title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: The plot revolves around the crisis of faith suffered by Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård) following the horrific events he witnessed during World War II. After WWII, Merrin is an archaeologist in Cairo, when he is approached by a collector of antiquities who asks him to come to a British excavation in the Turkana region of Kenya. This dig is excavating a Christian Byzantine church from the 5th century—long before Christianity had reached that region. Further, the church is in perfect condition, as though it had been buried immediately after the construction was completed. Merrin is asked to participate in the dig and find an ancient relic hidden in the ruins before the British do. Merrin takes the job but soon discovers that all is not well—something evil lies in the church and is infecting the region. The local tribesman hired to dig refuse to enter the building, and there are stories of an epidemic that wiped out an entire village. However, when Merrin, growing suspicious of these rumors, digs up one of the graves of the supposed victims of this plague, he discovers it is empty. Meanwhile, the evil grows, turning people against each other and resulting in violence, atrocities, and more bloodshed.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A prequel film attracted attention and controversy before its release in 2004; it went through a number of directorial and script changes, such that two versions were ultimately released. John Frankenheimer was originally hired as director for the project, but he withdrew before filming started due to health concerns. He died a month later. Paul Schrader then replaced him. Upon completion, the studio rejected Schrader's version as being too slow and hired another director to retool the movie. Nine months after the release of the retooled movie (see above section "Exorcist: The Beginning"), Schrader's original version, retitled "", was given a small theatrical release.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: Several years before the events in "The Exorcist", the young Father Lankester Merrin (played by Skarsgård, who played the same part in the "") travels to East Africa. Merrin has taken a sabbatical from the Church and devoted himself to history and archaeology as he struggles with his shattered faith. He is haunted especially by an incident in a small village in occupied Holland during World War II, where he served as the parish priest. Near the end of the war, a sadistic Nazi SS commander, in retaliation for the murder of a German trooper, forces Merrin to participate in arbitrary executions in order to save a full village from slaughter. He meets up with a team of archaeologists, who are seeking to unearth a church that they believe has been buried for centuries. At first, Merrin resists the idea that supernatural forces are in play but eventually helps them, and the ensuing events result in an encounter with Pazuzu, the same demon referenced in "The Exorcist".


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In August 2020, it was revealed that Morgan Creek Entertainment is developing a theatrical reboot of "The Exorcist". In December, Blumhouse Productions and Morgan Creek changed the reboot to a "direct" sequel which will be directed by "Halloween"'s director David Gordon Green. Jason Blum, David Robinson and James Robinson will produce. Though the film serves as a direct follow-up to the original, Green confirmed that each of franchise installments are still canon to his new film.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In July 2021, it was revealed that a trilogy of sequels are in development with David Gordon Green attached as director on each film. Green and Peter Sattler would write the screenplay, from a story by Green, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride. Jason Blum will serve as producer, alongside James Robinson and David Robinson. Burstyn will reprise her role from the original film, with Leslie Odom Jr. co-starring. The projects will be joint-venture productions between Blumhouse Productions and Morgan Creek Entertainment, with Universal Pictures serving as distributing company. Universal collaborated with Peacock to purchase distribution rights for $400 million total. The second and third films of the trilogy are being optioned as Peacock exclusive films. Later that month, Linda Blair stated that she had not yet been contacted to reprise her role from the original film.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In June 2022, Burstyn stated that she has completed production for her part in the film, revealing that principal photography had commenced some time previous. The untitled sequel is scheduled to be released on October 13, 2023.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In July 2021 when a trilogy of "Exorcist" films was announced, two sequels were confirmed to be concurrently in development. David Gordon Green is slated to serve as director, while work on the scripts for the two additional movies is ongoing.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In 2016, 20th Century Fox Television developed a television series of "The Exorcist", designed as a continuation of the film. The premise was described as "a propulsive, serialized psychological thriller following two very different men tackling one family’s case of horrifying demonic possession, and confronting the face of true evil". Rupert Wyatt directed the pilot episode whilst Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels were cast as Father Tomas Ortega and Father Marcus Keane. Geena Davis was cast as Angela Rance in the pilot. The pilot was filmed in Chicago in early 2016. The series ran for two seasons, and was canceled by Fox in May 2018.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: "The Exorcist" was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 1974, winning two. It was the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture. The film was also nominated for seven Golden Globes, winning four.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In 1991, "The Exorcist III" won a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA, for Best Writing (William Peter Blatty) and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif) and Best Horror Film. However it was also nominated for Worst Actor (George C. Scott) at the Golden Raspberry Awards. In 2005, "Exorcist: The Beginning" was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Director (Renny Harlin) and Worst Remake or Sequel.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: The success of "The Exorcist" inspired a string of possession-related films worldwide. The first was "Beyond the Door", a 1974 Italian film with Juliet Mills as a woman possessed by the devil. It appeared in the U.S. one year later. In the same year of 1974, a Turkish film, "Şeytan" (Turkish for "Satan"; the original film was also shown with the same name), is an almost scene-for-scene remake of the original. In the same year in Germany, the exorcism-themed film "Magdalena, vom Teufel besessen" was released. In 1975, Britain released "The Devil Within Her" (also called "I Don't Want to Be Born") with Joan Collins as an exotic dancer who gives birth to a demon-possessed child.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In 1987, Warner Bros. released an animated short starring Daffy Duck, entitled "Duxorcist" which was a parody of "The Exorcist", in which a group of spirits possess a female duck. Daffy does eventually succeed in getting them out of the female character. Similarly, a blaxploitation film was released in 1974 titled "Abby". While the films "Şeytan" and "Magdalena, vom Teufel besessen" were protected from prosecution due to the laws of their countries of origin, "Abby"s producers (filming in Louisiana) were sued by Warner. The film was pulled from theaters, but not before making $4 million at the box office.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A parody, "Repossessed", was released the same year as "The Exorcist III", with Blair lampooning the role she had played in the original. Another parody, was made in Italy by actor and comedian Ciccio Ingrassia in 1977, called L'esorciccio. The prologue for "Scary Movie 2" was a short parody of several scenes from the original film.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: Mexican comics "Los Polivoces" ("The Multivoices"), made a copy-parody, called "El Exorcista". Eduardo Manzano incarned the "possession" and hard make-up was used. Flying clothes were used as "phantoms" and rotoscophy techniques make his bed fly.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A 1995 episode of "The Simpsons" (titled "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily") features Bart, Lisa, and Maggie getting put under the care of the Flanders family. After Lisa reveals that neither she, Bart nor Maggie is baptized, Ned decides to baptize them. On the way to the baptism, Maggie turns her head around in a way similar to Linda Blair in "The Exorcist". It was also parodied in "Treehouse of Horror", "Treehouse of Horror XVI" and "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII". It was also parodied in "Fland Canyon".


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In the episode of "Gravity Falls" "The Inconveniencing", Mabel twisting her head 180 degrees whilst being possessed by a ghost is a reference to a scene in "The Exorcist", in which Pazuzu, possessing Regan MacNeil, turns its head 180 degrees.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In "Bride of Chucky", when Chucky is on the bed his head turns all the way around just before killing Damien. Tiffany watches this in excitement.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A meta-reference to the film was made in an episode of "Supernatural" titled "The Usual Suspects". On the show, demons possessing humans is a common plot element; demons in the series are human souls corrupted by their time in Hell, lacking physical bodies of their own to interact with Earth. Linda Blair appeared in "The Usual Suspects" as a police detective, with protagonist Dean Winchester finding her character familiar and expressing a strange desire for pea soup at the episode's conclusion.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In "Angel: Earthly Possessions", a spin-off comic story based on the TV series "Angel", protagonist Angel finds himself dealing with a priest who performs exorcisms, but comes to realize that the priest is summoning the demons for him to exorcise in the first place. He also makes a note of "The Exorcist" film, noting that the vision it created of possession actually made things easier for possession demons by making it harder for humans to know what to expect from a possession.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In the animated Horror-comedy show "Courage the Cowardly Dog", the episode "The Demon In The Mattress" is a direct spoof of the film, using several plot elements that was lifted straight from "The Exorcist". In the episode, Muriel orders a comfy new mattress, not paying attention to the grotesque deliveryman nor the sinister horse-drawn carriage that had delivered it. Unaware of the demon in the mattress, she is later possessed by it when while she sleeps.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In the paranormal TV series "Ghost Adventures", the producers visited the Exorcist House for their 100th episode of the series. In the episode, Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin visit the house to see that an exorcism occurred there in 1949. The episode has been announced as one of the scariest lockdowns since Bobby Mackeys.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: The 2013 disaster comedy film "This Is the End" referred to the exorcism when Jonah Hill is possessed by a demon and Jay Baruchel performs an exorcism on by repeating lines from the film.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In 2014, British author Saurav Dutt released a book entitled "Pazuzu Unbound", which is a book set in contemporary times, dealing with the demon Pazuzu but which does not deal with the original characters in the film and novel on which the book is inspired.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A limited-edition box set was released in 1998. It was limited to 50,000 copies, with available copies circulating around the Internet. There are two versions; a special edition VHS and a special edition DVD. The only difference between the two copies is the recording format.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A Blu-ray edition features a new restoration, including both the 1973 theatrical version and the "version you've never seen" from 2000. It was released on October 5, 2010.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In preparation for the first film's 41st anniversary, the complete collection of the series was released as "The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology" containing all five films restored on Blu-ray in September 2014. The rest of the installments of the franchise were also given an individual release for the first time on Blu-ray with the exception of "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist" which can only be obtained on Blu-ray by purchasing the collection.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: Contortionist Linda R. Hager was hired to perform the infamous "spider-walk scene" that was filmed on April 11, 1973. Friedkin deleted the scene just prior to the original December 26, 1973 release date because he felt it was ineffective technically. However, with advanced developments in digital media technology, Friedkin worked with CGI artists to make the scene look more convincing for the 2000 theatrically re-released version of "The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen". Since the original release, myths and rumors still exist that a variety of spider-walk scenes were filmed despite Friedkin's insistence that no alternate version was ever shot.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In 1998, Warner Brothers re-released the digitally remastered DVD of "The Exorcist: 25th Anniversary Special Edition". This DVD includes the special feature BBC documentary, "The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist", highlighting the never-before-seen original non-bloody version of the spider-walk scene. The updated "bloody version" of the spider-walk scene appears in the 2000 re-release of "The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen" utilizing CGI technology to incorporate the special effect of blood pouring from Regan's mouth during this scene's finale.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In February 2008, American playwright John Pielmeier expressed his interest in adapting William Peter Blatty's novel of the same name into a play and soon met with Blatty. He then began working on a script for the play, in which the first draft was completed within ten days. "The Exorcist" first premiered at the Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles in 2012.


