On November 2, 2010, North Carolina voters will use Instant Runoff Voting to choose a State Court of Appeals judge. This is a statewide, non-partisan office. See this story. This is probably the first time that any state has used Instant Runoff Voting for a statewide office in a general election. Many decades ago, a few southern states used IRV for statewide primaries.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Hopefully through my school (UNC Charlotte) I’ll be able to do a service learning project to help educate people in NC about IRV and how to actually vote!!! Hopefully this will be the start of using it for all elections in NC!
I spoke with some lawmakers who didn’t realize they had voted for this. This was hidden in an 2006 election omnibus bill full of technical issues and there was no debate.
As of Friday Sep 3, the NC State Board of Elections has not announced how this election will be administered or tallied. Ironic, 4 years after this was legislated, no one had done a feasibility analysis nor a fiscal analysis.
There is no software to tally the IRV votes.
NC state law mandates that votes cast at polling places be counted there, also reported. This would be extremely difficult and very laborious to do with IRV, since IRV is not additive and has to be centrally tallied. (against NC law).
I am told that the SBoE will announce how this will be tallied some time next week.
Additionally, the SBoE has announced they will spend $500,000 for a voter education mailer (that many households will throw away) and that polling places will need at least one extra poll worker. (no cost estimate on that yet). An extra ballot of special size will be an additional cost, where a normal contest would take up 2 or 3 lines.
At the meeting, several officials were heart to be muttering the phrase cluster- @#*!
I’ve received emails from anxious election officials who don’t want to be blamed if/when this blows up.
With 13 candidates, and a non partisan contest, and low information voters, as well as this will be the last contest on the ballot or on a separate ballot in some cases, we expect drop off to be significant for this contest.
The bad part is that whoever “wins” will hold office for 8 years.
The good part is that all 13 candidates are attorneys, and at least 1 may have the time to file a lawsuit contesting the results.
If there is no “majority” winner in the first round (many expect there won’t be) then it could take days or weeks to tally. 1st choice votes and provisional ballots will have to be canvassed statewide before 2nd choice votes can be counted.
With this IRV, only top 2 candidates will be considered, so if a voter did not pick either of the 2, then that voter will in essence be blocked from deciding the outcome of the “runoff”. With 13 candidates, many voters will likely not pick the top 2 for any ranking.
This position should have been appointed for a 2 year term and then put on the ballot in next GE.
Has NC ever cleared this change in election procedure under Section 5 of the VRA?
I don’t know anybody happy with having this statewide IRV election for this low-profile court race, but be very wary of opponents of all IRV elections who will make up or twist information in order to support their claims. Regarding the comments above:
** Producing a voter guide in appellate court races is required by the state’s public campaign financing law. The guide will include profiles of the 13 candidates, plus information about voter registration, voting procedures and the IRV method. Like other judicial voter guides, the $500,000 cost to reach 4 million households is paid by the Public Campaign Fund, from a voluntary check-off and a surcharge on attorney dues, not from general tax funds. It is a big lie to attribute the cost of this voter education to having an IRV election; the same exact expense would happen for a plurality election, but I bet you will see opponents repeat the big lie over and over to trash IRV.
** It’s also a flat lie to say that “an extra ballot” is being required to handle the IRV election. This contest will be on the same ballot with other races, and the first choices will be counted on Election Day at the precincts.
** No mandate has been issued that “one extra poll worker” must be hired to explain IRV. A poll worker will explain the process to voters, but as in 2008 when the “straight ticket” method required verbal instructions, hiring an extra poll worker is not required.
** It would be great if a late vacancy could be filled by gubernatorial appointment, but the NC Constitution requires that a vacancy be filled by election if it occurs more than 60 days before the general election in even years. Past efforts in NC to change the state constitution to provide for judicial appointment rather than elections have failed to win voter approval. But it’s time for another try.
** A similar appellate court vacancy in 2004 drew 8 candidates in a plurality contest; the winner got only 23% of the votes. As a result, legislative leaders decided it was time to try IRV in these cases. The IRV method was a response to the large number of candidates filing in vacancy elections, not the cause of the large number. The law was pre-cleared under Section 5 of the VRA.
** The drop off from votes cast for partisan statewide offices to votes cast in nonpartisan judicial offices is huge in North Carolina, so be wary of claims that attribute the drop off to IRV. In 2008, the drop off from the presidential race to the last court of appeals race on the NC ballot was 33%, i.e., nearly 1.5 million voters skipped the court race.
