The voters of Shelby County, Tennessee (which contains Memphis) will vote on November 2, 2010, on a new charter, which would combine city and county government. The proposal also asks the voters if they wish to use Instant Runoff Voting for council members.
The proposal won’t go into effect until the county’s vote-counting machines are ready to use IRV. Also, IRV won’t go into effect unless both the city and the county vote for the proposal to unify the governments, even if the county voters vote separately in favor of the IRV idea. As the comment below says, Memphis voters already voted to use IRV in 2008.
Memphis city voters will be using instant runoff voting no matter what happens with this vote– they approved it 71% to 29% in 2008.
Thank you. I’ll amend the post.
This county votes on paperless Diebold TSX touchscreens.
Rather than push for paper ballot based systems, Memphis wants to make elections more complex.
Notice how when IRV is being touted, its IRV, Instant Runoff Voting, but once the sale is made, it is renamed Ranked Choice Voting.
So the tail will wag the dog, and instead of having many options to choose from to have more transparent elections, the city is committed to spending millions of $ voting system that can tally IRV as first priority. Perhaps they’ll end up like Pierce Co and find out that the new machines can’t tally IRV. Pierce had to create new procedures to deal with this, as well as hire more election workers. Pierce Co ditched IRV later by a landslide.
Does anyone know when there will be certified software for the TSx that can run IRV contests? I have heard of no plans, so they might be waiting a while. I wonder how much the upgrade will cost.
Joyce has a good point about deceptively using the term “IRV” for multi-seat races. IRV is strictly for single seat contests, so something else will be implemented in the end. They mean STV, right? That’s what Cambridge, MA uses for their council, and they are the only U.S. jurisdiction I can think of that has used STV on a long term basis. You don’t get a 50%+1 majority with STV, but the people of Cambridge understand that.
Steve Mulroy, the Shelby county commissioner who has been a leader in advocacy for IRV in Memphis, has also been a leader in the fight for optical scan machines. New machines are expected to be in place by 2012.
As to Cambridge, any five-member majority of the city council represents a majority of voters. As to Shelby County, it has different options for an IRV ballot in multi-seat races — numbered posts, for example, or versions of the multi-seat, majoritarian systems used in Aspen (CO), Hendersonville (NC) or primaries in Charlottesvile (VA.
IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones to single offices when the Middle is divided.
34 S–M–H
33 H–M–S
16 M–S–H
16 M–H–S
99
The IRV math MORONS can NOT detect that IRV only looks at a part of a Place Votes Table.
1—2—3
S 34–16–49
H 33–16–50
M 32–67–0
I.E. IRV math MORONS can NOT detect the mere 67 votes for M in 2nd place — means nothing to them since they are FANATIC M-O-R-O-N-S.
App.V. – pending head to head math.
IRV is a scam. Why? Because we believe in majority rule elections. Run off elections usually produce a lower voter turn out. Well that traditionally favors the more conservative candidate. Well the Dems don’t like this fact. So they package IRV as saving taxpayers money and the Republicans fall for it. Just a plurality of vote wins never a majority.
If you’ve got Stalin and Hitler running in the same election and people can’t make up their minds between them, IRV is the least of your worries.
P.S. We were using the terms IRV and ranked choice voting interchangeably during the campaign to get IRV in Memphis, and I have the campaign literature to prove it. I can’t speak for other areas that have passed IRV, but Joyce’s comment does not accurately refer to mine.
Furthermore, the state legislature overwhelmingly approved the Voter Confidence Act of 2007, which mandated the use of optical scan machines with a paper audit trail. The man Rob refers to, Mulroy, is having to lobby the Secretary of State to implement a law that is already on the books. The reality of the situation here is nothing like what Joyce describes.
If only there were some short, four-letter word for someone who willfully misrepresents a given situation in order to win an argument…
# 8 Perhaps some folks can NOT detect the New Age politics in the U.S.A. in the various gerrymander disricts since 1964 — ALL Stalin and Hitler clones — aka wannabee dictator Donkeys and Elephants.
Even cumulative voting using an at-large council would be better than IRV. Any single-member districting will allow opportunity for gerrymandering as well. If we did multi-seat districting here (as we should) STV would be better (proportional approval and range methods even more so). But it should always be noted that STV brings results that are absolutely nothing like IRV.