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: A horror VR video game, called "The Exorcist: Legion VR", was published on Steam, Oculus and PlayStation in 2018 and was based on the events of "The Exorcist III".


title: The Exorcist (franchise)

text: In September 2015, Morgan Creek Productions was selling its library of films, while retaining remake and sequel rights to key properties, including "The Exorcist". Rumors began circulating that the original film would be remade, which was later denied by Morgan Creek.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov (; born 26 June 1944) is a Russian politician, who has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993. He is also the Chair of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov ran for President of Russia four times, most notably in 1996, when he controversially lost in the second round to Boris Yeltsin. He has been placed on the sanctions list by numerous North American and European governments.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov was born in Mymrino, a farming village in Oryol Oblast, on 26 June 1944. The son and grandson of schoolteachers, he followed in their footsteps. His father fought at the Soviet-German front of WWII and returned home with serious injuries. After graduating from a secondary school, his first job was working there for one year as a physics teacher in 1961.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In 1962, Gennady enrolled into the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute. From 1963 to 1966, he served in a Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Intelligence unit of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Zyuganov joined the Communist Party in 1966.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: He returned to the teachers' college in 1966. Three years older than most members of his class, he was already a party member and a popular college athlete. On his return, he married his wife, Nadezhda. He completed his degree in 1969.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov taught mathematics but soon turned to party work in Oryol Oblast, beginning in 1967. He became the First Secretary of the local Komsomol and the regional chief for ideology and propaganda. He emerged as a popular politician in the area. Among many other functions, Zyuganov organized parties and dances as a local Komsomol leader while he was rising through the ranks of the vast network of party apparatchiks. Zyuganov rose to be second secretary, or second in command, of the party in Oryol.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: He enrolled at an elite party school in Moscow, the Academy of Social Sciences in 1978, completing his doctor nauk, a post-doctoral degree, in 1980. He then returned to Oryol to become regional party chief for ideology and propaganda until 1983. In 1983, he was given a high-level position in Moscow as an instructor in the Communist Party propaganda department.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov emerged as a leading critic of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" and "glasnost" in the party's Agitation and Propaganda division (later the Ideological division), a hotbed of opposition to reform. As the party began to crumble in the late 1980s, Zyuganov took the side of hard-liners against reforms that would ultimately culminate in the end of CPSU rule and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In May 1991, he published a fiercely critical piece on Alexander Yakovlev.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov wrote several influential papers in the early 1990s attacking Boris Yeltsin and calling for a return to the socialism of the pre-Gorbachev days. In July 1991, he signed the "A Word to the People" declaration. As the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fell into disarray, Zyuganov helped form the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), and became one of seven secretaries of the new group's Central Committee. In 1993, he became its chairman. Outside observers were surprised by the survival of Zyuganov's Communist Party into the post-Soviet era.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov quickly emerged as post-communist Russia's leading opposition leader. He argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a decline in living standards, that economic power was left concentrated in the hands of a tiny share of the population, that violent crime increased, and that the Soviet collapse allowed ethnic groups throughout Russia to embark on campaigns, sometimes violent, to win autonomy. Many in Russia longed for a return to the days of socialism, when a strong central government promised personal and economic security.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Russians who felt left behind in the new Russia emerged as Zyuganov's supporters, including a number of workers, clerks, bureaucrats, professionals, and the elderly. As Zyuganov succeeded in combining Communist ideas with Russian nationalism, his new Communist Party of the Russian Federation joined hands with numerous other left-wing and right-wing nationalist forces, forming a common "national-patriotic alliance."


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections, the newly revitalized Communist Party of the Russian Federation made a strong showing, and Zyuganov emerged as a serious challenger to President Yeltsin.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov entered the 1996 presidential election, as the standard-bearer of the Russian Communist Party. Co-opting Russian nationalism, he attacked the infiltration of Western ideals into Russian society and portrayed Russia as a great nation that had been dismantled from within by traitors in cahoots with Western capitalists, who sought the dissolution of Soviet power to exploit Russia's boundless resources.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, along with Russian oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Anatoly Chubais, and others feared a Communist resurgence in Russia while witnessing Zyuganov present himself as a kinder, gentler Communist while attending the World Economic Forum at Davos in 1996. Chubais recalled, stating "I saw many of my good friends, presidents of major American companies, European companies, who were simply dancing around Zyuganov, trying to catch his eye, peering at him. These were the world's most powerful businessmen, with world famous names, who with their entire appearance demonstrated that they were seeking support of the future president of Russia, because it was clear to everyone that Zyuganov was going to be the future president of Russia, and now they needed to build a relationship with him. So, this shook me up!".


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: The oligarchs set aside their differences and held several private meetings in Davos hotel rooms, where they strategized how to defeat the perceived Zyuganov threat. The result was the "Davos pact", an agreement between Chubais and the oligarchs that he would lead an anti-Communist campaign against Zyuganov, that they agreed to fund. The subsequent months saw a massive media offensive as "money poured into advertising campaigns, into regional tours, into bribing journalists", all supported by the oligarchs who owned the major media. Yeltsin's subsequent victory in that election can be traced back to the events that took place in Davos between Chubais and those Russian oligarchs.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In the election on 16 June, Zyuganov finished second with 32%, trailing only Yeltsin, who captured 35%. Zyuganov prepared for the 3 July runoff election with confidence. He ran a campaign focusing on the president's ill health and pledged to return Russia to its Soviet days of glory. Yeltsin, however, relentlessly exploited his advantages of incumbency, patronage, and financial backing. Yeltsin gained from the elimination of the many smaller parties, as well as the support of Alexander Lebed, and eventually won the two-man showdown by 53.8% against 40.7%.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: It has been alleged that Yeltsin may not have legitimately won the 1996 presidential election, but instead employed electoral fraud. Some results, largely from Russia's ethnic republics of Tatarstan, Dagestan and Bashkortostan, showed highly unlikely changes in voting patterns between the two rounds of voting. At a meeting with opposition leaders in 2012, then-president Dmitry Medvedev was reported to have said, "There is hardly any doubt who won [that race]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin."


