Jun 26 2008
Luebke to Press for Instant Runoffs
State Rep. Paul Luebke says he’ll press for instant runoffs in 2009.
The Durham Democrat, who sponsored a pilot project for municipal elections in 2005, said the concept was scary to a lot of legislators, but after elections in Cary and Hendersonville, he thinks they may be more open to it.
“In 2009, if I’m back, I expect to participate in a discussion about how we could use instant-runoff voting as a statewide policy,” he said.
Luebke said the traditional primary runoff method has its own risks, including extremely low turnout.
“It’s really not a good idea to have so few people deciding these runoff races,” he said.
I think Luebke has a good idea here. Runoff elections are exceedingly expensive and just aren’t worth the cost when you see how the poor the turn out is. I was very irritated that here in South Carolina we had our Presidential primary separate from our state primary. Plus, we still had runoffs to deal with earlier this week so we had to pay for three primary elections this year! Then throw in the general in November with the possiblity of runoffs resulting from that and it becomes an expensive venture.
