Rhode Island Representative David Segal (D-Providence) has this op-ed in the New York Times of January 25. It advocates an end to gubernatorial appointments of U.S. Senators, and also advocates that special elections to fill U.S. Senate vacancies should skip the primary stage and use Instant-Runoff Voting. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.
I’m telling ya, what ever general benefit of IRV needs to be weighed against the steam roller effect on non Dems and non GOP!
—————— Donald Raymond Lake
We saw in Minnesota that Voters can’t even shade in a single oval, so lets ask them to shade in three different candidates.
Can the IRV advocates explain in 200 words or less exactly how the 2nd and 3rd choices are counted?
IRV cannot be counted at the polling place – you have to haul the ballots off to a central location. IRV is not additive – you have to have all of the ballots in one place or you need special software (which in effect serves as the ballots). This software is overly complex and reduces the transparency of vote counting.
This should only be done after all provisional and absentee ballots are approved.
And since IRV doesn’t help third parties – why go through all of these gyrations?
If someone claims that IRV helps third parties, they are counting on you to not do the research to see that it does not help third parties. IRV hurts third parties and keeps two parties dominent.
Research. Look at Australia, Ireland, and other places.
IRV is fine as an academic excercise, but other than that it doesn’t work.
IRV does NOT treat 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice votes the same — a blatant violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amdt — regardless of ALL of the MORON hype of the IRV math MORONS.
P.R. legislative offices
A.V. executive / judicial offices
Way too difficult for New Age math MORONS to understand.
“Can the IRV advocates explain in 200 words or less exactly how the 2nd and 3rd choices are counted?”
Answer – They’re added to the candidates still in the race. That’s 9 words!
IRV is a like traditional majority voting. Instead of multiple rounds of balloting, voters rank their choices. In traditional majority voting, when a voters first choice is eliminated, they have to write a second choice on the second ballot. At the same time, voters who still have a candidate in the race will write down their first choice again. Why not ask voters their second choice or even third choice on one ballot? IRV lets us do this. (This is 78 words).
Can you please explain the formula for “Huntington congressional seat reapportionment” in 200 words or less? (The mathematical formula doesn’t count because I don’t know algebra.) How about the demographics and cartography used in redistricting? It’s important because this will settle an election for one party or another before any ballot is even printed.
Even plurality elections – FPTP – are complex in this regard. To claim IRV as complex is a ruse.
“This software is overly complex and reduces the transparency of vote counting”
Is there software that is not complex? Forgive me – I can’t read computer code so I can’t be precious about technology enough to refer to it as “special”. (IRV was devised in the mid 19th century – so hand counting is possible.)
The IRV ballot image – a computer file provided by the tabulating machine – gives very comprehensive information about each ranking in the election. It is indeed transparent.
IRV doesn’t help any party – if it did, IRV wouldn’t have withstood court scrutiny.
IRV – lessens negative campaigning, folds the primary into a single general election (Saving voters time and taxpayers money.) and fosters competition. There are other benefits.
“We saw in Minnesota that Voters can’t even shade in a single oval, so lets ask them to shade in three different candidates.”
Most voters were able to get the job done. Should we not have interstates because a few people can’t handle driving on city streets?
“IRV hurts third parties and keeps two parties dominent.”
As compared to our current system?
Laura– Do you support the idea of a traditional two-round runoff? For example: nobody wins a majority, so a second election is held between just the top two candidates. (This system is common throughout the U.S.)
If so, IRV is exactly the same thing, except compressed into one step instead of a second election. In a two-round runoff, people who voted for losing candidates can vote again, making a new choice. IRV works the same way.
IRV does help minor parties. A Progressive Party nominee for Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, won the last election, and without IRV he would not have won.
Many members of minor parties were elected to the New York city council in the period 1937-1945, when the New York city council used single transferable vote, which has a great deal in common with IRV.
If the US had used IRV for president in 2000, that would have been hugely beneficial to minor parties. As it turned out, the idea that the Green Party helped caused the election of George W. Bush has injured the Green Party in this country hugely. If IRV had been in place, the problem would have vanished.
Demo rep:
You often write “A.V. executive / judicial offices”.
In this case, what does A.V. stand for? I had thought it was alternative vote (the same thing as IRV), but your comments suggest otherwise.
Congress has time, place, manner authority over election of both representatives and senators. When senators were elected by the legislature, Congress had provided explicit schedules and procedures for the election. There is no reason to believe that the authority has lapsed under terms of the 17th Amendment.
Congress should require that a special election be held within 60 days of a vacancy in either the House or Senate, with any runoff within 90 days. A governor would continue to be able to make a temporary appointment.
The last special senate election in Texas (in 1993) had 24 candidates. The previous one (in 1961) had 70 candidates.
Can anyone actually do an effective ranking of that many candidates?
I think it would be easy to rank that many candidates, although if IRV were implemented it might be restricted to, say, 3 rankings anyway. Most of the candidates would probably be uninteresting to me, so I’d put them at the bottom in any order or simply not vote for them at all.
Jim – voters don’t have to rank every candidate. If there are 24 candidates, I could rank 24, 10, 5 or 1; ranking more candidates simply increases the chance that your vote will be counted if the candidate of your choice is eliminated in early rounds of vote counting.