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Political observers suggested that Zyuganov was still a force to be reckoned with in Russian politics, and that his next task would be to remake the communists into a strong opposition. But after the December 1999 parliamentary elections, the number of Communist seats in the Duma was reduced. Communist support started to decline, given the widespread electoral support at the time for the government's invasion of Chechnya in September 1999 and the popularity of Yeltsin's new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who was widely seen as the ailing Yeltsin's heir apparent.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov has additionally served as the Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001, replacing Oleg Shenin.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In November 2001, in an open letter to Putin ahead of the summit between the US and Russian presidents in the United States, Zyuganov said that Russia was betraying its national interests. "It is blindly following US policy which has been characterized recently by open aggression". Zyuganov criticized Putin for his decision the previous month to close a Cuban listening post that eavesdropped on US communications and a key naval base in Vietnam, as well as Russian support for Washington using bases in former Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for its Afghan strikes. "Russia's national state and national interests may be betrayed" at the upcoming summit between Putin and US President George W. Bush, Zyuganov warned.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In October 2005, Zyuganov indicated that he would run for president in 2008, making him the second person to enter the race for the Kremlin following former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. According to one report, Zyuganov pledged to quadruple pensions and state salaries, should he be elected.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In the presidential election on 2 March 2008, Zyuganov garnered 17.76% of the vote and came in second to Medvedev's 70.23%.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: On Zyuganov's 65th birthday in June 2009, the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin presented him with a copy of the first Soviet edition of the Communist Manifesto. On the occasion of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's birthday on 21 December 2010, Zyuganov called for the re-Stalinization of Russian society in an open letter to President Medvedev.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: After Putin's annual address to parliament on 20 April 2011, Zyuganov criticised it as inadequate in dealing with Russia's economic decline and warned that, "If the [parliamentary and presidential] elections are as dirty as before, the situation will develop along the North African scenario." Zyuganov denounced election irregularities in the Russian legislative election of 2011 but also expressed his opposition to the organizers of the mass demonstrations of December 2011 who he viewed as liberals who exploited unrest.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: The communist party played only a minor role in the protests, with one of its speakers, who called for restoration of Soviet power, being booed off the stage. Party rallies on 18 December 2011, in protest of election irregularities in Moscow and St. Petersburg were attended by only a few thousand, mostly elderly, party supporters. According to "The New York Times", it is questionable that Zyuganov, due to his age and association with Soviet policies, will be able to capitalize on the opportunity presented by popular disgust with the Putin regime, or mobilize mass popular support for his party.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov is a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, but states that his recipes for Russia's future are true to his Soviet roots. Zyuganov hopes to renationalise all major industries and he believes the USSR was "the most humane state in human history". On 29 November 2008, in his speech before the 13th Party Congress, Zyuganov made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in:


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Objectively, Russia's position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the "heroic efforts" of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. Our country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation. The ruling group has neither notable successes to boast of, nor a clear plan of action. All its activities are geared to a single goal: to stay in power at all costs. Until recently it has been able to keep in power due to the "windfall" high world prices for energy. Its social support rests on the notorious "vertical power structure" which is another way of saying intimidation and blackmail of the broad social strata and the handouts that power chips off the oil and gas pie and throws out to the population in crumbs, especially on the eve of elections.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: The CPRF cherishes the rule of Joseph Stalin. Zyuganov and the party support social conservatism and voted in favor of the ban on the "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors", commonly known as the Russian gay propaganda law.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In September 2011, Zyuganov again became the CPRF's candidate for the 2012 presidential election. According to Zyuganov, "a gang of folks who cannot do anything in life apart from dollars, profits and mumbling, has humiliated the country" and called for a new international alliance to "counter the aggressive policies of imperialist circles."


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In the 2012 Russian presidential election on 4 March 2012, Zyuganov once again came in second place by receiving 17% of the vote.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: According to Zyuganov, Jesus Christ was the first communist, claiming the Bible may be read through a socialist perspective.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In August 2022, Zyuganov said that reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a leader whose rule brought "absolute sadness, misfortune and problems [for] all the peoples of our country".


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: Zyuganov enthusiastically supported the annexation of Crimea by Russia as well as the pro-Russian insurgency, for which the Ukrainian public prosecutor started against him a criminal case (as well as against Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Sergey Mironov).


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In February 2022, Zyuganov supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some younger members of his party spoke publicly against the war, condemning it as "imperialist" and contrary to Marxist-Leninist principles.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In September 2022, Zyuganov (voicing his opinions on the Communist Party’s website), described an alleged need for a maximum mobilization of Russia in its war effort against Ukraine, branding the conflict as a war against America, Europe and NATO. On 13 September, he told State Duma that the "special military operation [in Ukraine] has turned into a full-fledged war."


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: In February 2022, Zyuganov, who supported the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, was placed on the sanctions list by the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union.


title: Gennady Zyuganov

text: His wife, Nadezhda Zyuganova (née Amelicheva) graduated from History Department of Oryol Pedagogical Institute. They have two children: Andrey (1968) and Tatyana (1974). They have seven grandsons and one granddaughter. Zyuganov's main hobby is volleyball.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the United States (although there are other forms of ranked voting), preferential voting in Australia, where it has seen the widest adoption; in the United Kingdom, it is generally called alternative vote (AV), whereas in some other countries it is referred to as the single transferable vote, which usually means only its multi-winner variant. All these names are often used inconsistently.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Voters in IRV elections rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially counted for each voter's top choice. If a candidate has more than half of the first-choice


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: votes, that candidate wins. If not, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the voters who selected the defeated candidate as a first choice then have their votes added to the totals of their next choice. This process continues until a candidate has more than half of the votes. When the field is reduced to two, it has become an "instant runoff" that allows a comparison of the top two candidates head-to-head. IRV is not a proportional voting system but rather a "winner takes all" method, as it elects only one winner in an election (in one district).


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV is used in national elections in several countries. It is used to elect members of the Australian House of Representatives, as well as most state lower houses and in some local government elections. It is the method used to elect the President of India, the President of Ireland, and (in a modified form) the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea. It is used by many political parties for internal primaries/elections to elect party leaders and presidential/prime ministerial candidates, and by private associations for various voting purposes such as choosing the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In instant-runoff voting, as with other ranked election methods, each voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference. Under a common ballot layout, the voter marks a '1' beside the most preferred candidate, a '2' beside the second-most preferred, and so forth, in ascending order.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The mechanics of the process are the same regardless of how many candidates the voter ranks, and how many are left unranked. In most implementations, the voter ranks as many or as few choices as they wish.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: If there is an exact tie for last place in numbers of votes, various tie-breaking rules determine which candidate to eliminate. The set of all candidates with the fewest first-order votes whose votes together total less than any other candidate's can be eliminated without changing the outcome. This bulk elimination can bypass irrelevant ties, for example if one candidate receives 15 first-order votes and four others receive 5, 5, 3, and 1, and no other candidate receives fewer than 15, all four of the latter candidates will be eliminated during the next four rounds, and so can be eliminated immediately without considering the tie.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Ballots assigned to eliminated candidates are added to the totals of one of the remaining candidates based on the next preference ranked on each ballot. The process repeats until one candidate achieves a majority of votes cast for continuing candidates. Ballots on which all of a voter's ranked candidates are eliminated become inactive.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The common ways to list candidates on a ballot paper are alphabetically or by random lot. In some cases, candidates may also be grouped by political party. Alternatively, Robson Rotation involves randomly changing candidate order for each print run.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Where preferential voting is used for the election of an assembly or council, parties and candidates often advise their supporters on their lower preferences, especially in Australia where a voter must rank all candidates to cast a valid ballot. This can lead to "preference deals", a form of pre-election bargaining, in which smaller parties agree to direct their voters in return for support from the winning party on issues critical to the small party. It can also sometimes lead to joint campaigning between candidates with similar platforms. However, these strategies rely on the assumption that supporters of a party or candidate are receptive to advice on the other preferences on their ballot.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Most IRV elections historically have been tallied by hand, including in elections to Australia's House of Representatives and most state governments. In the modern era, voting equipment can be used to administer the count either partially or fully.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In Australia, the returning officer now usually declares the two candidates that are most likely to win each seat. The votes are always counted by hand at the polling station monitored by scrutineers from each candidate. The first part of the count is to record the first choice for all candidates. Votes for candidates other than the two likely winners are then allocated to them in a second pass. The whole process of counting the votes by hand and allocating preferences is typically completed within two hours on election night at a cost of $7.68 per elector in 2010 to run the entire election.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Ireland in its presidential elections has several dozen counting centers around the nation. Each center reports its totals and receives instructions from the central office about which candidate or candidates to eliminate in the next round of counting based on which candidate is in last place. The count typically is completed the day after the election, as in 1997.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In the United States, nearly all jurisdictions that use this format—like Maine, Oakland and San Francisco—administer IRV elections on voting machines, with optical scanning machines recording preferences and software tallying the IRV algorithm as soon as all ballots are recorded. In its first use of IRV in 2009, Minneapolis tallied first choices on optical scan equipment at the polls and then used a central hand-count for the IRV tally, but has since administered elections without hand tallies Portland, Maine in 2011 used its usual voting machines to tally first choice at the polls, then a central scan with different equipment if an IRV tally was necessary.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The election results from IRV cannot be counted additively: all ballots must be present prior to the first elimination. Methods like plurality voting and pairwise voting can divide the work of counting and sum the results as more votes are reported. To produce pairwise results, each candidate ranked on a ballot receives one vote against each alternative ranked lower and each not ranked on that ballot; equal rankings, including non-ranked candidates, are ties and no vote is tallied. These tallies can be summed to produce a complete matrix of pairwise elections, which can then be used to compute the Smith set or to calculate the outcomes of Schulze, Minimax, Ranked Pairs, and other methods.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV is very unlikely to give rise to a tie when the number of voters is large. For this reason it is sometimes advocated as part of a tie break for methods (such as the Smith set) which do not have this property: see Smith/IRV and Tideman's Alternative.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Research shows that voters in general can understand and use IRV. Various surveys in the U.S. found 80%–90% of voters reported understanding the ballot very well, and 90% reported it was easy to use. Voter comprehension increased with repeated use, eliminating demographic disparities over time. Older voters were more likely to say they found the system confusing, but in practice correctly completed IRV ballots at the same rate.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: All forms of ranked choice voting reduce to plurality when all ballots rank only one candidate. By extension, ballots for which all candidates ranked are eliminated are equivalent to votes for any non-winner in plurality, and considered exhausted.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Because the ballot marking is more complex, there can be an increase in spoiled ballots. In Australia, voters are required to write a number beside every candidate, and the rate of spoiled ballots can be five times higher than plurality voting elections. Since Australia has compulsory voting, however, it is difficult to tell how many ballots are deliberately spoiled. Where complete rankings are not required, a ballot may become inactive if none of the ranked choices on that ballot advance to the next round.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Most jurisdictions with IRV do not require complete rankings and may use columns to indicate preference instead of numbers. In American elections with IRV, more than 99% of voters typically cast a valid ballot.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A 2015 study of four local U.S. elections that used IRV found that inactive ballots occurred often enough in each of them that the winner of each election did not receive a majority of votes cast in the first round. The rate of inactive ballots in each election ranged from a low of 9.6% to a high of 27.1%. As one point of comparison, the number of votes cast in the 190 regularly scheduled primary runoff elections for the U.S House and U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2016 decreased from the initial primary on average by 39%,


