Election reforms needed

If you are feeling dissatisfied in the wake of the recent primary election, consider yourself in the majority.

In fact, the vast majority.

Nearly 77 percent of Flathead County Republicans preferred some candidate other than Cal Scott to run for the county commissioner post formerly held by the late Jim Dupont. That’s not surprising considering that there were seven other candidates on the ballot.

In the District 3 GOP race, where the margin of victory for Gary Krueger was a scant 30 votes over his nearest competitor, it should also be noted that more than 73 percent of the Republican voters preferred someone other than Krueger in the five-man race.

And in Montana’s GOP governor race, approximately 66 percent of Republicans voted against the winner, former Congressman Rick Hill.

Is this any way to run an election?

We think not.

In fact, the June 5 election should serve as a wake-up call for Flathead County and hopefully Montana that the system of electing our public officials in this state is fundamentally flawed. We aren’t necessarily getting the best candidates, or even the most popular candidates — we are getting the candidates who can appeal to a sizable niche of the electorate most effectively.

In one sense, this is a good problem to have. It is caused by the fact that many citizens want to run for public office and no doubt believe they can do a great job serving the public.

But when seven people run for governor as Republicans, it means that the race is going to be confusing at best to the average voter. The same was true in the District 1 commissioner race, where eight candidates were on the ballot, and even in District 3, where five candidates vied for attention. Or how about the Democratic U.S. House primary race with seven candidates, where top finisher Kim Gillan had less than 31 percent?

If you need more evidence that voters are confused by elections with large numbers of candidates, consider this: In the crowded District 1 race, where the margin of victory was 203 votes, there were 2,241 ballots on which voters didn’t vote for any of the eight candidates. Essentially, those voters just threw up their hands and said, “We can’t decide!”

But if they got a chance to vote in a runoff between just the top two finishers, we think they would have a much better chance to cast an educated vote.

That’s why it’s time for Montana’s Legislature to adopt some kind of runoff system to ensure that voters’ real preferences are respected in elections. A candidate who has the support of only 23 percent of voters should not automatically be declared the winner of an election, but rather go into a runoff with the second-place finisher, who in the case of the District 1 race got 21.5 percent of the vote.

Let them both go directly to the voters in a head-to-head competition, and let one of them emerge with an absolute majority of support to proceed to the general election.

A runoff election would certainly create new costs, but think of what we would get in exchange: Candidates who actually are supported by a majority of the voters in their party!