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2003 Vermont Attorney General Reports and Opinions 1 (2003)

handle is hein.sag/sagvt0043 and id is 1 raw text is: #2003-1 Informal Opinion February 24, 2003 Senator William Doyle, Chair Senate Government Operations Committee State House 115 State St. Montpelier, VT Re: Instant Run-Off Voting - Constitutional Issues Dear Senator Doyle: I am writing to confirm my advice that the Legislature allow the voters to consider any proposal that would establish an instant runoff voting system for statewide offices. Voter approval of a constitutional amendment is legally required before the runoff system can be applied to elections for the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer. A constitutional amendment is not legally required for the other statewide offices, and the Legislature could change these voting procedures without voter participation. As a practical matter, however, the Legislature may want to await a constitutional change so that a common procedure will apply to all statewide offices. A constitutional change is legally required for the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer because the present election procedure for these offices is established by the Constitution. The Constitution provides that these offices must be filled through the one-office, one-name voting procedure that Vermont has used for the past two hundred years. The Constitution also provides that when no candidate wins a majority under this procedure, the General Assembly must fill the office by a joint ballot. It has been suggested that the instant runoff procedure conforms to these constitutional requirements. I respectfully disagree. The differences between the constitutional and the instant runoff procedures are readily apparent when the language of the Constitution is compared to the language of the instant runoff bill. 1

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