If one insists on foolishly using single-member districts for what should be at-large positions, then approval or range voting should be the first choice. At least then one doesn’t have to worry about vote splitting or fearing not being able to vote for one’s favorite. Even more, the results are much easier to understand.
If FairVote was involved in this, why not push cumulative voting instead? You all seem to like that one. It’s not exactly my personal favorite, but it’s much better than the crappy results IRV would bring.
#11 San Francisco voters turned down STV for its city council elections, instead switching from at-large elections to district elections. When they turned down STV, voters had been told it was like the elections in Australia and Ireland.
A few years later, they voted on IRV. Those favoring IRV argued: 1. No this isn’t the system turned down a few years ago, that was entirely different, AND 2. IRV is how they do elections in Australia and Ireland.
IRV does *not* find majority winners. This fallacy notion that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem has been widely promoted by the organization Fair Vote.
The truth is that IRV often eliminates the majority-favorite candidate in early counting rounds and does *not* count the 2nd choice candidates of all voters when their 1st choice loses because IRV allows the voters of the least popular candidates to determine which candidates are eliminated and most often never counts the 2nd choices of voters’ supporting the more popular candidates as their 1st choice. IRV tends to elect extreme right or extreme left candidates and fails more of Arrow’s Fairness criteria than plurality voting, and is ranked lowest in terms of voter satisfaction of all alternative voting methods by mathematicians.
So Kathy says IRV “tends to elect extreme right or extreme left candidates”. Joyce (and I assume Aaron) say IRV promotes two-party domination. Interesting. Perhaps what IRV really does is just improve plurality voting and runoff elections elections without correcting the inevitable limitations of winner-take-all voting systems.
FairVote has always advocated for alternatives to winner-take-all systems like cumulative voting, choice voting (aka STV) and other forms of proportional voting. But we recommend instant runoff voting for winner-take-all elections and quite comfortable in that position.
Aaron, may I ask what you do to encourage policymakers to change voting rules — actually going out and making the case against the status quo rather than against reformers taking a different path? From what I can tell, the whole slew of advocates of range voting and approval voting haven’t made much of a dent in actually getting change done. It’s a useful exercise, although I suspect it will be a bracing experience when you try to convince policymakers to push for your preferred systems.
Rob,
Give me two to three more years and you’ll see that I will be much more than a commenter from the sidelines. Unfortunately, school is time consuming. But I entered my currently program with the specific purpose to advocate for fairer election systems. I’ll see you before you know it. 😉
Aaron
# 14 How many STUPID folks (like party hack legislators) have been and are being brainwashed by the *quite confortable* folks at FairVote about the EVIL math of IRV for single offices ??? — i.e. NOT treating ALL choice votes the same – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.
Nonpartisan Approval Voting for executive/judicial offices — pending major public education about head to head math.
i.e. *progress* in *political science* since 1776.
You’re going to have to do more than call us “evil” if you want to defeat the cause for fairer elections in the USA. Most of us who support FairVote and their sincere efforts to bring about positive change have already been called much worse.
Aaron — Try it at your school. Try it with your city. You just may find that real people who make decisions about rules care about things like “later no harm” whether they use that phrase or not.
I have no problems with argumentation. I’ve chosen my position based on its merits and have no issue with defending it. These voting systems did not merely stumble into my favorites. As far as implementation goes, I’ve been successfully persuasive at lower levels. I think I’ll wait until I’m out of school, or at least nearly so, before I attempt to change the voting system of a city. In the meantime, I apologize for having to leave you in anticipation.
And you’ll notice that I’ve been intellectually honest. I have not heavily degraded cumulative voting nor STV. I’ve read Douglas Amy’s work and am not ignorant on the US’s history with proportional systems. I’m not reflexive to deride a system that is not my favorite, so long as it has substantive merit (which IRV falls short). And I don’t think we’re at odds on everything. Obviously, I’m also for proportional representation. We just have different means of accomplishing that goal.
So clearly, I’m not one to vouch for IRV as a stepping stone. I can imagine the recognition that you’ve supported an inadequate system being difficult. But it’s necessary to move on and admit mistakes. Democracy is, after all, the essential tool that allows all of our important issues and ideas to come into light. And that’s much more paramount than deferring humility.
I’m not sure if you intended your message as a deterrence. But you’ll find that when school isn’t holding me back that I’ll only become louder. Range and approval voting will be in the US’s future. I’ll make sure of it.