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Instant-runoff voting derives its name from the way the ballot count simulates a series of runoffs, similar to an exhaustive ballot system, except that voter preferences do not change between rounds. It is also known as the alternative vote, transferable vote, ranked-choice voting (RCV), single-seat ranked-choice voting, or preferential voting.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Britons and New Zealanders generally call IRV the "alternative vote" (AV). while in Canada it is called "ranked choice voting". Australians, who use IRV for most single winner elections, call IRV "preferential voting". American NGO FairVote uses the terminology "ranked choice voting" to refer to IRV in the case of single-winner offices and to refer to single transferable vote in the case of multi-winner offices. Jurisdictions using IRV such as San Francisco, California, Maine, Alaska, and Minneapolis, Minnesota have codified the term "ranked choice voting" in their laws. San Francisco has argued the word "instant" in term "instant runoff voting" could confuse voters into expecting results to be immediately available.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV is occasionally referred to (rather confusingly) either as Hare's method (after Sir Thomas Hare) or as Ware's method after the American William Robert Ware. When the single transferable vote (STV) method is applied to a single-winner election, it becomes IRV; the government of Ireland has called IRV "proportional representation" based on the fact that the same ballot form is used to elect its president by IRV and parliamentary seats by STV, but IRV is a winner-take-all election method. State law in South Carolina and Arkansas use "instant runoff" to describe the practice of having certain categories of absentee voters cast ranked-choice ballots before the first round of an election and counting those ballots in any subsequent runoff elections.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Unlike a plurality voting system that just compares the top two vote getters, instant-runoff voting minimizes the problem of wasted votes. However, it does not ensure the election of a Condorcet winner, which is the candidate that would win a direct election against any other candidate in the race. These issues are illustrated in the following election:


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Instant-runoff voting has notably high resistance to tactical voting but less to strategic nomination.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem demonstrates that no (deterministic, non-dictatorial) voting method using only the preference rankings of the voters can be entirely immune from tactical voting. This implies that IRV is susceptible to tactical voting in some circumstances.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Research concludes that IRV is one of the voting methods least vulnerable to tactical voting, with theorist Nicolaus Tideman noting that, "alternative voting is quite resistant to strategy," and Australian political analyst Antony Green dismissing suggestions of tactical voting. James Green-Armytage tested four ranked-choice methods, and found the alternative vote to be the second-most-resistant to tactical voting, though it was beaten by a class of AV-Condorcet hybrids, and did not resist strategic withdrawal by candidates well. These analyses only apply to tactical voting, but not to other forms of manipulation; for example, Tideman and Robinette demonstrate a method by which a candidate modifies their campaign to appeal to a slightly broader range of voters, including those of a popular opponent, so as to "bracket" that opponent out (cause them to be eliminated earlier).


