The May 14 Washington Post again calls on the city council to put Instant Runoff Voting in place, at least for city council elections. Here is the editorial. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
The May 14 Washington Post again calls on the city council to put Instant Runoff Voting in place, at least for city council elections. Here is the editorial. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
Rob Richie’s twenty-year drive for IRV has been a disaster for third parties and independents.
IRV allows the biggest party to win every single-winner district. IRV is a continuation of the two party system.
For those advocating IRV I say “wake up”. IRV is not good.
James – I disagree. There is no “best” voting system. IRV hasn’t been “a disaster” in any way, shape, or form to any group because it has never been widely adopted. There is one significant example of where it has been adopted: the lower chamber of the Australian legislature is elected via full-preference IRV in single winner districts. Here is the distribution of party members elected to that body today:
Green Party – 1 member
Labor Party – 55 members
Katter’s Party – 1 member
Country Liberal Party – 1 member
independents – 2 members
Liberal Party – 74 members
Nationals – 15 members
Palmer United – 1 member
The point is that “The Nationals” are a third party with significant representation, and there are six elected as independents of one sort or another. This level of diversity does not exist in *any* US state nor the US Congress.
IRV is far superior to what we have now, known to insiders as “first past the post” — which I’m convinced is a nefarious plot to keep the two party system in power.
“Perfect is the enemy of good.” — generally attributed to Voltaire
Why promote a system that perpetuates the two-party system? IRV isn’t proportional, it’s winner-takes-all. The top vote getter gets everything.
Under pure proportional representation the math and percentages are perfect; 33.33& (plus one vote) is always the threshold in a two-member district.
When is this not ever perfect?
Didn’t Dick Cheney say that about Iraq; “No voting system is perfect.”?
Well for your information, I’ve been counting votes under pure proportional representation for twenty consecutive years and the math has always been perfect.
What math do you use that’s not perfect? IRV, of course!
“Perfect practice makes perfect.”
–Dr. Johnson, Pastor at Pilgrim Congregational Church
What math do you use that’s not perfect? IRV, of course!
(Oh yeah, no election is perfect, as you like IRV in single-winner districts. It’s no wonder the voting system isn’t expected to be perfect. Because you like faulty systems.
Don Wills wrote;
“IRV is far superior to what we have now, known to insiders as “first past the post” — which I’m convinced is a nefarious plot to keep the two party system in power.”
I wrote;
“We have been using pure proportional representation in the USA for twenty consecutive years and the results have always been perfect proportional with votes cast as proof.
Rob Richies’ “Fair Vote” organization has been promoting a faulty single-winner system and like most lovers of single winner like the political parties who elect single-winner chairs, to consider a multi-candidate election for his seat is always out of the question because it’s a threat to his dictatorial position.
Single-winnr power grabbers don’t want democracy for the people. They want top-down control.
They can’t think when it comes to math in elections, their brains shut down and then they want to dictate the incorrect information while they have no idea of the destruction they spread.”
Just look at SF as an example for what IRV has brought – a political power house for Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, Diane Feinstein, and the ever repressive SF Chronicle.
The SF city council most likely has elecven Ds. There are no Rs, Ls, Gs of whom I’m aware. Each IRV districy divides the city, but pure PR you’d have one at-large election where the first candidate garnering 1/12th of the votes plus one vote, wins each of the eleven seats.
IRV hasn’t helped electoral reform in SF and the current eleven district boundaries are probably more costly and more of a way to divide and ghettoize rather than unite the city as a whole.
I perceive at-large elections to allow candidates to speak for the whole city instead of just the local district.
That way, you can have your cake and eat it too.
If you want to vote for a candidate because they live nearby geographically then you vote for their name #1. But if you prefer a candidate across town because of their political ideology, you put them down as #1.
You get both ways under at-large RCV.
Under proportionalism you can have it both ways (more choice) but under IRV single winner districts you can only vote for people who live close to you. You don’t get the choice of voting for someone to represent you and city as a whole when the candidate lives in any of the ten districts you don’t live in. (90% of the voters suffer from that under IRV in SF, they have to vote within their district only.)
Candidates should be chosen to represent the city based on the #1 votes, not whether they live near you or not.
After all, they’re being elected to represent the whole city anyway as one city council, aren’t they? What’s more important, balancing the city’s budget or getting more pork for their own district’s projects?
To support IRV has been a tremendous waste of time, money, resources, political action and people should hold FairVote accountable for the flaws in their thinking for the past twenty years to current.
Their push for flawed math has been unfortunate for those who have gotten behind the rotten math and rotten results and I’ve been pushing to expose their behavior since they won’t bother to answer the phone, talk or be open to unity from my own experience similar to most single-winner dictator types of orgs.
How did you distribute the 22 Liberal National MPs?
James – you don’t seem to understand the difference between politics and fantasyland. Politics is the art of the possible. Fantasyland is the world that does not exist, and will never exist. It is possible to get to IRV from where we are now. It is not possible to get to where you want to go.
I live in Wyoming – we have one House member. How do you suggest we split that person up? Two legs and an arm R, left arm D?
The only way to get to proportional representation is to abolish the states, and along with them the Senate and House as we know them today. That’s not gonna happen. Ever. The USA will dissolve or explode first.
