Bills have been introduced in both houses of the Hawaii legislature to provide that special elections should be conducted using Instant Runoff Voting. The House bill, HB 638, was to have had a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on February 1, but that hearing has been postponed to February 15. The identical Senate bill, SB 667, doesn’t have a hearing date yet.
Hawaii special elections include party labels on the ballot, but parties don’t have nominees. There is only one round in special elections. On May 22, 2010, Hawaii had held a special U.S. House election, in which the three leading candidates were Republican Charles Djou, and Democrats Colleen Hanabusa and Ed Case. Djou won with 39.4% of the total vote cast. The two leading Democrats, together, polled 58.4%, but they were both defeated since Djou polled the most votes. In November 2010, under a normal system in which parties have nominees, Djou was defeated.
Sure, if there are two polarized groups, and the only thing any member of either group cares about is that one of their own wins, then IRV works.
But as soon as one Hawaiian thinks to themself “I like Democrat 1 more than Republican 1, but Republican 1 more than Democrat 2” then the system begins to fall apart again.
Not to mention the fact that this will continue to leave voters choice defacto restricted to Republicans and Democrats, with no help to third parties and independents.
IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones for single offices — when the muddled Middle is divided.
34 S–M–H
33 H–M–S
16 M–S–H
16 M–H–S
99
IRV is a total EVIL perversion — NO EQUAL counting of ALL 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice votes.
M loses. S beats H 50-49. Take Cover.
A mere 99 1st plus 2nd choice votes for M — means nothing to IRV EVIL fanatics who will love having Stalin and Hitler clones elected to single person public offices.
P.R. and App.V — pending major education about head to head math.
If Hawaii adopts IRV for special elections, they will eventually come to regret it as did North Carolina.
A law passed in 2006 said that for judicial vacancies that occurred after the primaries, instead of appointing someone to the vacancy for two years, the state would have IRV contests.
NOTE – if your state doesn’t treat ballots as public documents, i.e they won’t publish raw vote data, then you absolutely should NOT use IRV.
San Francisco publishes the raw vote data so people can check to see if the tally is correct and also see if their votes hurt or helped their choices.
In North Carolina, the tallies could be massively inaccurate and we wouldn’t know because we can’t see the raw vote data.
“RV was used in the special election for an appeals court seat, which drew 13 candidates. On Nov. 2, Cressie Thigpen led with 395,220 votes, or 20 percent. Doug McCullough was next with 295,619 votes, or 15 percent. As the top two, under the IRV rules their second- and third-place votes were added. Last week, five weeks after the election, the State Board of Elections announced that McCullough was now the winner with 544,023 votes to 537,445 for Thigpen.
This was, of course, not precisely like a separate runoff for another important reason: 1,943,771 people voted in this race on Nov. 2. But the votes for McCullough and Thigpen after the “instant” runoff totaled 1,081,468. What happened to the other 862,303? These were voters who did not mark McCullough or Thigpen as their first-, second- or third-choice candidates. So the “instant” runoff was like holding a second separate election in which 862,303 people who voted in the first election — 44 percent of the total — were excluded from participating. ”
http://www.news-record.com/blog/54431/entry/107176
See also the IRV fanatic math in the Australia House of Reps. — full of party hack extremists.
Gee – more folks NOT brainwashed by the IRV/Alt. V. EVIL fanatics.
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http://www.fairvote.ca/en/FVC-news/fair-vote-canada-reaffirms-commitment-to-proportional-representation
Joyce McCloy defends plurality voting rules in Hawaii with incomplete information about North Carolina. The website http://www.ncvotes123.com has more information on these elections.
In the statewide judicial vacancy race with 13 candidates, plurality voting would have meant a winner with just 20%, with the second-place candidate 5%b behind. IRV confirmed that of the voters who indicated any preference for either of the two frontrunners, the winner was preferred on more ballots. A county-level race also indicated that a candidate in second had more support when compared to the candidate in first in a race in which neither candidate earned 40%. Both races were nonpartisan, but when looking at the partisan endorsements in both races, the outcomes were entirely logical and more reflective of voter opinion than plurality voting.
As to the IRV counting process in NC, the state could have IRV results on election night if using the software in place in Bay Area cities. They did not have the software, so they started a hand-count procedure four weeks after the election. But the state board of elections leadership said that “IRV worked” and more people cast ballots in the statewide race than in three of the four other comparable races.
Three new cities will use IRV this November in St. Paul (MN), Portland (ME) and Telluride (CO), and it is subject of a national referendum in the UK.
# 6 What would the math have been with nonpartisan Approval Voting ??? — vote for one or more — highest win — for executive/judicial offices.
#6 North Carolina uses the Top 2 Open Primary for its judicial elections. If there is a judicial vacancy midterm, the governor appoints someone, and the seat is contested normally at the next election.
The only reason that North Carolina had an IRV election was that the sitting judge decided to quit after the primary and take another job. North Carolina should should make it illegal for a judge to resign, except for malfeasance, death, or severe disability. They could provide for a resignation prior to the filing deadline, to take effect after the next election. After all, James Wynn was nominated to the federal court of appeals in November 2009. He could have tendered his resignation effective in November 2010, or told President Obama that he was obligated to the voters of North Carolina who had elected him.
Secondly, if North Carolina held its primary at a more reasonable time (August rather than May), there would be fewer resignations that triggered the IRV procedure)
When there is a mid-term judicial vacancy in North Carolina, the governor appoints a replacement who can serve up to two years. Even in this case where the resignation didn’t happen until August, the governor appointed Cressie Thigpen. It would not have been a great harm to wait another 2 years.
There were 2,700,363 votes cast in the November 2010 election. Doug McCullough received 20.14% of them. Cressie Thigpen 19.90%. 59.96% of the voters, voted for neither, even given three chances.
The North Carolina IRV election was decidedly lacking in transparency. If the leadership of the SBOE said that “it worked” it should be assumed to be self-serving.
“more people cast ballots in the statewide race than in three of the four other comparable races.”
You’re telling a porky here. There were 5 conventional statewide judicial races in November 2010. You apparently don’t consider the Supreme Court race to be a “comparable” election, but do consider the Court of Appeals race where there was an unopposed candidate to be comparable. So two of the four contested Top 2 statewide judicial election had more votes cast, and two had less than the IRV election. One of the contested races had two Republicans, so there was less support from Democrat voters. And it was the only contested race in which both candidates were male. BTW, that race showed the value of a conventional runoff, in that the incumbent overcame a 10% deficit in the primary, to win by 7% in the general election.
The IRV race was presented separately on the ballot, while the other judicial races were bottom of the ballot below all the congressional and legislative and even district attorney races. There was a dropoff in the conditional races, as voters gradually realized they didn’t have a clue as to which candidate to vote for.
And even though more ballots were cast in the IRV race, 862,466 of them disappeared between election and the runoff. Where did they go? For all we know know, they were dumped in Pamlico Sound.