San Francisco's use of the system coincides with another tight presidential race -- with Democrats again labeling Nader a potential spoiler. As a result, supporters say it could trigger significant interest in the voting system across the country.
"It's going to be huge," said Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, a Green Party member who placed the voting initiative on the ballot in San Francisco two years ago. "Democrats have opposed it in the past because they say it doesn't work. But the ability to tell voters it doesn't work goes away once you've tried and tested it somewhere."
The method of voting is used in Australia, Ireland and London. Its history in the United States, however, is limited to the 1975 mayoral contest in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Though the Republican candidate had beaten his Democratic rival in the first round with 49% of the vote to her 40%, she squeaked to victory in a re-tally after the left-leaning Human Rights Party candidate was eliminated. Those voters had chosen the Democrat second. Shortly after that election, Republicans placed a successful measure on the ballot to repeal the system.
(Cambridge, Mass., has employed a related version of the procedure for its City Council races, as has New York City for its school board races.)
At the state and federal level, the method has been praised as a way to create space for third parties in a two-party system that has excluded them. But therein lies the rub: Attempts to pass instant runoff voting plans in New Mexico, Alaska and Illinois, among other places, have failed in recent years, largely because Democrats or Republicans opposed it.
It didn't even make it onto the agenda of post-2000 commissions on election reform. Efforts -- which culminated in the Help America Vote Act -- focused instead on fixing the existing system of punch cards, provisional ballots and voter registration databases, said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group that analyzes election reform issues.
Though Seligson concedes that "San Francisco will give [instant runoff voting] some exposure it's never had before," he says the two major parties "are not going to opt for [a method] that in any way challenges the way the system currently is."
Still, supporters believe success in San Francisco -- or at least a glitch-free experiment -- could demystify the process and boost its chances elsewhere.
