates.  Burlington uses IRV for its mayoral elections and eliminates the need for a separate runoff if no candidate receives sufficient (40 percent) first-choice votes. In the 2009 election, roughly 7 percent of voters did not rank either of the two finalists and, thus, effectively “sat out” the final round of the “instant” runoff in the mayor’s race. This means that the effective participation rate in the election was 93.3 percent of voters in the final round. This compares to a drop off of nearly 50 percent of voters that went to a runoff a few weeks later to decide the outcome in the Ward 7 council race as IRV is only used for mayoral contests.

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In Aspen (CO), a record 2,544 voters turned out for the first-time use of IRV elections in 2009, electing winners in mayoral and council races in a single decisive election. In this race, 95.5 percent of voters cast a vote in the final round of the IRV election  This 4.5 percent fall-off from the initial round compares to a fall-off rate of 56 percent in the 2005 runoff election, before IRV was adopted. This year, just 42 percent of general election voters retruned for the runoff in one of the city council races, which are not conducted using IRV.

Aspen began using separate runoffs in 2001 to ensure majority winner elections but, like in other cities with runoffs, the city experienced expensive and low turnout runoffs and switched to IRV for the mayoral elections. Under the consolidated runoff system, a significantly more voters help elect the city’s representatives.

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The same is true, but in reverse, for municipal top-two primary systems like those used in Pierce County, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Voter participation is very low and unrepresentative in primary elections (as low as 5 to 7 percent in Saint Paul) in comparison to the general election. IRV allows the greatest and most diverse number of voters to choose among the greatest number of candidates in the general election.

In Pierce County (WA), a full 96 percent of voters had their vote counted in the final round of the 2008 County Executive race, and 90 percent of voters had their vote counted in the County Council race.  Compare these participation rates to the 23.4 percent of voters who turned out in the recent 2009 primary elections for county races that are not yet covered under IRV.

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The reason for the low turnout primaries? Because there's almost no attention paid to them–-the media hardly cover them, there's no public notice and candidates tend to only target "regular" primary voters. So the vast majority of voters aren’t even aware a primary election is underway. Primary voters are not representative of the larger community, especially communities of color who are disproportionately underrepresented in primaries.  Candidates who can't mobilize a base of new supporters during a low turnout primary have a difficult time making it through this step in the process.

Bottom line: Significantely more voters participate in November general elections and, under IRV, more voters elect the winners.