1. IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones when the Middle is divided — too hard for the media math MORONS to detect ???

   P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.

2. While officially non-partisan, political parties in North Carolina do endorse judicial candidates. There were 4 conventional Court of Appeals races in North Carolina, plus another election for the State Supreme Court race.

   The race where there was an unopposed candidate had the lowest turnout. Only a doofus testifying in the Idaho GOP lawsuit would not expect this to be true.

   The next lowest was in the race where the Democratics did not endorse a candidate.

   The highest vote total was in the Supreme Court race, followed by the conventional Court of Appeals race that was highest on the ballot. The IRV race was then next in turnout.

   So the IRV race only had higher turnout than one conventional statewide judicial race where there were two candidates endorsed by the major political parties. The conventional judicial runoffs were in the 3rd column of the ballot below all partisan offices. It is remarkable that as many voters did vote for those offices (about 1.9 million vs 2.6 million for the US senate race).

   The IRV race took up all three columns on half a page of the ballot, plus instructions. But only about a 1/3 of the voters voted for either of the top 2 candidates, with a lot of localized or random voting (8 candidates led in at least one county). It is still to be seen how many voters guessed which candidates would be in the Top 2, and expressed a preference.

   Had it been a plurality election, the political parties would have endorsed a single candidate, and it is quite likely that those candidates would have received more votes than the winning candidate will receive under NSIRV.

   NC elects its Court of Appeals judges for 8-year terms, so it is not uncommon to have vacancies. The governor appoints an interim judge, and the seat is contested at the next general election. In fact, an interim judge has been appointed for this particular seat. A responsible judge who does not plan to serve out his term, will resign prior to the election, so that replacement candidates may file for office. I only found one instance of a statewide judicial race since 1996 that had a plurality election.

   So IRV is simply an unnecessary elaboration. If a judge resigns tomorrow, there won’t be an election for 2 years, so there is not a real reason to handle a resignation in a narrow time window as a special case.

   Another remarkable result was that the three superior court IRV elections (which were confined to a single county, or part) had higher turnout than the court of appeals race. All 3 elections had 3 candidates. Either voters were much more aware of these contests – doubtful; or the idea of having 3 choices among 3 candidates was comprehensible, while 3 among 13 was not; or the political parties were able to direct votes more effectively in these contests.

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