New Mexico Supreme Court Won’t Stop Santa Fe From Using Ranked Choice Voting

On January 9, the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal by the city of Santa Fe, over whether the city should use ranked choice voting in its 2018 city elections. A lower state court last month had ordered the city to use ranked choice voting. Even though the city council then authorized its use, it was still asking the State Supreme Court to reverse the lower court. But the State Supreme Court rejected the city’s request. See this story. Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.


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New Mexico Supreme Court Won’t Stop Santa Fe From Using Ranked Choice Voting — 11 Comments

  1. Ranked choice voting in single-winner districts will bring the voters of Santa Fe a one-party system because only the biggest civic group who attains the 50% (plus one vote) will always be guaranteed to win 100% of the elections there.

    Are you interested in and advanced voting system that unites all voters under pure proportional representation?

    The United Coalition of Candidates (UCC) are united under pure proportional representation:
    http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html

    Candidate for State Assembly, California, USA (November 2020)
    Mark Herd [Libertarian]

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    Gail McLaughlin [Independent]
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    Candidates for USA Congress (November 2018)
    California CD 2 Andy Caffrey [Ecotopian Democratic]
    Louisiana CD 3 Verone Thomas [Noble People of Conscious]

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    Donald Trump [Republican]
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    Pamela Elizondo [Green]

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    * * *

  2. RCV/IRV ignores most of the data in a Place Votes Table.

    The *Middle* is divided – as usual.

    34 A-M-Z

    33 Z-M-A

    16 M-A-Z

    16 M-Z-A

    99


    With RCV/IRV, M loses. A beats Z 50-49.

    A = Stalin, Z = Hitler, M = Washington
    —————
    Place Votes Table

    — 1 — 2 — 3 — T

    A 34 – 16 – 49 – 99
    M 32 – 67 – 0 – 99
    Z 33 – 16 – 50 – 99
    T 99 – 99 – 99

    i.e. RCV/IRV will cause even more extremist stuff due to rigged majority *mandate* stuff.

    M has a mere 99 of 99 votes in 1st and 2nd place.

    ————
    Head to Head (Condorcet) Math – from 1780s — repeat 1780s.

    
M beats A 65-34
    
M beats Z 66-33

    Condorcet is obviously correct by the math of having a 3rd choice beat each of 2 existing choices head to head.

    A > B

    C comes along

    C > A
    C > B
    —-
    P.R. and nonpartisan Approval Voting – pending Condorcet head to head math
    – will need computer voting to do all the combinations.

  3. Dem Rep, the issue is having one winner Stalin, which is no good.

    In order for regular people to be elected, there needs to be an assembly election, the more the better. For example, a five-year executive subject to perpetual votes of confidence from the Assembly floor.

    To many people try to paint democracy as good verses bad, that pair-testing may be good in degrading single-winner names to show high contrast between the good and the bad.

    But all single-winner elections need to be prohibited, as the Hagenbach-Bischoff method correctly does, it rightly prohibits single-winner posts.

    We can still get things done as a big team, we simply plan and write “plays” using the rankings for many multiples of names and decision-items, and with the personnel we are assured of getting incremental improvements that the dynamics of multiple choices will bring to the team.

  4. More D.R. vs J.O. debating. As Yogi famously observed, it’s “Déjà vu all over again”. However if gives me an opening to make a point.

    I just read an interesting book – “Drain The Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse than you Think” by two term Colorado US House Rep Ken Buck. It has completely changed my opinion on the merits of Proportional Representation (PR).

    Here’s a quick summary of my previous thoughts on PR: It’s a good idea but it can’t happen because of the Constitution and the inability of current political class to make such drastic fundamental changes that require Amendment(s) to the Constitution.

    Here’s a quick summary of the book: I thought I understood the power-wielding, nefarious control that party leadership has (both Ds and Rs) in DC, and that the subtitle of the book was just overblown marketing hype. Nope. The details are truly worse than I imagined.

