On March 15, the 9th circuit heard oral arguments in Dudum v City and County of San Francisco. This is a federal case, filed in 2010 by opponents of San Francisco’s version of Instant-Runoff Voting. Because the San Francisco vote-counting equipment is not as flexible as it might be, San Francisco’s system limits voters to a first choice, second choice, and third choice, when they vote for city officials. Opponents of IRV filed the lawsuit, arguing that the limit on the number of choices is unconstitutional. This San Francisco Chronicle article says that the three judges seemed skeptical of that argument. The IRV opponents lost this case in U.S. District Court.
The three judges on the case are Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon, Clinton appointees, and Carlos Bea, a Bush Jr. appointee. All three judges are Californians. The law firm representing the opponents of IRV is the same law firm that represents former California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, in the two lawsuits currently challenging certain aspects of California’s top-two system. This is ironic, because according to the newspaper story, this law firm in Dudum v City and County of San Francisco is emphasizing that the U.S. Constitution requires that all votes be counted. And yet in the two pending cases against certain aspects of Proposition 14, the same law firm is arguing that it is constitutional to provide write-in space on ballots and yet not only not count write-ins, but not even count how many write-ins were cast. Under California’s Proposition 14, a write-in winner could win in November and even then those write-ins would not be counted. UPDATE: here is another newspaper story about the hearing.
I’m no fan of IRV by any means. Approval Voting is much better by any reasonable measure. But the idea that IRV is not constitutional because it isn’t expressive enough is downright ridiculous. I stand by my previous statement on this one:
This idea that top-three IRV is unconstitutional because it limits a voter’s expression is laughable. Is it the limit of expression within a voting system that makes it unconstitutional by whatever means (free association, equal protection, and due process in this case)? If this is the conclusion, Plurality Voting would be banned. After all, Plurality is about the least expressive type of voting there is.
If they want to be consistent and start banning Plurality and top-three IRV, then that’s fine with me. But I don’t think that’s very realistic. And it doesn’t sound like the 9th Circuit thought it was very realistic either.
One more case with MORON lawyers ???
IRV does NOT treat ALL 2nd, 3rd, etc. place votes the same.
— one more blatant facial violation of the Equal Protection Clause — especially for single offices.
BUT in this New Age of nonstop math MORONS, any MORON fix seems to be OK.
14th Amdt, Sec. 2 for the write-in stuff.
How many MORON lawyers are there in the U.S.A. ???
#1 In the San Francisco District 10 supervisor race 20% of ballots were irregularly marked. I wonder if anyone has done an analysis to see if there is a racial or income correlation?
When that was last an open seat San Francisco used a conventional runoff, and it was won by a vigorous grass root campaign. If you look at the races under IRV, they are effectively plurality races, as the secondary and tertiary preferences are scattered. A conventional runoff would give the top candidates an opportunity to debate and a true consensus be determined.
@4
I’m not familiar with a racial/socioeconomic breakdown of ballot spoilage rates. If such a discrepancy existed, you would still have to compare that discrepancy with Plurality. And then you’d have to fit it with a law. This argument the Plaintiffs are using against IRV is crazy, though.
And a top-two runoff hardly ensures a consensus. It only appears to do so, just like IRV appears to do so. The issue is that we don’t know when irregularities occur because we rarely have access to data that would provide us with the answer.
But in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election we had that data. This was the infamous “Lizard” Edwards vs. “Wizard” Duke election. The incumbent, Roemer, was shown through polling as preferred over both the Lizard and the Wizard in one-on-one matchups. But Roemer got the minority of votes and didn’t make it to the runoff. The Lizard actually won despite the majority not wanting him and a clear preference for Roemer.
Why did this happen? Because traditional runoffs still use Plurality for the first round and Plurality is vulnerable to vote splitting. Roemer would have gotten knocked out under IRV as well. That’s because just like Plurality splits votes, IRV splits first choice preferences. Roemer would get the fewest first choice preferences and get eliminated. This IRV outcome is clear because the Plurality election told us what the first choice preference was.
Want a small two-person race? Use Approval for the first round, and then use a runoff. Or you could make open primaries the first Approval Voting round, and the general election the “runoff.”
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