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: By not meeting the monotonicity, Condorcet winner, and participation criteria, IRV may incentivize forms of tactical voting (such as compromising) when voters have sufficient information about other voters' preferences, such as from accurate pre-election polling. FairVote mentions that monotonicity failure can lead to situations where "having more voters rank [a] candidate first, can cause [the candidate] to switch from being a winner to being a loser." This occurs when a mutual majority exists which would elect a different candidate than the Condorcet candidate and a minority coalition running off to a single candidate exceeds one-half the size of this majority: the minority candidate cannot be eliminated until the mutual majority runs off to a majority winner. Moving the winner to the top of the minority ballots can shrink the minority sufficiently for their candidate to be eliminated, and their votes then cause the election of a different candidate. This situation occurred in the 2009 Burlington mayoral election: had several Kurt Wright voters moved Bob Kiss to the top of their ballots, the winner would have changed from Bob Kiss to Andy Montroll. The change in lower candidates is important: whether votes are shifted to the leading candidate, shifted to a fringe candidate, or discarded altogether is of no importance.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Tactical voting in IRV seeks to alter the order of eliminations in early rounds, to ensure that the original winner is challenged by a stronger opponent in the final round. For example, in a three-party election where voters for both the left and right prefer the centrist candidate to stop the opposing candidate from winning, those voters who care more about defeating the opposition than electing their own candidate may cast a tactical first-preference vote for the centrist candidate.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The 2009 mayoral election in Burlington, Vermont provides an example in which strategy theoretically could have worked but would have been unlikely in practice. In that election, most supporters of the candidate who lost in the final round (a Republican who led in first choices) preferred the Condorcet winner, a Democrat, to the IRV winner, the Progressive Party nominee. If 371 (24.7%) out of the 1,510 backers of the Republican candidate (who also preferred the Democrat over the Progressive candidate for mayor) had insincerely raised the Democrat from their second choice to their first (not changing their rankings relative to their least favorite candidate, the Progressive), the Democrat would then have advanced to the final round (instead of their favorite), defeated any opponent, and proceeded to win the IRV election. This is an example of potential voter regret in that these voters who sincerely ranked their favorite candidate as first, find out after the fact that they caused the election of their least favorite candidate, which can lead to the voting tactic of compromising. Yet because the Republican led in first choices and only narrowly lost the final instant runoff, his backers would have been highly unlikely to pursue such a strategy. This strategy still would not elect the Republican, due to a lack of preferences towards them.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The spoiler effect is when a difference is made to the anticipated outcome of an election due to the presence on the ballot paper of a candidate who (predictably) will lose. Most often this is when two or more politically similar candidates divide the vote for the more popular end of the political spectrum. That is, each receives fewer votes than a single opponent on the unpopular end of the spectrum who is disliked by the majority of voters but who wins from the advantage that, on that unpopular side, they are unopposed. Strategic nomination relies on triggering this situation, and requires understanding of both the electoral process and the demographics of the district.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Proponents of IRV claim that IRV eliminates the spoiler effect, since IRV makes it safe to vote honestly for marginal parties: Under a plurality method, voters who sympathize most strongly with a marginal candidate are strongly encouraged to instead vote for a more popular candidate who shares some of the same principles, since that candidate has a much greater chance of being elected and a vote for the marginal candidate will not result in the marginal candidate's election. An IRV method reduces this problem, since the voter can rank the marginal candidate first and the mainstream candidate second; in the likely event that the fringe candidate is eliminated, the vote is not wasted but is transferred to the second preference.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: However, when the third-party candidate is more competitive, they can still act as a spoiler under IRV, by taking away first-choice votes from the more mainstream candidate until that candidate is eliminated, and then that candidate's second-choice votes helping a more-disliked candidate to win. In these scenarios, it would have been better for the third party voters if their candidate had not run at all (spoiler effect), or if they had voted dishonestly, ranking their favorite second rather than first (favorite betrayal.) This is the same bracketing effect exploited by Robinette and Tideman in their research on strategic campaigning, where a candidate alters their campaign to cause a change in voter honest choice, resulting in the elimination of a candidate who nevertheless remains more preferred by voters.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: For example, in the 2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral election, if the Republican candidate who lost in the final instant runoff had not run, the Democratic candidate would have defeated the winning Progressive candidate. In that sense, the Republican candidate was a spoiler—(albeit for an opposing Democrat, rather than some political ally) even though leading in first choice support.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: By contrast, in the seat of Prahran during the 2014 Victorian State Election, despite the Greens candidate outlasting the more centrist Labor candidate during counting, most of the Labor preferences ultimately helped elect the Greens rather than the further right Liberal candidate. In this case, the Greens candidate, despite only having the third most primary votes, ultimately was not a spoiler and was able to be elected.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In practice, IRV does not seem to discourage candidacies. In Australia's House of Representatives elections in 2007, for example, the average number of candidates in a district was seven, and at least four candidates ran in every district; notwithstanding the fact that Australia only has two major political parties. Every seat was won with a majority of the vote, including several where results would have been different under plurality voting. A study of ballot image data found that all of the 138 RCV elections held in four Bay Area cities in California elected the Condorcet winner, including many with large fields of candidates and 46 where multiple rounds of counting were required to determine a winner.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV is a single-winner application of a proportional voting method, technically single-winner STV with a droop quota (50%+1). Like all winner-take-all voting methods, IRV tends to exaggerate the number of seats won by the largest parties; small parties without majority support in any given constituency are unlikely to earn seats in a legislature, although their supporters will be more likely to be part of the final choice between the two strongest candidates. A simulation of IRV in the 2010 UK general election by the Electoral Reform Society concluded that the election would have altered the balance of seats among the three main parties, but the number of seats won by minor parties would have remained unchanged.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Australia, a nation with a long record of using IRV for the election of legislative bodies, has had representation in its parliament broadly similar to that expected by plurality methods.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Medium-sized parties, such as the National Party of Australia, can co-exist with coalition partners such as the Liberal Party of Australia, and can compete against it without fear of losing seats to other parties due to vote splitting, although generally in practice these two parties only compete against each other when a sitting member of the coalition leaves Parliament. IRV is more likely to result in legislatures where no single party has an absolute majority of seats (a hung parliament), but does not generally produce as fragmented a legislature as a fully proportional method, such as is used for the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, where coalitions of numerous small parties are needed for a majority.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The costs of printing and counting ballot papers for an IRV election are no different from those of any other method using the same technology. However, the more-complicated counting system may encourage officials to introduce more advanced technology, such as software counters or electronic voting machines. Pierce County, Washington, election officials outlined one-time costs of $857,000 to implement IRV for its elections in 2008, covering software and equipment, voter education and testing.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Because it does not require two separate votes, IRV is assumed to cost less than two-round primary/general or general/runoff election methods. However, in 2009, the auditor of Pierce County reported that the ongoing costs of the system were not necessarily balanced by the costs of eliminating runoffs for most county offices, because those elections may be needed for other offices not elected by IRV. Other jurisdictions have reported immediate cost savings.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Australian elections are counted by hand. The 2010 federal election cost a total of $7.68 per elector of which only a small proportion is the actual counting of votes. Counting is now normally performed in a single pass at the polling center as described above.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The perceived costs or cost savings of adopting an IRV method are commonly used by both supporters and critics. In the 2011 referendum on the Alternative Vote in the UK, the NOtoAV campaign was launched with a claim that adopting the method would cost £250 million; commentators argued that this headline figure had been inflated by including £82 million for the cost of the referendum itself, and a further £130 million on the assumption that the UK would need to introduce electronic voting systems, when ministers had confirmed that there was no intention of implementing such technology, whatever the outcome of the election. Automated vote counting is seen by some to have a greater potential for election fraud; IRV supporters counter these claims with recommended audit procedures, or note that automated counting is not required for the method at all.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: John Russo, Oakland City Attorney, argued in the "Oakland Tribune" on 24 July 2006 that "Instant runoff voting is an antidote to the disease of negative campaigning. IRV led to San Francisco candidates campaigning more cooperatively. Under the method, their candidates were less likely to engage in negative campaigning because such tactics would risk alienating the voters who support 'attacked' candidates", reducing the chance that they would support the attacker as a second or third choice. Campaign strategists in New York City reported that after IRV was introduced, they became more careful not to attack other candidates in ways that might offend voters that would otherwise give the campaign a second-choice ranking.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In 2013–2014, the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll surveyed more than 4,800 likely voters in 21 cities after their local city elections—half in cities with IRV elections and 14 in control cities selected by project leaders Caroline Tolbert of the University of Iowa and Todd Donovan of Western Washington University. Among findings, respondents in IRV cities reported candidates spent less time criticizing opponents than in cities that did not use IRV. In the 2013 survey, for example, 5% of respondents said that candidates criticized each other "a great deal of the time" as opposed to 25% in non-IRV cities. An accompanying survey of candidates reported similar findings.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Internationally, Benjamin Reilly suggests instant-runoff voting eases ethnic conflict in divided societies. This feature was a leading argument for why Papua New Guinea adopted instant-runoff voting. However, Lord Alexander's objections to the conclusions of the British Independent Commission on the Voting System's report cites the example of Australia saying "their politicians tend to be, if anything, more blunt and outspoken than our own".


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Some critics of IRV hold that voters supporting major candidates get their second and third place preferences ignored as those candidates are eliminated before their first choice is eliminated. Meanwhile, if you support a fringe candidate, it is more likely that your second and third place choices will be used. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, for example, arguments over IRV in letters to newspapers included the belief that IRV "gives minority candidate voters two votes", because some voters' ballots may count for their first choice in the first round and a lesser choice in a later round. The argument that IRV represents plural voting is sometimes used in arguments over the "fairness" of the method, and has led to several legal challenges in the United States. In every instance, state and federal judges have rejected this argument.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The argument was addressed and rejected by a Michigan court in 1975; in "Stephenson v. the Ann Arbor Board of City Canvassers", the court held "majority preferential voting" (as IRV was then known) to be in compliance with the Michigan and United States constitutions, writing:


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The same argument was advanced in opposition to IRV in Maine. Governor Paul LePage claimed, ahead of the 2018 primary elections, that IRV would result in "one person, five votes", as opposed to "one person, one vote". In litigation following the results of the 2018 election for Maine's 2nd congressional district, Representative Bruce Poliquin claimed that IRV allowed his opponents to "cast ballots for three different candidates in the same election". Federal judge Lance Walker rejected this claim, and the 1st circuit court denied Poliquin's emergency appeal, leading to Poliquin dropping his claim.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Primary and runoff elections tend to have lower turnout than general elections. Consolidating these into a single election increases voter participation.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: This method was considered by Condorcet as early as 1788, though only to condemn it, for its ability to eliminate a candidate preferred by a majority of voters.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV can be seen as a special case of the single transferable vote method, which began use in the 1850s. It is historically known as Ware's method, due to the implementation of STV in 1871 at Harvard College by American architect William Robert Ware, who suggested it could also be used for single-winner elections. Unlike the single transferable vote in multi-seat elections, however, the only ballot transfers are from backers of candidates who have been eliminated.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The first known use of an IRV-like method in a governmental election was in the 1893 general election in the Colony of Queensland (in present-day Australia). The variant used for this election was a "contingent vote", where all candidates but two are eliminated in the first round. IRV in its true form was first used in Western Australia, in the 1908 state election. The Hare-Clark system was introduced for the Tasmanian House of Assembly at the 1909 state election.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV was introduced for federal (nationwide) elections in Australia after the Swan by-election in October 1918, in response to the rise of the conservative Country Party, representing small farmers. The Country Party split the non-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win without a majority of the vote. The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced IRV (in Australia called "preferential voting") as a means of allowing competition between the Coalition parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918, and at a national level at the 1919 election. IRV continued to benefit the Coalition until the 1990 election, when for the first time Labor obtained a net benefit from IRV.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In the United States, the sequential elimination method used by IRV is described in "Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised" as an example of preferential voting:The term preferential voting refers to any of a number of voting methods by which, on a single ballot when there are more than two possible choices, the second or less-preferred choices of voters can be taken into account if no candidate or proposition attains a majority. While it is more complicated than other methods of voting in common use, and is not a substitute for the normal procedure of repeated balloting until a majority is obtained, preferential voting is especially useful and fair in an election by mail if it is impractical to take more than one ballot. In such cases, it makes possible a more representative result than under a rule that a plurality shall elect ... Preferential voting has many variations. One method is described here by way of illustration. The instant-runoff voting method is then detailed.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: "Robert's Rules" continues:The system of preferential voting just described should not be used in cases where it is possible to follow the normal procedure of repeated balloting until one candidate or proposition attains a majority. Although this type of preferential ballot is preferable to an election by plurality, it affords less freedom of choice than repeated balloting, because it denies voters the opportunity of basing their second or lesser choices on the results of earlier ballots, and because the candidate or proposition in last place is automatically eliminated and may thus be prevented from becoming a compromise choice.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Two other books on American parliamentary procedure take a similar stance, disapproving of plurality voting and describing preferential voting as an option, if authorized in the bylaws, when repeated balloting is impractical: "The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure" and "Riddick's Rules of Procedure".