However, we can get to IRV from where we are now without throwing out the good constitutional things we have now like the checks and balances of the three branches of government, the House and Senate with staggered elections, etc.
James – what you advocate is perfect in your mind, but is an absolute fantasy. Democracy is a very imperfect system of governance, but along with a constitution with rules for protection of minorities and a representative, republican form of law-making, it’s the best mankind is capable of at this time in our history.
Cambridge Massachusetts has been using RCV correctly in an at-large nine-member district for more than 50 years.
The city of Cambridge MA’s at-large elections, for all nine city council members, for close to 70 years.
Honorable Don Wills wrote on Ballot Access News article commentary;
“you don’t seem to understand the difference between politics and fantasyland. Politics is the art of the possible. Fantasyland is the world that does not exist, and will never exist. It is possible to get to IRV from where we are now. It is not possible to get to where you want to go.”
http://ballot-access.org/2015/05/17/washington-post-again-endorses-instant-runoff-voting-for-washington-d-c-city-council-races/#comments
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NEWSFLASH FOR DON AND OTHER MAL-INFORMED!!!
The city of Cambridge MA HAS BEEN USING RANKED CHOICE VOTING in city at-large elections for the city council, for all nine city council members, for close to 70 years.
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James – I try to be very concise with my words. I wrote “IRV hasn’t been “a disaster” in any way, shape, or form to any group because it has never been widely adopted.” Note the words “never been widely adopted”. I stand by those words, and then I give one real example of real politics on a national scale using IRV.
I give the example of Australia electing its 100+ partisan members to the lower chamber of the national legislature based on English common law with single winner geographically bounded districts using IRV. And you give the example of a 9 member, un-districted, non-partisan city council. Readers can judge for themselves which one of us has the better argument.
Don,
The Liberal and National parties are in coalition. They only ran against each other in ten divisions, with there being a real contest between the two parties in only three divisions (Mallee, Durack, and O’Connor, all in quite remote areas).
The two parties have formally merged in Queensland. For some reason you don’t show the results for the Liberal National Party of Queensland. They have also merged in Northern Territory where they ran as Country Liberal (the National Party was originally the Country Party).
As you may know, IRV was created in Australia by the two parties to keep Labor candidates from being elected on a plurality vote. As ALP has become competitive, the two parties generally do not run against each other due to concerns about leakage on transfers. For example, say that the the Liberal and National candidates get 30% and 25% of the vote and Labor 45%. The hope would be that supporters of whoever finished 3rd would transfer to the 2nd-place candidate, keeping Labor out.
30%: 1 Lib, 2 Nat, 3 Lab
25%: 1 Nat, 2 Lib, 3 Lab
45%: 1 Lab, 2 ??, 3 ??
But if you are the National candidate and want to be elected, you are going to need to take 1st preferences from the Liberal candidate. In doing so, you risk switching some of your 2nd preferences to ALP, as well as some of the Liberal 2nd preferences.
Over time, you start allocating seats, so the two parties don’t compete.
The real alignment is:
90 The Coalition
55 ALP
1 Green
4 independents
Jim – The Australian IRV system is still built inside a parliamentary form of governance. What this means is that executive branch serves at the will of the legislature (and technically the monarch). Thus it is necessary for a coalition to be created in the legislature that creates a majority to be able to control the executive. This dynamic does not exist and will not exist in the USA as the executive is separately elected by the people both nationally and in the states. Thus, any conclusion surmised from the Australian IRV system is only somewhat applicable to what would happen in the USA.
Hopefully Maine will adopt IRV statewide for its legislature and we will be able to get a much better understanding of how well it works in practice in the USA. The lip service that TPTB give about how the states are the laboratories for trying out various policies might be exactly what is needed to end the stranglehold the Ds and Rs have, thanks to allowing true preference voting as the driving factor in voter’s decision making, instead of the voting for the lesser of two evils that now is the primary driver.
Don,
But in Australia, the National and Liberal parties can no longer be considered independent parties, that form a coalition after the election. Even the website of the Australia Electoral Commission shows the results for “The Coalition” (note definite article), with the results of the component parties shown afterward. And in Queensland and Northern Territory the parties have formally merged. The Liberals and Nationals do not compete except in a few rare divisions.
There was a coalition formed after the 2010 election because ALP did not have a parliamentary majority, and they ended up making various deals. They also lost the 2013 election.
The combination of IRV and the parliamentary system and IRV may have helped the independents to be elected. They typically were not in first place on 1st preferences, but they did outpoll an ALP or Liberal candidate. They did well among the also-rans, if you rank a no-hoper as your first choice, you aren’t going to go for one of the major brands with your 2nd choice. The Greens transferred about 50% to ALP, but about 30% to an independent, suggesting that their support is a mix of ideology, and a protest vote.
But the final transfer from the third-place finished was overwhelmingly to the independent. This is likely due to the parliamentary system. If a vote for the Democratic candidate was seen as being a vote for Nancy Pelosi to be PM, very few Republicans will vote for the Democratic candidate. The same would be true if a vote for the Republican candidate would be a vote for John Boehner for PM.
How many IRV elections in which both of the final top 2 are EXTREMISTS ??? See the SF city council.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.