Socialist Alternative entered a candidate in the November 7, 2017 elections for Minneapolis city council, ward 3. That candidate, Ginger Jentzen, placed first among the first choice ballots. Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting. Jentzen did not win a majority when the first place votes were counted, so the city then counted the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place ballots. When those votes were counted, Jentzen had lost to a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but even in the final tally she had over 40% of the vote.
See the wikipedia article for the 2017 Minneapolis city elections. Scroll down to ward 3. One of the four candidates in the race was a Green, Samantha Pree-Stinson. The Pree-Stinson campaign did not ask voters to cast their 2nd choice votes for Jentzen.
Minneapolis elections allow party labels on the ballot, but parties don’t have nominees. There was no one in the race with the label “Republican”; there were two candidates with the label “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.”
IRV (instant runoff voting) and RCV (ranked choice voting) in single-winner districts creates a one-party system.
At least by using plurality votes with Xs, the 2nd and 3rd-sized civic groups can randomly win, because of the split vote problem.
Not in IRV or RCV in single-winner districts though, only biggest group wins, guaranteed 100% of the time.
Are you interested in pure proportional representation, a new unity phenomena that’s sweeping the globe?
The United Coalition has been using pure proportional representation for more than twenty-two consecutive years and it works fine.
http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html
Jesus dude (James) you are completely fucking clueless. Just so fucking clueless that you’re a waste of oxygen.
The only thing I disagree with in the system used here, is the fact that one party can run multiple candidates for a seat…. That’s ridiculous.
I generally support the Green Party, but in this race I would have supported Ginger, and am extremely disappointed and concerned that the Green Party reportedly ran to the right of not only the Socialist Alternative candidate, which is to be expected, but also the Democratic candidate who ended up winning. I really wish leftists parties of all stripes would actually work together, and not let a seat like this fall in the hands of the same-old Democratic Party. It sickens me when Greens attack people who are more to the left. Rob Sherman did it, and it is extremely troubling the national Green Party promoted her campaign.
If you’re interested in reading about the race through the Socialist Alternative’s point of view, there’s a good article up on their website by Calvin Priest and Bryan Koulouris.
1. RCV was made to NOT have primaries — ie all candidates of all parties and independents in ONE election.
2. See the Lenin *terror* in the 1918-1921 Russia Civil War and later Stalin terror in late 1930s regarding leftists (aka commies) killing each other off.
Demo, if you think all leftists, or even all socialists, are Stalinist communists who will lead to gulags, you are sorely in need of discussions with socialists of varying stripes, and reading the political party platforms of the 10+ socialist parties in this country.
How about looking at the control freak comments of the mere leftist Donkeys / *socialists* in the gerrymander Congress ???
Hmmmm.
Was *socialist* in the name of the ex/dead 1922-1991 USSR regime and in the ex/dead 1933-1945 one party nazi regime ???
No gulags needed — just pay leftist 100 percent income tax rates and/or do forced labor (in socialist schemes) or get put in a Fed jail for life.
NO shortage of leftist/rightist STATISTS and their EVIL control freak schemes (aka STATISM) — in the last 6,000 plus years.
The Nazi Party was far-right, and National Socialism is a far-right ideology, not a far-left one. To quote from actual socialists who, of course, constantly deal with this myth, “Hitler enforced his fascist ideology on everyone when he privatized banks, busted the unions and steered the party towards right-wing nationalism which encouraged workers to make even greater sacrifices for capitalists as long as they were the same race. In a poem about the holocaust, a pastor named Martin Niemöller wrote “First they came for the socialists…” illustrating the fact Hitler feared socialists so much that he imprisoned/killed them first before going after everybody else.”
I’m not playing this game with you, Demo. Look this stuff up instead of spouting misinformation. If you won’t spend even a minute looking up something as simple as this, then there’s really no point in discussing the minutia of policy and ideology with you, is there? To you, all on the left from liberals to communists are “statists”, all are reaching for the same goal, or will at least all end up in the same place, their differences don’t matter at all, and somehow the Democratic Party is left-wing, which is patently absurd in this political climate.
I said it to you before, and I’ll say it again, as much as I dislike being so blunt: You are willfully ignorant on this topic, and it’s painfully obvious every time it comes up in conversation with you.
Parties do endorse candidates in Minneapolis, but this endorsement does not appear on the ballot.