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The term "instant runoff voting" is derived from the name of a class of voting methods called runoff voting. In runoff voting voters do not rank candidates in order of preference on a single ballot. Instead a similar effect is achieved by using multiple rounds of voting. All multi-round runoff voting methods allow voters to change their preferences in each round, incorporating the results of the prior round to influence their decision. This is not possible in IRV, as participants vote only once, and this prohibits certain forms of tactical voting that can be prevalent in "standard" runoff voting.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A method closer to IRV is the exhaustive ballot. In this method—one familiar to fans of the television show "American Idol"—one candidate is eliminated after each round, and many rounds of voting are used, rather than just two. Because holding many rounds of voting on separate days is generally expensive, the exhaustive ballot is not used for large-scale, public elections.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The simplest form of runoff voting is the two-round system, which typically excludes all but two candidates after the first round, rather than gradually eliminating candidates over a series of rounds. Eliminations can occur with or without allowing and applying preference votes to choose the final two candidates. A second round of voting or counting is only necessary if no candidate receives an overall majority of votes. This method is used in Mali, France and the Finnish and Slovenian presidential election.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The contingent vote, also known as Top-two IRV, or "batch-style", is the same as IRV except that if no candidate achieves a majority in the first round of counting, all but the two candidates with the most votes are eliminated, and the second preferences for those ballots are counted. As in IRV, there is only one round of voting.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Under a variant of contingent voting used in Sri Lanka, and the elections for Mayor of London in the United Kingdom, voters rank a specified maximum number of candidates. In London, the Supplementary Vote allows voters to express first and second preferences only. Sri Lankan voters rank up to three candidates for the President of Sri Lanka.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: While similar to "sequential-elimination" IRV, top-two can produce different results. Excluding more than one candidate after the first count might eliminate a candidate who would have won under sequential elimination IRV. Restricting voters to a maximum number of preferences is more likely to exhaust ballots if voters do not anticipate which candidates will finish in the top two. This can encourage voters to vote more tactically, by ranking at least one candidate they think is likely to win.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Conversely, a practical benefit of 'contingent voting' is expediency and confidence in the result with only two rounds. Particularly in elections with few (e.g., fewer than 100) voters, numerous ties can destroy confidence. Heavy use of tie-breaking rules leaves uncomfortable doubts over whether the winner might have changed if a recount had been performed.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The common feature of these IRV variations is that one vote is counted per ballot per round, with rules that eliminate the weakest candidate(s) in successive rounds. Most IRV implementations drop the requirement for a majority of cast ballots.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Unlike many single-winner methods, instant-runoff cannot accept equal rankings, and must discard ballots with multiple first-preferred remaining alternatives: such ballots would be equivalent to casting multiple ballots in a plurality election. The inability to cast equal votes—including the inability to truncate ballots in some jurisdictional rules—creates difficulties for the epistemic properties of democracy. Under theories of public reason, a democratic decision uses the knowledge of the whole voting body. When a voter has no preference, or decides themselves that their ability to form a correct preference is insufficient, the correct vote is no vote. This is expressed by equal rankings, and when all rankings are equal it is expressed by no vote.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: At the Australian federal election in September 2013, 135 out of the 150 House of Representatives seats (or 90 percent) were won by the candidate who led on first preferences. The other 15 seats (10 percent) were won by the candidate who placed second on first preferences.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A number of IRV methods, varying as to ballot design and as to whether or not voters are obliged to provide a full list of preferences, are in use in different countries and local governments.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In an optional preferential voting system, voters can give a preference to as many candidates as they wish. They may make only a single choice, known as "bullet voting", and some jurisdictions accept a single box marked with an "X" (as opposed to a numeral "1") as valid for the first preference. This may result in exhausted ballots, where all of a voter's preferences are eliminated before a candidate is elected, such that the "majority" in the final round may only constitute a minority fraction of all ballots cast. Optional preferential voting is used for elections for the President of Ireland and the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. Optional preferential voting is used for some elections in Queensland.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In a full-preferential voting method, voters are required to mark a preference for every candidate standing. Ballots that do not contain a complete ordering of all candidates are in some jurisdictions considered spoilt or invalid, even if there are only two candidates standing. This can become burdensome in elections with many candidates and can lead to "donkey voting", in which some voters simply choose candidates at random or in top-to-bottom order, or a voter may order his or her preferred candidates and then fill in the remainder on a donkey basis. Full preferential voting is used for elections to the Australian federal parliament and for most State parliaments.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Other methods only allow marking preferences for a maximum of the voter's top three favorites, a form of partial preferential voting.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A version of instant-runoff voting applying to the ranking of parties was first proposed for elections in Germany in 2013 as spare vote.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Scholars rate voting methods using mathematically derived voting method criteria, which describe desirable features of a method. No ranked-preference method can meet all of the criteria, because some of them are mutually exclusive, as shown by statements such as Arrow's impossibility theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Many of the mathematical criteria by which voting methods are compared were formulated for voters with ordinal preferences. If voters vote according to the same ordinal preferences in both rounds, criteria can be applied to two-round systems of runoffs, and in that case, each of the criteria failed by IRV is also failed by the two-round system as they relate to automatic elimination of trailing candidates. Partial results exist for other models of voter behavior in the two-round method: see the two-round system article's criterion compliance section for more information.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The Condorcet loser criterion states that "if a candidate would lose a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must not win the overall election". IRV (like all voting methods with a final runoff round) meets this criterion, since the Condorcet loser cannot win a runoff, however IRV can still elect the "second-worst" candidate, when the two worst candidates are the only ones remaining in the final round.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The independence of clones criterion states that "the election outcome remains the same even if an identical candidate who is equally preferred decides to run." IRV meets this criterion. The later-no-harm criterion states that "if a voter alters the order of candidates lower in his/her preference (e.g. swapping the second and third preferences), then that does not affect the chances of the most preferred candidate being elected."


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The majority criterion states that "if one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of voters, then that candidate must win." The mutual majority criterion states that "if an absolute majority of voters prefer every member of a group of candidates to every candidate not in that group, then one of the preferred group must win." Note that this is satisfied because when all but one candidate that a mutual majority prefer is eliminated, the votes of the majority all flow to the remaining candidate, in contrast to FPTP, where the majority would be treated as separate small groups. The resolvability criterion states that "the probability of an exact tie must diminish as more votes are cast."


