On February 7, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors postponed consideration of two proposal concerning Instant Runoff Voting until February 14. One amendment abolishes IRV; the other expands the number of choices for a voter in a single race, beyond just first, second and third choice. If either or both pass on February 14, then they would go on the ballot for voters to decide.
HAVE YOU ACTUALLY READ WHAT THE PROPOSED CHARTER AMENDMENT SAYS?
The current charter says that a voter may rank all candidates (unless that is not feasible on the city’s voting equipment), in which case a voter may be limited to “not less than 3”.
The proposed amendment says that a voter may be limited to the technical limits of the equipment but in no case less than 3.
So basically under current law, if the equipment could handle 5 rankings and the race had 9 candidates, a nefarious Director of Election could limit voters to 3 rankings; but if there were only 4 candidates, then a voter would have to be permitted to rank all 4.
Under the proposed change, a voter would have to be allowed to rank 5.
But it doesn’t require that new equipment be acquired, and it is likely that the 3 choice limit be continued.
Why not simply give voters a list of candidates and let them place numerals next to each name of each candidate. Proponents could breathlessly boast that is the way that it is done in Australia and Ireland.
If necessary, the city could sponsor H1B visas for election workers from Ireland who have the technical expertise to count the ballots. Alternatively, you could use citizen counters. The only extra cost is the laurel leaves for the counters.
IRV = THE method to elect Stalin/Hitler clones when the magic Middle is divided.
34 S–M–H
33 H–M–S
16 M–S–H
16 M–H–S
99
Gee – who has 99 of 99 votes in 1st plus 2nd place BUT loses.
———–
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
— pending Condorcet Head to Head math — requiring computer votes in any sort of complex case.
Or if you want a technical fix add the following:
Definitions:
1. A completed ballot is one in which a voter has used every ranking available on the ballot, giving exactly one candidate each ranking; and not giving any candidate more than one ranking. (Note a declared write-in candidate is a candidate. If a voter writes the name of someone who is not a declared write-in candidate, it will be treated as if he had not used that ranking, and thus can not be considered a completed ballot).
2. A system coerced exhausted ballot is a completed ballot for which all ranked candidates have been eliminated. In other words, the voter would presumably have ranked additional candidates but for deficiencies in the voting system. If a ballot is not a completed ballot, then there are unused preferences, repeated preferences for the same candidate, or overvotes. That is, the voter voluntarily or by mistake did not use all the rankings he was limited to.
Elimination Procedure:
After the initial count, or after any subsequent transfers have been completed, determine if any additional candidates may be eliminated. While it is traditionally seen as eliminating the last place candidate, and then checking for multiple eliminations, it is actually simpler to try to eliminate as many candidates as possible, and then test for fewer candidates, and eliminate only one as the last resort.
So given N continuing candidates, who are sorted into descending number of votes v[i] (i.e if i = v[j], and NCE is the number of coerced exhausted ballots.
for i = 1,N-1
if v[i] > sum(v(i+1..N) + NCE then
eliminate i+1 .. N trailing candidates, exit.
end if
end for
If we fall through the loop, we can’t even eliminate the last place candidate, because of the coerced exhausted ballots. At this point we quit, and hold a new election with only the N remaining candidates, one month later. This process may be repeated as necessary at monthly intervals.
Or simply let voters indicate equally ranked candidates. Each ballot can be considered to have a current rank; this is initially, 1 (one). After all candidates for a given rank have been eliminated, the current rank is incremented by one.
If there are multiple continuing candidates for the current rank, then the vote is divided equally among them. If a voter has equally ranked A, B, D, F, and K; and B and F have been eliminated, then the continuing candidates A, D, and K each are credited with 1/3 of a vote. If K is then eliminated, A and D will each be credited with 1/2 of a vote.
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