2009 Burlington mayoral election

The 2009 Burlington mayoral election was held in March 2009 for the city of Burlington, Vermont. This was the second mayoral election since the city's 2005 change to instant-runoff voting (IRV), after the 2006 mayoral election. In the 2009 election, incumbent Burlington mayor (Bob Kiss) won reelection as a member of the Vermont Progressive Party, defeating Kurt Wright in the final round with 48% of the vote (51.5% excluding exhausted ballots).

The election created a controversy as a result of several election pathologies, after Kiss was declared winner as a result of 750 votes cast against his candidacy (ranking him last), over the objections of the 54% of Burlington voters who had preferred Andy Montroll.

Unlike the city's first IRV election three years prior, however, Kiss was neither the plurality winner (Republican Kurt Wright) nor the majority vote winner (Democrat Andy Montroll). This led to a controversy about the use of IRV in mayoral elections, culminating in a successful 2010 citizen's initiative repealing IRV's use by a vote of 52% to 48%.

Background
The city of Burlington, Vermont, approved IRV for use in mayoral elections with a 64% vote in 2005, at a time when IRV was used only in a few local elections in the United States. The 2006 Burlington mayoral election was decided by two rounds of IRV tallying, selecting candidate Bob Kiss of the Vermont Progressive Party (VPP). In the election, Kiss prevailed over Democrat Hinda Miller and Republican Kevin Curley. With his election Kiss became the second member of the VPP to be elected to the office after Peter Clavelle.

Candidates

 * Bob Kiss (P), incumbent mayor (elected in 2006) seeking second term
 * Kurt Wright (R), then-current City Councilor and State Representative
 * Andy Montroll (D), then current member of the Burlington City Council
 * Dan Smith (I), lawyer
 * James Simpson (G), owner of human-powered transportation services company in Burlington

Results
Unlike Burlington's first IRV mayoral election in 2006, the mayoral race in 2009 was decided in three rounds. Bob Kiss won the election, receiving 28.8% of the vote in the first round and 48.0% in the final round (51.5% excluding exhausted ballots), defeating final challenger Kurt Wright (who received more votes than Kiss in the earlier rounds, but only received 45.2% in the final round).

The elimination rounds were as follows:

Analysis
FairVote touted the 2009 election as one of its major success stories, with IRV helping the city avoid the cost of a traditional runoff (which would not have affected the results). They also argued IRV prevented a spoiler effect that would have occurred under plurality. Later analyses showed the race was still spoiled, however, with Wright acting as a spoiler pulling moderate votes from Montroll, who otherwise would have been able to defeat Kiss in a one-on-one race.

FairVote also claimed the election as a success story because 99.9% of voters were able to fill out at least one preference on their ranked-choice ballot. Other election observers questioned this interpretation, after analyses showed 16% of voters cast plurality-style ballots for only one candidate and 7% of ballots did not rank either of the candidates in the last round, leaving them unrepresented.

Some mathematicians and voting theorists criticized the election results as revealing several pathologies associated with instant-runoff voting, noting that Kiss was elected as a result of 750 votes cast against him (ranking Kiss in last place).

Several electoral reform advocates branded the election a failure after Kiss was elected, despite 54% of voters voting for Montroll over Kiss, violating the principle of majority rule.

Tournament matrix
The results of every possible one-on-one election can be completed as follows: This leads to an overall preference ranking of:


 * 1) Montroll – defeats all candidates below, including Kiss (4,064 to 3,476)
 * 2) Kiss – defeats all candidates below, including Wright (4,313 to 4,061)
 * 3) Wright – defeats all candidates below, including Smith (3,971 to 3,793)
 * 4) Smith – defeats Simpson (5,570 to 721) and the write-in candidates

Montroll was therefore preferred over Kiss by 54% of voters, preferred over Wright by 56% of voters, over Smith by 60%, and over Simpson by 91% of voters.

Hypothetical results under various voting systems
Because all ballots were fully released, it is possible to reconstruct the winners under other voting methods. While Wright would have won under plurality, Kiss won under IRV, and would have won under a two-round vote or a traditional nonpartisan blanket primary.

Montroll, being the Condorcet winner, would have won if the ballots were counted using ranked pairs (or any other Condorcet method). Analyses suggested Montroll also would have won under most rated voting methods, including score voting, approval voting, majority judgment, or STAR voting.

Effect on IRV in Burlington
There was post-election controversy regarding the IRV method, and in March 2010 a citizen's initiative resulted in the repeal of IRV in Burlington. The initially "stagnant" repeal campaign drew renewed interest as Kiss became embroiled in a series of controversies. In December 2009, a group called "One Person, One Vote", made up of Republicans and Democrats unhappy with the election outcome, held a press conference to announce that they had collected enough signatures for an initiative to repeal IRV. According to a local columnist, the vote was a referendum on Kiss's mayoralty; Kiss had allegedly become a "lame duck" because of a scandal relating to Burlington Telecom and other local issues. However, in an interview with Vermont Public Radio, Kiss disputed that claim, and those gathering signatures for the repeal stated that it was specifically a rejection of IRV itself.

Locals argued the system was convoluted, turned the 2009 election into a "gambling game" by disqualifying Montroll for having won too many votes, and "eliminated the most popular moderate candidate and elected an extremist".

The IRV repeal initiative in March 2010 won 52% to 48%. It earned a majority of the vote in only two of the city's seven wards, but the vote in those 2009 strongholds for Kurt Wright was lopsided against IRV. Republican Governor Jim Douglas signed the repeal into law in April 2010, saying "Voting ought to be transparent and easy to understand, and affects the will of the voters in a direct way. I'm glad the city has agreed to a more traditional process."

The repeal reverted the system back to a 40% rule that requires a top-two runoff if no candidate exceeds 40% of the vote. Had the 2009 election occurred under these rules, Kiss and Wright would have advanced to the runoff. If the same voters had participated in the runoff as in the first election and not changed their preferences, Kiss would have won the runoff.

The following decade saw continuing controversy about voting methods in Burlington. In 2011, for example, an initiative effort to increase the winning threshold from the 40% plurality to a 50% majority failed by 58.5% to 41.5%, while in 2019, instant-runoff voting was once again proposed for Burlington by Councilor Jack Hanson but went unapproved by the Charter Change Committee for the March 2020 ballot.

One year later, in July 2020, the city council voted 6–5 in support of a measure to reinstate IRV, but it was vetoed by Mayor Miro Weinberger the following month. The council then amended the measure to apply only to the council itself, which the Mayor accepted, and on March 2, 2021, Burlington voters voted in favor of IRV for its city council by 64% to 36% (8,914 to 4,918). The charter change required approval by the Vermont legislature, which enacted it in May of 2022, and which the governor allowed to become law without his signature. The council in September 2022, the voters in March 2023, and the legislature in May 2023 approved the expansion of use of IRV for mayor, school commissioners, and ward election officers, with first use in March 2024.