Stateline, a service of the Pew Center on the States, has this report on North Carolina’s use of Instant Runoff Voting this November for a statewide non-partisan judicial race. The essay, by Josh Goodman, is neutral and balanced, but does suggest that the state has not properly prepared for IRV. Other sources, not discussed here, have reported that so few voters know in advance about IRV that early voters are not marking their ballots properly. They assume they are supposed to vote for multiple candidates in the part of the ballot reserved for voters to cast their first choice. They assume the race is to elect several winners. This is not surprising, because in the recent past, North Carolina was one of the states in which many state legislators were elected in multi-winner districts. Thanks to Jack Dean for the link.
IRV Is No Good
Thanks to all of those well intentioned do-gooders for promoting IRV, another error in our foray on Normandy Beach.
We continue see more and more wasted time and effort spent for those single winner district egotists, under IRV single winner districts.
Unfortunately, The USA Parliament, Inc. does incorrectly use IRV in voting on its rules, and that was a mistake. Our rules are not a single winner district, we use a multiple district, when electing our set of multiple rules.
I am planning to lead a drive to expunge IRV from the rules, as we have no use for single winner districts at all, as they are counterproductive. These egotists are not team players, and we need to work as a team, not to promote egotistical single winner district power grabbers, power mongers, and greed heads.
We use the Sainte-Lague system.
http://www.usparliament.org/rules.htm
I don’t believe we have any multi-winner districts in NC for either house of the State Legislature. Now we do for County Commissioner, City Council and other more local offices, but I do not think we do for state legislature or anything higher than that.
I’m not your average person when it comes to voting and election stuff I guess, but I’ve been working with the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections a couple days in the past week and the setup doesn’t seem difficult to me at all and it also seemed well explained. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will understand it.
Thank you, Jordan. You are right. I corrected the post.
What is the IQ of the *average* voter — when a NEW election system comes along — and there are BAD voter instructions ???
Is the regime too cheap to produce some SAMPLE ballots on how to vote ???
One more election outrage.
I’ve never met a person who doesn’t know how to rank choices #1, #2, #3, the more the better.
But there’s plenty of those who will try to apply that to single winner districts, instead of multiple winner districts of two or more such as president and vice president, governor and lt. governor and chairman and vice chairman.
By promoting single winner districts, you’re pretty guaranteeing that when 2/3rds of the voters plus two votes prefers the top ranked male and the top ranked female to represent them, you’re guaranteeing there will be no guarantee the results are as 2/3rds of the voters wish.
If you don’t understand why 2/3rds should achieve gender balance, then you don’t understand the concept of why single winner districts are bogus.
The Sainte-Lague system is for electing two or more per district under STV (single transferable vote).
IRV is for assuring gender balance isn’t achieved in two member districts (chairman and vice chairman).
“…you’re pretty guaranteeing that when 2/3rds of the voters plus two votes prefers the top ranked male and the top ranked female…” (or visa versa, top ranked female and top ranked male)
Opposite gender #1!
http://www.usparliament.org/parpar.htm
Only in two member, or more than two (such as 100) member districts, will 50/50 gender balance be guaranteed when 2/3rds of the voters vote that way. I.e. the assembly will be 50/50 female/male if 2/3rds of the voters vote for 50% male and 50% female (or visa versa).
Under single winner districts, that isn’t the case, because one gender can win every seat when 2/3rds of the voters put say for example only female names as #1, and only male names as #2 under IRV. Then the female names win in every single winner district under IRV. I.e. president and vice president will both be female, even though 2/3rds ranked a male as #2, and 2/3rds voted for one male and one female (or visa versa).
Are you still for single winner districts under IRV, considering the results are counter to how 2/3rds of the voters wanted in each district, governor and lt. governor, president and vice president and chairman and vice chairman or multi-member assemblies
Mr. Greene [Constitution] is the president of the Free the Vote Foundation, is he for single winner districts?
Consider the fact that his organization will never guarantee gender balance for prez/vp, as long as the two seats are elected as single winner districts, and as long as 50% plus one of voters ranked two different names that were male, as both president and vice president, yet 50% minus one had voted for the same female name as either president or vice president.