    The book has radically altered my opinion about political parties. Previously, I believed political parties were essentially neutral vessels – a community of politically like-minded individuals supporting each other – that were not fundamentally good or bad. I now believe that political parties are evil. While political parties cannot be morally or legally outlawed (freedom of association, etc.), they must not be allowed any particular structural role in elections or legislative deliberations (e.g. no party designation on ballots). Changing to a PR based electoral system would make political parties more powerful, not less. That’s very bad. So, IMO, PR is a bad idea that should not be adopted.

    An advantage of Ranked Choice Voting is that it diminishes the importance of Party. That may actually be it’s most important advantage compared with PR.

  5. Parties in legislative bodies automatically — MORE or LESS control freak statism.

    See Federalist No. 10 – Madison.

    Perhaps a Civil WAR 2 will cause war survivors (if any) to make those *drastic fundamental changes* — see the various election related USA Const Amdts starting with the 12th Amdt (super crisis in 1800 Prez election).

    14 Amdt, Sec 2 and 15th Amdt — due to 13th Amdt and the horrific 1861-1865 Civil WAR 1 (about 750,000 DEAD on both sides plus multi-thousands mentally / physically maimed for life – no eyes, hands, etc.).

    17th Amdt — TOTAL corruption in having the gerrymander State legislatures pick USA Senators, etc.

    Various *nonpartisan* PR systems are possible —

    Ratio = Total Votes / Total Members — with pre-election candidate rank order lists for moving surplus and loser votes.

    The various FOREIGN PR systems are fatal due to *closed* party lists {the top party hack MONSTERS pick the candidates in rank order lists) and the *parliamentary* systems

    — same hacks having major exec offices and are also in the parliament — UK — THE FATAL prime example – copied in Canada [now very UN-stable — West v Ontario v Quebec v East], etc.

    PR [both majority rule and minority representation) and nonpartisan AppV

  6. PR lowers the election threshold systematically and predictably while RCV in single-winner districts keeps the threshold at 50% (plus one vote).

    If you want to see high numbers of regular people competing for low thresholds (Not 50%, but .99% plus one vote) then PR is an improvement.

    Single-winner seat=
    roadblock and sad.

    Multi-winners=
    dynamic and slippery slope, funny.

  7. “PR lowers the election threshold systematically and predictably while RCV in single-winner districts keeps the threshold at 50% (plus one vote).”

    That’s disingenuous. RCV is more similar to approval voting than FPTP, but by using the 50%+1 you imply that RCV is not an improvement over FPTP. That’s generally false – RCV is quite an improvement over FPTP in single winner districts.

    There are various other problems with multi-winner districts or other electoral systems that implement party proportional representation that are never mentioned by D.R and J.O. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation for an introduction to this monstrosity.

    And again, all of this multi-winner per district stuff needs state and US constitutional amendments, with one very significant exception – the electoral college can be made to be PR (per state) by state law. But that will never happen because of the big states protecting each respective majority party.

  8. Federal statute requires election of representatives by single-member district. Federal statute can (at least in theory) be changed.

  9. Once upon a time the killer slave owner oligarchs in the USA slave States thought slavery would continue FOREVER — a very long time.

    Once upon a time the killer monarchs/oligarchs thought that divine right of kings would continue FOREVER in Europe — a very long time.

    Things got changed the very hard way –

    Civil War I in the USA.
    WW I in Europe.

    Gerrymander single member districts have been concentration camps merely since the 1200s in England — a mere 700 plus years.

    The lawyer MORONS have not (yet) attacked the USA law regarding GSMD.

    PR and AppV

  10. There must be a number of sports analogies about players or teams in knockout playoffs or tournaments–don’t think about your next opponents until you take care of your CURRENT opponent. Demo Rep’s Jan 10 example seems to do just that–ya gotta stay out of last place to advance. What RCV does is allow voters to express a preference for a 3rd party without being a spoiler or wasting their vote. More voters may give them a 1st place vote, but the 3rd party still has to avoid an early exit.
    These data, pasted on my webpage replicate Demo Rep’s example:
    candidates:A;M;Z
    b 34 1 2 3
    b 33 3 2 1
    b 16 2 1 3
    b 16 2 3 1

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