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The Condorcet winner criterion states that "if a candidate would win a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must win the overall election". It is incompatible with the later-no-harm criterion, so IRV does not meet this criterion.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: IRV is more likely to elect the Condorcet winner than plurality voting and traditional runoff elections. The California cities of Oakland, San Francisco and San Leandro in 2010 provide an example; there were a total of four elections in which the plurality-voting leader in first-choice rankings was defeated, and in each case the IRV winner was the Condorcet winner, including a San Francisco election in which the IRV winner was in third place in first choice rankings.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Systems which fail Condorcet but pass mutual majority can exclude voters outside the mutual majority from the vote, essentially becoming an election between the mutual majority. IRV demonstrates this exclusion of up to 50% of voters, notably in the 2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral election where the later rounds became a runoff between the mutual majority of voters favoring Andy Montroll and Bob Kiss. This can recurse: if a mutual majority exists within the mutual majority, then the majority becomes a collegiate over the minority, and the inner mutual majority solely decides the votes of this collegiate.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The consistency criterion states that if dividing the electorate into two groups and running the same election separately with each group returns the same result for both groups, then the election over the whole electorate should return this result. IRV, like all preferential voting methods which are not positional, does not meet this criterion.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion states that "the election outcome remains the same even if a candidate who cannot win decides to run." In the general case, instant-runoff voting can be susceptible to strategic nomination: whether or not a candidate decides to run at all can affect the result even if the new candidate cannot themselves win. This is much less likely to happen than under plurality.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The monotonicity criterion states that "a voter can't harm a candidate's chances of winning by voting that candidate higher, or help a candidate by voting that candidate lower, while keeping the relative order of all the other candidates equal." Allard claims failure is unlikely, at a less than 0.03% chance per election. Some critics argue in turn that Allard's calculations are wrong and the probability of monotonicity failure is much greater, at 14.5% under the impartial culture election model in the three-candidate case, or 7–10% in the case of a left-right spectrum. Lepelley "et al." find a 2–5% probability of monotonicity failure under the same election model as Allard. The diagram shows the non-monotonicity of IRV, where moving the center of opinion away from a candidate can help that candidate win, and moving the center of opinion towards a candidate can cause that candidate to lose.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The participation criterion states that "the best way to help a candidate win must not be to abstain". IRV does not meet this criterion: in some cases, the voter's preferred candidate can be best helped if the voter does not vote at all. Depankar Ray finds a 50% probability that, when IRV elects a different candidate than Plurality, some voters would have been better off not showing up.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The reversal symmetry criterion states that "if candidate A is the unique winner, and each voter's individual preferences are inverted, then A must not be elected". IRV does not meet this criterion: it is possible to construct an election where reversing the order of every ballot paper does not alter the final winner.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Some examples of IRV elections are given below. The first two (fictional elections) demonstrate the principle of IRV. The others offer examples of the results of real elections.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A simple example is provided in the accompanying table. Three candidates are running for election, Bob, Bill and Sue. There are five voters, "a" through "e". The voters each have one vote. They rank the candidates first, second and third in the order they prefer them. To win, a candidate must have a majority of vote; that is, three or more.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In Round 1, the first-choice rankings are tallied, with the results that Bob and Sue both have two votes and Bill has one. No candidate has a majority, so a second "instant runoff" round is required. Since Bill is in bottom place, he is eliminated. The ballot from any voter who ranked Bill first (in this example solely voter "c" ) gets modified as follows: the original 2nd choice candidate for that voter becomes their new 1st choice, and their original 3rd choice becomes their new 2nd choice. This results in the Round 2 votes as seen below. This gives Sue 3 votes, which is a majority.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Most instant-runoff voting elections are won by the candidate who leads in first-choice rankings, choosing the same winner as first-past-the-post voting. As an example Australia the 1972 federal election had the highest proportion of winners who would not have won under first past the post—with only 14 out of 125 seats not won by the plurality candidate.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Some IRV elections are won by a candidate who finishes second after the first-round count. In this case, IRV chooses the same winner as a two-round system if all voters were to vote again and maintain their same preferences. A candidate may also win who is in third place or lower after the first count, but gains majority support (among the non-eliminated candidates) in the final round. In such cases, IRV would choose the same winner as a multi-round method that eliminated the last-place candidate before each new vote, assuming all voters kept voting and maintained their same preferences. Here is an example of this last case.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: It takes three rounds to determine a winner in this election.Round 1 – In the first round no city gets a majority:


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: If one of the cities had achieved a majority vote (more than half), the election would end there. If this were a first-past-the-post election, Memphis would win because it received the most votes. But IRV does not allow a candidate to win on the first round without having an absolute majority of the vote. While 42% of the electorate voted "for" Memphis, 58% of the electorate voted "against" Memphis in this first round.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Round 2 – In the second round of tabulation, we remove the city with the least first-place support from consideration. Chattanooga received the lowest number of votes in the first round, so it is eliminated. The ballots that listed Chattanooga as first choice are added to the totals of the second-choice selection on each ballot. Everything else stays the same.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Chattanooga's 15% of the total votes are added to the second choices selected by the voters for whom that city was first-choice (in this example Knoxville):


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In the first round, Memphis was first, Nashville was second and Knoxville was third. With Chattanooga eliminated and its votes redistributed, the second round finds Memphis still in first place, followed by Knoxville in second and Nashville has moved down to third place.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Round 3 – No city yet has secured a majority of votes, so we move to the third round with the elimination of Nashville, and it becomes a contest between Memphis and Knoxville.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: As in the second round with Chattanooga, all of the ballots currently counting for Nashville are added to the totals of Memphis or Knoxville based on which city is ranked next on that ballot. In this example the second-choice of the Nashville voters is Chattanooga, which is already eliminated. Therefore, the votes are added to their third-choice: Knoxville.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Result: Knoxville, which was running third in the first tabulation, has moved up from behind to take first place in the third and final round. The winner of the election is Knoxville. However, if 6% of voters in Memphis were to put Nashville first, the winner would be Nashville, a preferable outcome for voters in Memphis. This is an example of potential tactical voting, though one that would be difficult for voters to carry out in practice. Also, if 17% of voters in Memphis were to stay away from voting, the winner would be Nashville. This is an example of IRV failing the participation criterion.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: For comparison, note that traditional first-past-the-post voting would elect Memphis, even though most citizens consider it the worst choice, because 42% is larger than any other single city. As Nashville is a Condorcet winner, would elect Nashville. A two-round method would have a runoff between Memphis and Nashville where Nashville would win, too.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The result of the 1990 Irish presidential election provides an example of how instant-runoff voting can produce a different result from first-past-the-post voting. The three candidates were Brian Lenihan of the traditionally dominant Fianna Fáil party, Austin Currie of Fine Gael, and Mary Robinson, nominated by the Labour Party and the Workers' Party. After the first round, Lenihan had the largest share of the first-choice rankings (and hence would have won a first-past-the-post vote), but no candidate attained the necessary majority. Currie was eliminated and his votes reassigned to the next choice ranked on each ballot; in this process, Robinson received 82% of Currie's votes, thereby overtaking Lenihan.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: A real-life example of IRV producing a result which differs from what would be expected under a first-past-the-post or the two-round voting system is the result for the seat of Prahran in the 2014 Victorian state election. In this instance, it was the candidate who initially finished "third" (Greens candidate Sam Hibbins) in the primary vote went on to win the seat on the back of favourable preferences from the other two minor parties and independents, narrowly beating the second-ranked candidate (Labor candidate Neil Pharaoh) by 31 votes, and the first-ranked candidate (Liberal candidate Clem Newton-Brown) by 277 votes. It was not until the final round of counting that one of the two remaining candidates (Hibbins) had more than 50% of the total vote.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In theory, the elimination of the center-left Labor candidate before the left-wing Green candidate could have transferred enough votes to the center-right Liberal candidate for him to win, but instead roughly 8:1 Labor voters chose the Green ahead of the Liberal.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: Unlike Burlington's first IRV mayoral election in 2006, the IRV winner in 2009 (Bob Kiss) was neither the same as the plurality winner (Kurt Wright) nor the Condorcet winner (Andy Montroll). Burlington voters repealed IRV in 2010 by a vote of 52% to 48% and in 2021 voted to use RCV for city council elections by a vote of 64% to 36%.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: The organization FairVote, which advocates for IRV, claimed the election as a success, citing three reasons (1) it prevented the election of the presumed winner under a plurality system by avoiding the effect of vote-splitting between the other candidates, (2) 99.99% of the ballots were valid suggesting that voters handled the system without difficulty, and (3) "contributed to producing a campaign among four serious candidates that was widely praised for its substantive nature."


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: However, the election was considered a failure by advocates of the Condorcet winner, who point out that "in a head-to-head election, Andy Montroll should have beaten Bob Kiss by a 7.8% margin".


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: In this case, a mutual majority causes a lock-out of a sufficiently large (e.g. plurality) minority. In examples where a smaller minority would break the lock-out "and" would change the winner in their favor, the participation criterion is violated. Wright voters were 40%, versus voters who placed Montroll and Kiss above Wright at 51.5%. That means a lot of Wright voters would have had to stay home for their demographic to matter at all, causing a participation criterion failure. If Wright voters preferred Montroll over Kiss, it would have been more advantageous to abstain or not give Wright their first preference; this would then result in Montroll reaching the final runoff and beating Kiss (54% to 46%), as opposed to the actual final runoff between Wright and Kiss.


title: Instant-runoff voting

text: This would elect the candidate who started with only the third most primary votes, Montroll, and still would not be able to elect Wright without more of Montroll voters’ preferences or a higher primary vote (possibly to the point of having an outright majority)


title: Steve McMichael

text: Stephen Douglas McMichael (born October 17, 1957), nicknamed "Mongo", "Ming" and "Ming the Merciless", is an American former professional football player, sports broadcaster, and professional wrestler.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael played college football for the University of Texas at Austin and was an All-American. Professionally, he played in the National Football League (NFL) for the New England Patriots, Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers as a defensive tackle, winning Super Bowl XX with the Bears in January 1986. During his professional wrestling career, McMichael was known for his time in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He became a member of the legendary Four Horsemen stable and was a one-time WCW United States Champion.


