Special Elections & IRV

Frederick Clarkson has a great roundup of the three special elections that will be held this spring. I have been following the race for the 18th Suffolk fairly closely, as the district is just across the Charles from me. I know that people there have been trying to get rid of Golden for years. Who would have thought that Romney would have been the one to do it by luring him away? Clarkson seems to think that Tim Schofield is in the drivers seat -- good news for progressives, however with Michael Moran getting the endorsement from the Greater Boston Central Labor Council and the state AFL-CIO, I wonder if the progressive/labor votes will be split allowing Brian Golden's handpicked successor, Greg Glennon, to get the plurality. Golden's boy is a chip off the old block, a very culturally conservative Democrat and in fact a recent 'convert' from Republicanism.

The special elections, though give us in the state a reason to talk about the Instant Runoff Voting bills that have been filed on Beacon Hill recently. It seems to me that IRV is a perfect fit for these special elections with crowded fields and low turnout. Some people tend to think that IRV is too complicated for the average (or at least below-average) voter. I don't think that you can say this, though, about voters in a primary. At the very least, they show enough initiative to not only register for a party, but generally they'd have to search all the harder for information since primary candidates are often the most obscure. If they're investing extra time anyway, I don't see why, for primaries at least, they can't be trusted to rank candidates rather than just select one.

Of course, any measure on Beacon Hill will come too late for the March primaries. Here on the sidelines, we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for the progressives.