Instant Runoff Election for Court of Appeals



A historic election for North Carolina

 

When NC Court of Appeals Judge James Wynn resigned to accept a position as a federal appeals court judge in August 2010, the wheels were set in motion for the first statewide Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) election in NC history. Because Wynn’s departure occurred so close to the general election, there was no time to schedule a primary election in the race to fill his seat. Thirteen candidates ran for the office. Under the old non-IRV system, the winner could have had as little as 8% of the vote – indeed, in 2004 the winner in a similar eight-candidate race in North Carolina had only 23%.

On November 2, voters ranked their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices for the position. No candidate came close to winning a majority of the vote in the first round of counting. Indeed, the leading candidate, who would have been the winner in a plurality election, garnered just 20% of first choice rankings. The race advanced to an instant runoff, with the top two candidates advancing and the eleven trailing candidates eliminated. The instant runoff started on November 29, after the statewide canvass of ballots was complete. You can read more about the tabulation process here.

After 1st choices were counted, the top candidates were Doug McCullough with 15.21% of 1st choice rankings and Cressie Thigpen with 20.33%. In the instant runoff, ballots ranking eliminated candidates 1st were then counted instead for whichever remaining candidate (McCullough or Thigpen) was ranked higher on each ballot.

Once these ballots had been added to the candidates’ totals, McCullough was the winner with 50.31% of the final-round vote. This means that among voters who expressed a preference between the top two candidates, 50.31% preferred McCullough. The vote-count was close enough to trigger a statewide recount; the margin between the candidates changed by fewer than 100 votes, underscoring the quality of the original count.

A number of leading civic groups in North Carolina have taken action to educate voters about the election. The North Carolina Center for Voter Education has a website that features resources on IRV. The Carolina Journal of the John Locke Institute has contributed an overview article on IRV in North Carolina and a review of Court of Appeals race. Other groups taking action include Democracy North Carolina (see its fact sheet here), Common Cause and League of Women Voters of North Carolina.

With so many candidates for the position, the contest had the potential be a challenging one for voters and election officials.  But officials took necessary steps to ensure that the process ran smoothly, and citizens took an active role in educating themselves about  IRV. With so much attention being paid to the historic implementation of IRV, this was one of the most transparent, best-verified elections anywhere in the United States.

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