** Election officials in North Carolina are among the best in the nation. They will do a yeoman’s job to meet the challenge of a new voting method in a low-profile election. But accidents happen and problems arise with or without IRV. Be wary of what gets attributed to IRV, in a passionate or dispassionate tone, for better or worse.
IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones when the Middle is divided.
34 H–M–S
33 S–M–H
16 M–H–S
16 M–S–H
99
Only a mere 67 votes for M as second choice — means nothing to IRV MORON math fanatics.
IRV for single offices — BLATANT UNEQUAL treatment of ALL votes for 2nd, 3rd, etc. choices.
Also – a mere 99 of 99 votes for M in 1st plus 2nd choice votes.
Also means nothing to IRV math MORONS — but may actually mean something to the SCOTUS folks later on.
Bob Hall calling me a liar? I’m shocked.
Hall said: “** It’s also a flat lie to say that “an extra ballot” is being required to handle the IRV election. This contest will be on the same ballot with other races, and the first choices will be counted on Election Day at the precincts.”
Sorry Bob, I was just going by what the State Board of Elections said in a public meeting. So at the time even they weren’t sure how they would tally this election.
It turns out that as of today, Sept 9, the State BoE has not provided counties with instructions on tallying IRV.
Its such a problem that the SBoE has set up a task force, to figure out a way to do so.
Before Bob calls me a liar again, here’s the email from NC State BoE. Don Wright, the General Counsel, replies within my email, so it may be hard to follow. He refers to “Gary”, who is the Executive Director of the NC SBoE:
Subject: RE: NCSBoE IRV task force, Voter Ed
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 14:35:31 -0400
From: Wright, Don
To: Joyce McCloy
CC: Bartlett, Gary , McLean, Johnnie
Joyce I have confirmed with Gary the following …see below.
From: Joyce McCloy [mailto:jmc27106@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 12:55 PM
To: Wright, Don
Subject: NCSBoE IRV task force, Voter Ed
North Carolina State Board of Election
Don Wright, General Counsel
Dear Don,
If you do not have the answers to these questions, please advise who I should direct them to.
I understand that the State Board of Elections has set up a task force to determine how the upcoming IRV
election will be administered.
[Yes, the task force/focus group will suggest items as to policies, education and guidelines. There will be no decisions made by them. SBOE employees Karen Brinson, Rosemary Blizzard and Gerry Smith are on the focus group. Bob Joyce of the UNC School of Government is also on the task force. Counties on the task force/ focus group are Guilford, Forsyth , Henderson, Wake, Pitt, Mecklenburg and Transylvania.]
*Please send me the information on this task force, its duties and who will be on it.
Additionally I understand that some voter education may be conducted by non profits but funded by either county or state funds.
[No. Non-profits are free to offer IRV education, but it will be an independent effort by them. There will be no SBE funds beyond the costs of the special voter guide that will have some IRV educational information in it.]
*Please advise which non profits or groups will be paid to conduct voter education.
*How much money will be paid these groups.
*Will the voter education be conducted by IRV advocacy groups or other?
[The SBE will conduct its own voter education. Advocacy groups are free to conduct voter education at their expense if they wish.]
*If there is exit polling or surveys, will it be conducted by objective organizations or will it
include IRV advocates as happened in Cary, NC?
[There are no SBE plans for IRV exit polling or surveys.]
In Cary in 2007, IRV voter education and exit polling was conducted by IRV advocates, including
The IRV America Director who came in from Maine, whoboasted of being incognito and faked a southern accent.
Regards;
Joyce McCloy
NC Coalition for Verified Voting
http://www.ncvoter.net
336-794-1240
In closing, I provide only the information given to me,which was what we had from the SBoE at the time.
Gee Bob – you called me a liar in 2007 outside the NCDP SEC meeting because I said some things about Same Day Registration that you didn’t like. Now you are calling Joyce McCloy a liar here.
Let’s see – I attended that SBOE meeting where they were debating how to do this – on a separate paper ballot in all 100 counties statewide, a separate paper ballot in paper counties ONLY, a separate paper ballot in DRE counties only, or trying to do IRV on the same ballot with the regular races.
No matter what method they end up going with – there will be some violation of state and/or federal election law no matter which way they go.
You and the other IRV advocates just want to push this turkey so badly you don’t care if laws have to be broken to do it! Doesn’t that bother you – I thought you were “Mr Watchdog”?