The price is too high for the benefit

It’s very accurate to say that IRV will cost more than the runoff system we use now. Other states have examined IRV and have found that it costs way too much to implement it.

It’s too simplistic to say that a single IRV election costs less than a regular election and a second runoff. IRV does does more for software, but we can’t be sure how much that cost will be – there is no software yet written for our election equipment. We might need to get new hardware to run it on. Election administrators and poll workers have to be trained on the more complex IRV method. Ballots with three columns for each candidate cost more than those with only one column, etc.

If you use the $3.08 cost per registered voter for implementation and 48 cents per registered voter for voter education that the MD legislature came up with in their 2008 IRV bill (one of three they rejected due to high cost) and apply those costs to 5.8 million NC voters, it would cost almost $18 million to implement IRV and $2.8 million for voter education. You have to pay for IRV each and every year because you never know if you will need it. Compare that to $3.5 to $5 million for a statewide runoff that you only pay when you need it – and we end up needing it once every 4 years.

Over time – IRV ends up costing a lot more than traditional runoff elections. If we implemented IRV this year, by the election year of 2040, IRV would cost taxpayers $107 million vs $45 million for traditional runoffs.

We could do better. Lowering the threshold might work.

But in addition to being more expensive, IRV is also more complex than traditional elections to count. There is no software certified to tabulate IRV in our state, so IRV elections must be handcounted. At the pace set by the Wake BOE in October 2007 to sort/stack and count a little over 3000 Cary ballots (6 hours including set up time), and starting the day after the elections were certified by the SBOE on May 22, the Wake BOE would have taken 7.5 weeks to tabulate 150,000 Democratic ballots cast in Wake County to settle the Labor Commissioner’s race using IRV. That means they would have been doing nothing but counting IRV ballots until sometime in the middle of July – three weeks after the June 24 race. And that is assuming that the count was accurate the first time – “audits” of IRV races have to essentially recount the entire race. And having other IRV races would only take more time.

And there is some doubt if we could have even used IRV in the May primary election. A memo from the State Board of Elections dated March 6, 2007 recommends not using IRV in the May 2008 primary election because IRV could pose a risk. Before leaders consider extending the pilot, they should get the SBOE to tell them about the specific risk or risks posed by IRV, and how to eliminate that risk if possible.

I would suggest that all sides in this matter – both the IRV advocates and opponents – have equal time and access to our state leaders before getting them to vote to extend the IRV pilot program. No “ex parte” communications – both sides deserve a fair hearing. And other options should be explored and considered before we consider extending the IRV pilot program.