A couple of elections ago, someone endorsed the official DFL candidate and wrote an endorsement letter or pamphlet where he suggested another candidate was not a real DFL candidate. The official DFL candidate condemned the endorser. That is you can support me, but can’t go around claiming other DFL members are not DFL.
The only non-DFL member of the city council, Green candidate Cam Gordon was first elected when Minneapolis used Top 2 elections, and his opponent received a majority of the primary votes.
The Minneapolis mayoral election illustrates several problems with IRV. The final 2nd place candidate was not a Condorcet winner. The eliminated 5th candidate pushed enough transfers, to force the elimination of the 3rd and 4th candidate/
Of the voters who did not give a first preference to either of the final two candidates, 38% did not give any ranking of those two candidates.
It would be like the final choice for the company picnic was between hamurgers and fried chicken. You would ask the pizza supporters what their second choice and they would variously respond:
(1) I don’t have a second choice.
(2) I don’t have a second choice, but my third choice is pizza.
(3) My first, second, and third choices are pizza, pizza, and pizza.
(4) My first choice is pizza, if we don’t have pizza, let’s have escargot or fried grasshoppers.
All are non-useful.
Top 2 ensures a robust debate between the top tow contenders and does not depend on voters ranking candidates or prognosticating results in order to make an effective choice.
Commies = nazis = STATISTS
I ask again —
Was *socialist* in the name of the ex/dead 1922-1991 USSR regime and in the ex/dead 1933-1945 one party nazi regime ???
Instead of chicken, hamburgers, pizza
how about
communism, freedom, fascism ???
Fascism isn’t far-right. It’s center-right. It favors protectionism and economic interventionism, all of which are NOT capitalist and therefore not right-wing. It’s center-right economics with authoritarianism. Both Le Pen (from France) and Trump would fit roughly the classification of fascist. Both are center-right authoritarians.
See the political compass for an example:
Le Pen – https://www.politicalcompass.org/france2017
Trump – https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016
Genuine capitalism favors NO interventionism in the market place, No bailouts, No cronyism, and No protectionism. The US is not a capitalist country. It IS fascist, and has been for a while. Minimum wage, taxation, bailouts and subsidies, restrictions on international trade, the ownership of private companies by the government (AIG, Chrysler, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), the restriction of competition with the post office (congress puts price floors on the prices FedEx and UPS can charge so they have to charge more than the post office), the inability to form a private competitor to Amtrak, are all signs of fascism, not capitalism, in the US.
Jim Riley’s defense of Top 2 rings hollow when you look at undemocratic outcomes that happen with Top 2 runoffs compared to ranked choice voting. In Minneapolis and Calfornia cities with RCV, every winner with instant runoff has been the “beats all” Condorcet winner. No one disputes that Jacob Frey is the legitimate Minneapolis mayor winner. Indeed, Riley won’t be able to find a single instant runoff race in the United States where the the winner wasn’t either the Condorcet winner or the winner who also would have won in a runoff.
But it’s easy to find Top 2 / runoff outcomes that are just crazy wrong. Take
* Georgia state senate special election going on right now: Two Democrats advanced to the runoff, but a majority of votes were cast for Republicans. https://www.eastcobbnews.com/georgia-state-senate-special-election-runoff-features-two-democrats/
* Washington state treasurer race in 2016, where the reverse happened – three Democrats split the majority Democratic vote, allow two Republicans to advance and then win.
And of course runoffs are used in US House and Senate primary runoffs across the South, and turnout on average plunges by more than a third from one round to the next. The candidates needs to be more beholden to special interests in raising money, and taxpayers need to shell out millions. Runoffs are better than plurality, but have big downsides that Jim should realize are real.
Instant runoff gets it done in one round. The elections this month show how well it works, how turnout was unexpectedly high in the races, and how naysayers like the usual comments here should give it a rest.
RCV/IRV ignores most of the data in a place votes table.
The *Middle* is divided – as usual.
34 A-M-Z
33 Z-M-A
16 M-A-Z
16 M-Z-A
99
With RCV/IRV, M loses. A beats Z 50-49.
A = Stalin, Z = Hitler, M = Washington
—————
Place Votes Table
— 1 — 2 — 3 — T
A 34 – 16 – 49 – 99
M 32 – 67 – 0 – 99
Z 33 – 16 – 50 – 99
T 99 – 99 – 99
i.e. RCV/IRV will cause even more extremist stuff due to rigged majority *mandate* stuff.