I personally think voters should have the choice to rank all the candidates, if they care to. In response to the favorite argument of IRV opponents – that Americans are too stupid to vote anyway – well, you won’t have to fill out more than one oval if you don’t want to.
And Krist – Nirvana rules, and Fairvote rules. Thanks for ruling.
# 8 A.V. = Approval Voting — vote for 1 or more executive / judicial candidates. Highest win.
Also less than 200 words.
Note that currently many local regimes have multiple persons being elected to the same office — city councils, local judges, etc.
A.V. can also be used as a tiebreaker in all sorts of head to head elections (with some major public education — even in this New Age of growing numbers of math dummies).
—–
IRV WILL cause more left / right extremists to be elected (and claim a mighty majority *mandate*) when the muddled middle is split — see 1860, 1932, 2000, 2004 and even 2008 Prez elections —
i.e. when a moderate middle candidate is third with the top 2 remaining being Stalin / Hitler clones.
John Q. Moderate gets wiped out using IRV.
Stalin or Hitler clone gets elected — to become a Prez, Governor, Mayor, etc. — Killer-in-Chief via IRV.
#14:
Note that approval voting reverts to regular crappy fptp voting when voters vote strategically.
Also, your IRV example depends on a Hitler-clone getting more votes than the moderate. I don’t see that likely, but if so, then doesn’t the Hitler-clone deserve to win it? Sounds like democracy, but maybe that’s EVIL MORON dummy math, my bad.
1 2 3
34 H W S
33 S W H
16 W H S
16 W S H
99
[ATTENTION math dummies – the W votes are split for 2nd choices]
Place Votes Table
1 2 3
H 34 16 49 99
S 33 16 50 99
W 32 67 0 99
99 99 99
[ATTENTION math dummies — IRV ignores the 67 votes for W as second choice (from H and S voters) and even the 50 votes for S as third choice]
With IRV, W loses. H beats S 50-49.
Head to head (Condorcet method) —
W beats H 65-34
W beats S 66-33
W WINS.
IF the first 2 place votes are *YES* votes (as in Approval Voting), then —
H 50
S 49
W 99
W WINS
IF the Bucklin Method is used (add place votes to get a majority), then adding the place 1 and place 2 votes —
H 50
S 49
W 99
W WINS
1 win for H, 3 wins for W
——-
H Hitler, S Stalin, W George Washington (U.S.A. General in the 1775-1783 American Revolutionary War and the first U.S.A. President in 1789-1797)
Of course — having moderates get defeated is the intention of the EVIL New Age math MORONS hyping IRV.
Aha! I was wondering how Hitler and Stalin managed to beat George Washington. Turns out it was because of fiendish instant runoff voting! Guess the EVIL New Age math MORONS teamed up with the Freemasons to strike that little tidbit from the history books.
Laura Roslin: Can the IRV advocates explain in 200 words or less exactly how the 2nd and 3rd choices are counted?
In 32 words: “If no candidate has a majority, eliminate the one with the fewest votes and count those ballots for each voter’s top choice among the candidates still in the running. Repeat if necessary.”
By itself, IRV will not help small party candidates get elected — at least not very often. But it prevents them from being spoilers, which will allow election results to be a more accurate measure of their support and therefore improve their bargaining position. Just as important, in the U.S., electoral reform in single-winner elections is one of several necessary steps toward proportional representation for legislative bodies, which will help small party candidates get elected.
#12 While it is true that voters are not required to express exhaustive preferences, failure to do so may cause their vote to be disregarded. It is like saying that one doesn’t have to vote for every office, or even vote at all. It is true, but it does not address the real issue.
If a voter is limited to three preferences, they are forced to game the election, perhaps expressing their true preference as #1, and then trying to guess which other candidates might actually have a chance of being elected, for their 2nd or 3rd preference.
Limiting a voter to 3 choices, as has been done in San Francisco, was simply for reasons of expediency, and nothing to do with the underlying principles of IRV.
With 24 choices, one is likely to rank most candidates sequentially, or perhaps flub up the numbering. While IRV can handle tied preferences (though not within a 200-words or less description), it is unlikely to be implemented that way, and so a voter would be punished for what is a minor error, or what might not even be an error, but the sincere intent of the voter. While you might consider a bunch of candidates equally deserving of no ranking, others might want to make clear that a particular candidate is their least favored candidate, while not wishing to rank intermediate candidates.
Implementation of IRV elections is likely to result in more candidates running for office, which will require even more effort to rank.
And remember, a voter may be faced with more choices than simply ranking their favorite flavor of ice cream. I can vote for 165 separate political offices. Imagine if each only had 5 candidates. That is over 825 rankings (most are for 4-year terms, some for 2, and other for 6). So perhaps I would only have to do a few 100 at each general election.
Compare to the alternative of a true runoff. Each voter simply has to express their first preference. If that candidate doesn’t get a majority, then another election is held. Eliminated candidates may make endorsements. There will be an opportunity for voters to become better informed about the two finalists. And then they simply vote for who they wish to serve them.