In that scenario, almost twice as many votes went to the female name, but males won both seats with about one vote less that half as many votes as the one female name received.
So two male names can win each single winner district, while the one female name didn’t win anything.
So he’d have two males elected, when twice as many voted for the female name at either post.
Here’s an example of how an election in North Carolina SHOULD be promoted by Mr. Greene [Constitution]…
Fellow male NCs, I encourage you to please vote for the opposite gender #1, and my name #2, like this;
#1, a female
#2, Greene
A female/Greene for Gov./Lt. Gov.
Or for females…please vote opposite gender #1, like this;
#1, Greene
#2, a female
A Greene/female for Governor/Lt. Governor
These kinds of things, females really like…just look at the 6th California Parliament’s Cabinet, whose results will be announced soon, and then show me what the NC Constitution Party’s executive Cabinet looks like. We have four 100-member parliaments, with plenty of consecutive ranked back-ups too. But compared to D-Day, we are only about the same as 15 minutes on the beach, and we’re being decimated…
http://www.usparliament.org/ca-par-cabinet.htm
I look forward to seeing you participate more, with a truly democratically legit system. Not the waste-your-time bogus single winner districts for egotists, that everyone around here promotes…but the Sainte-Lague parliament seat distribution system.
Thank you,
–James Ogle (why did you THINK they called it Google?)
Clap, clap, clap, “THANK YOu” applause applause, clap clap, clap, applause, applause…”thank you”….clap, clap, clap, clap, applause “thanks”…clap clap, clap, applause…”please….thank you” clap, clap, clap…etc., etc. please!
North Carolina DOES have multi seat contests in city council races. In fact, Hendersonville, the one city to volunteer twice for an IRV pilot, has each time used “pick three” IRV for multi seat contests. Neither election has called the IRV votes into play, nor have those votes been reported to the public, so we don’t know how they played out.
North Carolina’s vote vendor has already advised the state they can’t be responsible for any IRV related fiascos:
“IRV is not an approved function at the federal or state level of current ES&S software, firmware or hardware. Subsequently, we will work at the direction of the SBE and counties to assist but cannot be held responsible for issues as a result of IRV..”.~ letter from PrintElect to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, dated August 31, 2010.
Little to no voter education is being done and some county political parties are giving voters incorrect information on how to rank the IRV contest for Court of Appeals.
IRV is a bogus system, that shouldn’t be used.
If a council has five seats, then it’s a five member district. If an assembly has 60 seats, it’s a 60 member district. IRV is for single winner districts, which attract egotists.
The former, the five member district, 1/6th of the votes plus one vote, should elect one of the five.
The latter, a 60-member district, the first 60 with 1/61st of the vote plus one vote should elect one of the 60 seats.
Look at Cambridge Massachusetts, where there are nine seats elected, and the paper ballots are counted by hand. The threshold there is 1/10th of the votes plus one vote. So the first nine candidates that receive 1/10th of the the votes plus one vote wins. The tenth one gets a maximum of 1/10th of the votes, but not plus one vote, so they are the one that didn’t win.
This is the Sainte-Lague system. IRV is for single winner districts and should not be used.
Another dysfunctional way that shouldn’t be used, is when half are elected every cycle. That’s wrong. In order to be perfectly proportional, all seats are elected every year.
“IRV is not an approved function at the federal or state level…”
Good, I am glad IRV isn’t approved. There’s too many well intentioned do-gooders who promote IRV, and they attract the power grabbing, greed head egotists, who think they’re better than everyone else.
The best number is an odd number, like three, five, seven, nine…like The USA Parliament, Inc.
We have a five member executive, because the old way, a two member executive, we stalled whenever one person slacked. So we improved the rules to make it the triple prime minister, dual secretary system. Decisions by a committee of five. Not some lone dictator president, who picks the vice president, like everyone is used to.
You single winner district people are such cro magnons!
SMD = ANTI-Democracy minority rule.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander districts = about 25 percent minority rule.
REAL Democracy —
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner — via pre-election candidate rank order lists — to transfer excess votes down and loser votes up.
Both majority rule and minority representation.