M has a mere 99 of 99 votes in 1st and 2nd place.
————
Head to Head (Condorcet) Math – from 1780s — repeat 1780s.
M beats A 65-34
M beats Z 66-33
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. – pending Condorcet head to head math
– will need computer voting to do all the combinations.
@JB,
Cam Gordon, who was elected as Green under Top 2, would not have been elected under IRV or plurality.
It is conjecture whether Tom Hoch or Jacob Frey would have been elected mayor under Top 2, or whether either would have even finished in the Top 2, or even run.
It is not true that the result of the Georgia special senate election or Washington state treasurer election are crazy wrong.
13 gerrymander districts
Do the math for the 7 lowest winners — as a percent of the total votes.
ie one more minority rule regime — even with RCV/IRV.
—
PR and AppV
@JimRiley Cam Gordon is a big backer of instant runoff runoff in Minneapolis. His 2005 election was a great example of the problem of giving the much smaller, less representative turnout of a primary the kind of power it had in the old top two system because his top opponent won a majority of the primary vote, but it was a MUCH smaller number of voters — less than half of what showed up in number. But that much smaller number of voters knocked out all but the top two in election after election.
Although you say wrongly that you know what would have happened in 2005 with IRV, you also say it is “conjecture” about Frey winning with top two this year. Every available number indicate he would have won under any system, but it is quite possible that the low turnout, unrepresentative primary you want to return power to would have limited the top two to the the two white guys who finished first and second in first choices — the biggest spenders Frey and Hoch. The city would have missed out on the rich general election debate where it had more voices and choices.
What’s your argument that it is not crazy wrong when a final general runoff does not include anyone associated with the majority group of voters in the first round? That’s something you’d never see with an IRV election.
In 2005, you’re assuming that turnout would have been high for an election where Rybak’s re-election was a foregone conclusion. Look at how dismal turnout was for the 2009 general election (2009 was 57% of the 2005 election in Ward 2). In a plurality election or even an IRV election you’re going to have a hard time getting election-day registrants to come out to vote in an off-off-year city election. Students might not realize all they need to do is show up at the polling place with proof of residency, even if it is different from their parent’s home and they’ve only resided their two months, and consists of little more than a bed and a desk. But give them an exciting one-on-one race and you might motivate them. The difference in turnout between the general and primary was not the simple turnout 2.01x in Ward 2 vs. 2.12x for the rest of the city; but the extraordinary number of election-day registrations (16.9% in Ward 2 vs. 7.2% in the remainder of the city.
Compare to Gordon’s losing election in 2001. In 2001, Zerby’s vote total increased by 2.31x, while Gordon’s total increased by 2.33x. That is, the primary electorate was representative when taking into account the eliminated third candidate. Compare to 2005, when Gordon’s vote increased by 2.81x, while Letofsky’s support increased by 1.81x.
In an IRV election, transfers would have dissipated.
Conclusion: Gordon was elected in 2005 based on his ability to mobilize election-day registrants in an exciting campaign in a university-dominated ward.
Based on total preferences, Raymond Dehn was nowhere close to being a Condorcet winner. Frey might have been. We don’t know how a general election under Top 2 would have turned out.
Jacob Frey 50.8%
Betsy Hodges 46.6%
Tom Hoch 43.5%
Nekima Levy-Pounds 40.7%
Raymond Dehn 40.4%
Depending on how many of Frey’s votes were duplicates it is possible that no candidate was preferred by a majority of voters. That is, Minneapolis voters would rather not have a mayor, rather than any of their choices.
25% of voters did not have a 3rd preference (i.e. “It’s as easy as one, two, … … I forget the third one .
Having an Elector-Voter vote for more than 1 candidate is NOT needed —
use candidate rank order lists of all other candidates that are made public before ballots are printed.
PR and AppV
AJ wrote –
Fascism isn’t far-right. It’s center-right.
—-
A news flash for the about 70,000,000 DEAD in World War II
— due to the FASCIST regimes of Mussolini, Hirohito and Hitler (in time order of getting power) – in the Axis Powers of TOTAL EVIL.
PR and AppV — to save Democracy from the current nonstop MORONS in various places.