title: Steve McMichael

text: From 2007 to 2013, McMichael was the head coach of the Chicago Slaughter of the Continental Indoor Football League (CIFL). In 2013, lost his campaign for mayor of Romeoville, Illinois. McMichael has been a regular presence on Chicago sports radio for several years and is currently the namesake of a restaurant in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael was born on October 17, 1957 in Houston, Texas. His parents separated before his second birthday, and his mother later remarried E.V. McMichael, an oil company executive whose surname McMichael adopted. He has three other siblings: older brother John Richard and younger sisters Kathy and Sharon. The family moved to Freer, where he attended Freer High School. In his senior year, he lettered in six sports: football, basketball, baseball, track, tennis and golf. Baseball was his preferred sport, and whilst playing as a catcher, he batted .450 in his senior year, garnering attention from the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael's performances for his high school football team saw him being offered scholarships by 75 institutions. He decided to attend the University of Texas at Austin. He played as a defensive tackle for the Texas Longhorns football team from 1976 to 1979, but his freshman season was marred by the death of his stepfather. In his senior season, he was a consensus first-team All-American, and he was defensive MVP at the 1979 Hula Bowl.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael was drafted out of Texas in 1980 by the New England Patriots but cut before his second season. The Chicago Bears signed him as a free agent in 1981. He became one of their starting defensive tackles and helped lead them to a Super Bowl win in 1985. He had a streak of 101 games started until 1990, when his playing time was reduced. He led the Bears with 11 sacks in 1988. He had 108 tackles in 1989. McMichael was named to the NFC's Pro Bowl teams for the 1986 and 1987 seasons.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael gained notability in a 1991 game against the New York Jets. With the Bears down 13–6 with 1:54 remaining, McMichael forced a Blair Thomas fumble and recovered it at the New York 36. Quarterback Jim Harbaugh then threw a game-tying touchdown to Neal Anderson with :18 left in the game. The Bears went on to win in overtime when Harbaugh scored on a 1-yard TD run. Bears coach Mike Ditka said in 2005 that McMichael was the toughest player he had ever coached. He played with the Green Bay Packers in 1994 before retiring.


title: Steve McMichael

text: After the end of his NFL career, he appeared at ringside in the WWF for Lawrence Taylor at WrestleMania XI on April 2, 1995, in Hartford, Connecticut. Taylor was wrestling Bam Bam Bigelow and there were several football players at ringside to keep wrestlers from interfering in the match. During the March 20 episode of "Monday Night Raw", McMichael provided guest commentary with Vince McMahon and would later brawl with Kama Mustafa, one of Bigelow's comrades. The fight was all over the arena floor and almost into the stands, knocking over the broadcast table, soon being broken up by personnel. Taylor ended up winning the later match.


title: Steve McMichael

text: In 1995, McMichael was hired by World Championship Wrestling (WCW). On September 4, 1995, he made his debut with the company as the pro-babyface color commentator on the premiere of "WCW Monday Nitro", with Bobby Heenan fulfilling his typical pro-heel commentator role alongside lead broadcaster Eric Bischoff. McMichael would root for the popular wrestlers during matches, would bicker with Heenan on a regular basis, and brought his dog Pepe with him to the broadcast booth.


title: Steve McMichael

text: In April 1996, Ric Flair started hitting on McMichael's wife Debra, who would sit at ringside during "WCW Monday Nitro". McMichael challenged Flair and Arn Anderson to a match with his partner Kevin Greene. He trained with Randy Savage (he was actually trained by Terry Taylor at the WCW Power Plant), while Flair and Anderson got Heenan to be their coach for the match.


title: Steve McMichael

text: The match took place at The Great American Bash. During the match, Debra and Greene's wife were chased to the back by Woman and Miss Elizabeth, who were Flair's valets. Debra came back with Woman and Elizabeth, and she had a briefcase full of money and a Four Horsemen T-shirt. McMichael accepted it and hit Greene in the head with the briefcase. McMichael's first singles match was against Joe Gomez at Bash at the Beach.


title: Steve McMichael

text: He went on to feud with the Dungeon of Doom with the other Horsemen, and he had problems with Jeff Jarrett over the affections of Debra in late 1996 through early 1997. Women would trash Debra, causing McMichael and Chris Benoit to step in each time. The turning point in the McMichael–Jarrett feud was at SuperBrawl VII. McMichael wrestled Jarrett, and if Jarrett won, he was an official Horseman. Debra interfered for Jarrett, so he would win. Then McMichael and Jarrett had to team, and they bickered at first but later became a solid tag team. McMichael wrestled two football players in 1997. He beat Reggie White at Slamboree and lost to Kevin Greene at The Great American Bash, which saw McMichael slapped by Greene's mother at ringside.


title: Steve McMichael

text: In July 1997, Jarrett was kicked out of the Horsemen, and Debra soon left McMichael for Jarrett. McMichael got his revenge when he defeated Jarrett for his WCW United States Heavyweight Championship on the August 21 episode of "Clash of the Champions XXXV". Just weeks earlier, Arn Anderson had been forced to retire due to an injury, and Curt Hennig took his place in the Horsemen. At Fall Brawl, Hennig turned on the Horsemen and joined the nWo, during the War Games match that the Horsemen were involved in. McMichael was handcuffed to the steel cage surrounding the ring along with Benoit, and neither man could defend Flair from the 5-on-1 assault from the nWo; the match ended after McMichael surrendered to stop the nWo from attacking Flair, although Hennig would still slam the cage door on Flair's head (which was edited out of the home video release, but included on the WWE Network in full), even after the submission was made. The next night on "Nitro", McMichael dropped his United States title to Hennig, and Flair disbanded the Horsemen.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael went after Debra's stable of wrestlers that included Jarrett, Eddie Guerrero and Alex Wright. Debra hired Goldberg to get McMichael, and he became one of Goldberg's first victims in November 1997. Goldberg stole McMichael's Super Bowl ring and weeks later McMichael hit Goldberg with a pipe and reclaimed it. He briefly helped Benoit feud with Raven's Flock in January 1998 and then got into a feud with The British Bulldog, in which he broke his hand during a match at SuperBrawl VIII in February 1998. McMichael returned in June and had a feud with Stevie Ray and helped reform the Four Horsemen in October with Flair, Benoit, Dean Malenko and manager Arn Anderson. They feuded with the nWo until McMichael made his final appearance on the February 8, 1999 episode of "Nitro".


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael returned to professional wrestling for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's flagship pay-per-view, Bound For Glory, where he refereed the Monster's Ball Match. This match was notable for McMichael's extremely slow cadence for a three count.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael co-hosts a Bears pre-game show with Jeff Dickerson on ESPN 1000 in Chicago. He was the head coach of the Chicago Slaughter of the Indoor Football League from 2007 until the team's final season in 2013.


title: Steve McMichael

text: On August 7, 2001, during the seventh-inning stretch of a game between the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field, McMichael, who was visiting the Cubs television booth, took a turn as the guest singer for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Earlier in the game in the bottom of the 6th inning, home plate umpire Ángel Hernández had controversially called Cubs infielder Ron Coomer out at the plate. Before singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game, McMichael announced to those in attendance over the PA system that he would "have some speaks" with Hernández after the game, presumably as a result of Hernández's call on Coomer. Crew chief Randy Marsh ordered McMichael to be ejected from the ballpark, and the umpires later received an apology for McMichael's conduct from then-Cubs general manager Andy MacPhail.


title: Steve McMichael

text: On August 16, 2012, McMichael announced his intentions to run for mayor of Romeoville, Illinois. He lost the race to incumbent John Noak, garnering 39 percent of the vote.


title: Steve McMichael

text: On March 24, 2001, McMichael married Misty Davenport. On August 3, 2007, McMichael appeared as a guest on the "Waddle & Silvy Show" on ESPN 1000 and announced he is going to be a father with his wife. Their daughter Macy Dale McMichael was born at 4:12 pm on January 22, 2008.


title: Steve McMichael

text: McMichael and fellow 1985 Chicago Bears alumni Dan Hampton and Otis Wilson performed in a rock and roll oldies band (with entertaining satirical Mike Ditka verses) called the Chicago 6.


title: Steve McMichael

text: On April 23, 2021, McMichael announced that he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In the announcement, he also confirmed that he would be retiring from making public appearances going forward. The announcement came six months after one of McMichael's contemporaries in the NFL, former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle & broadcaster Tunch Ilkin, announced his own ALS diagnosis; Ilkin died of ALS complications on September 4, 2021, at the age of 63. Despite not making any more public appearances, with his and his family's permission, photos of McMichael being visited by former teammates and wrestlers have surfaced on social media, which have received criticism from fans due to McMichael's declining health.


title: 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

text: During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner". While on the podium, Smith and Carlos, who had won gold and bronze medals respectively in the 200-meter running event of the 1968 Summer Olympics, turned to face the US flag and then kept their hands raised until the anthem had finished. In addition, Smith, Carlos, and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman all wore human-rights badges on their jackets.


title: 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

text: In his autobiography, "Silent Gesture", published nearly 30 years later, Smith revised his statement that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute per se, but rather a "human rights" salute. The demonstration is regarded as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympics.