Santa Fe Newspaper Story on How Fairvote Succeeded in Bringing Ranked-Choice Voting to the City

The Santa Fe New Mexico, the city’s daily newspaper, has this story about how activists who favor ranked choice voting won their long struggle.


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Santa Fe Newspaper Story on How Fairvote Succeeded in Bringing Ranked-Choice Voting to the City — 21 Comments

  1. RCV aka IRV — disease infection of math brain cells — akin to top 2 primary math disease infection.

    PR and AppV – pending Condorcet

  2. Demo Rep, IRV can properly be thought of this way:

    On round one, there are 5 candidates. Nobody got a majority of the vote. Why should somebody be elected by the minority of voters? They shouldn’t. (You have somebody that will vote in the legislature against the will of more than half the people they represent.)

    So we eliminate the lowest polling candidate (they had the smallest minority of the vote, and thus clearly have minimal, if any, support), and re-ask the voters, out of the now 4 candidates, who do you prefer? Still nobody gets over 50% of the vote.

    So we remove the 4th place finisher, and ask the voters again, out of these 3 candidates, who is your preferred candidate? Now somebody gets over 50% and now a clear majority of people have backed a candidate that they’re content with. We have a candidate with fairly strong support, and the candidate now has conviction that they are able to act without pissing off MORE THAN HALF their district.

    It’s multi-round voting, without having voters needing to show up a potential of ‘n’ times. n = numbers of candidates – 1.

    This is really the only method that provides a reasonable outcome that creates backing by more than half the voters. Approval Voting can still end up with a candidate that has LESS THAN a majority of the vote. When approval voting is used in reality, it frequently creates this scenario.

  3. COPY the below and paste on wall – I do NOT like to repeat stuff about the FATAL defects in BAD math election systems.
    —————
    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, M = Washington, Z = Hitler

    —————
    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 winners due to rigged majority *mandate* stuff.

    M has a mere 99 of 99 votes in 1st and 2nd place.

    Also- symmetry – Z has 50 in last place – should lose. M then beats A 65-34.

    ————
    Head to Head (Condorcet) Math – from 1780s — repeat 1780s.
    
M beats A 65-34
    
M beats Z 66-33

    Condorcet is obviously correct by the math of having a 3rd choice beat each of 2 existing choices head to head.

    A > B

    C comes along

    IF C > A and C > B, THEN C should be winner.
    *******
    Condorcet math – ALL elections –
    legislative, executive, judicial.

    ALL combinations of—-

    Test Winner(s) vs Test Loser — Test Other Losers

    Number ranked votes go from TOL to TW or TL.

    Would need computer voting to do all the combinations in any *larger* election.

    Also– vote YES or NO (default) on each choice for a tie breaker when a TW/TL does not win/lose in all combinations.

    For 2 or more exec/judic offices (e.g. 2 judges), the 2 or more top ranked number votes are used in the TW/TL/TOL math.

    Legislative body elections– the final Winners would have a Voting Power equal to their final votes (direct from voters plus indirect from Losers).
    —-
    Thus — P.R. – legis and nonpartisan Approval Voting (YES/NO) exec-judic — pending Condorcet head to head math.

    Note – see “mathematics of voting and elections” in google search regarding 3 or more choices math.

  4. You are a fucking idiot. Jesus dude, you really need to just admit you have no fucking clue what your talking about and just shut the fuck up already. You do nothing but prove your stupidity with each and every post. You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of basic mathematics, statistics, and logical reasoning. You’re IQ has to be well below 90.

    When you keep posting the same thing over and over again, you’re not making yourself any more right. You’re just proving your lack of intelligence.

  5. 1. Condorcet and IRV are both RCV systems.
    2. In the opinion of many, both are “better” than FPTP.
    3. In most real world scenarios Condorcet and IRV choose the same winner.
    4. In very few (and highly unlikely) situations Condorcet picks a candidate that IRV does not pick, and who many would consider to be the more “fair” choice, whatever that means.

    Demo Rep’s contrived example depends on a 34, 33, 33 split of # 1 votes. Highly unlikely.

    Also, in DemoRep’s contrived example, A got the most #1 votes so A wins in both FPTP and IRV, something that those who vote for A will think is the more “fair”. They will likely be quite disgruntled if M is declared the winner via Condorcet.

    And DemoRep’s example depends on the voters who voted for M as their #1 to split exactly the same in their votes for A or Z as #2. That is also highly unlikely. In reality, that won’t happen, and whichever way M #1 voters lean for their #2 vote will choose the winner between A and Z. To me that is the most “fair” way to choose a winner.

    Besides, Condorcet is much harder to explain to the average voter, and is therefore is much harder to actually get implemented. I suggest that those who favor Condorcet over IRV should STFU and just keep repeating RCV, RCV, RCV. Then maybe a few years down the road when one of the situations noted in 4. occurs, the tabulation method can easily be changed from IRV to Condorcet if the electorate so chooses. I doubt they will.

    Democratic elections are messy and imperfect. However, they are the only way for the citizen to have any control over government, so it is imperative that voters have buy-in for whatever method they wish to use to elect their masters.

    I have one question for Condorcet supporters – Do you prefer FPTP to IRV?

  6. from this article – http://www.fairvote.org/why-the-condorcet-criterion-is-less-important-than-it-seems

    are these two relevant quotes –

    “Agreeing that the Condorcet criterion is desirable is equivalent to saying that moderate candidates should always win.”

    “Just because a candidate is hated the least doesn’t mean he or she is liked the most. Put another way, quite often a Condorcet winner might actually never have a chance to be win a one-on-one race against other candidates because that Condorcet candidate lacks enough support to keep other candidates from running. So choosing the centrist candidate every time is just falling into the fallacy of the middle ground. It’s tempting to always compromise between two distinct positions, but the compromise might be worse than either of them.”

    and from wikipedia –

    “A widely accepted interpretation of “The perfect is the enemy of the good” is that one might never complete a task if one has decided not to stop until it is perfect: completing the project well is made impossible by striving to complete it perfectly. Closely related is the Nirvana fallacy, in which people never even begin an important task because they feel reaching perfection is too hard.”

    Is anyone going to answer my question?

  7. The new International Parliament is riding a wave of unity, a new
    phenomena that’s sweeping the world, and the pure proportional
    representation (PPR) enables us to use highly advanced team
    actions based on the mathematics of ranked choice voting (RCV).

  8. Standard adjectives / adverbs from the usual suspect wannabee tyrant math MORONS.

    How *likely* is it that that Stalin or Hitler types will be elected to be Prez of the USA or Guvs of a State (a single office) by rigged RCV/IRV majority *mandates* ???

    Do the math MORONS on this list detect what happened in Germany in 1929-1933 ???

    Those *moderate* / compromise folks are so EVIL compared to known extremist EVILS ???

    How many MORON retards om this list LOVE having killer dictators — as long as each MORON retard is NOT killed/enslaved by the killer tyrants ???

    A more extreme example for the usual suspect math MORONS on this list to work on —

    Times are super-rough.
    The muddled moderate middle is almost gone. Think USA in 2016-2018 ???

    49 A-M-Z

    48 Z-M-A

    1 M-A-Z

    1 M-Z-A
    99


    Hitler and Stalin switch places.

    Do the Place Votes Table.

    For non-morons — If RCV has been so great, it would have been used for 6,000 years
    — esp in picking the kings of the Middle East killer tribes.


    Also – for NON-morons — NO legislative powers in exec/judic offices —

    PR in legislative bodies — what happens in such bodies IF Condorcet is used —

    the A, M, Z parties enacting laws using party voting powers ???

    How communist extreme are the members of the SF city-county Board of Supervisors due to RCV/IRV ???
    — for some actual RCV math results
    — with the 11 fatal gerrymander single member districts — and 4 year odd/even terms.

    ANY *moderates* on the SF city-county Board of Supervisors ???

    Perhaps RW will inform this list.

  9. @DW,

    It is a false dichotomy.

    An alternative explanation is that Montroll did not have enough support to prevent the progressives from gaming the system. You really shouldn’t put a lot of trust in Fairvote.

    When Burlington was voting to get rid of IRV, they managed to get Howard Dean to endorse the effort. He did a press conference. Someone asked about the previous campaign where the Progressives went negative on the Democratic candidate (proponents claim that candidates go full kitten in an IRV election in order to attract subsequent preferences). Dean responded that Burlington had only had one election under IRV since he had always voted in it. The IRV supporters from the LWV or similar group then had to explain that there had been two elections. Dean was fully aware of what had happened since he was from Burlington and also a Democratic Party official. He tried to recover by say voters didn’t like the “tough stuff”, but it was the tough stuff that did in his party’s candidate.

    BTW, why should there be party nominations under IRV?

  10. JR wrote “why should there be party nominations under IRV?”

    There should not be primaries administered by the state, regardless of whether the general election is IRV, FPTP, whatever. A group of people are of course permitted to assemble and pick their favorite and advertise for the election of their favorite. And they can call themselves anything they want, including a party. But the election laws in the states that administer primaries, election of precinct committee people, etc. are an anathema to actual democratic process. I favor going back to 1890 where the ballot was a piece of paper with no names on it, just offices and blanks!!

    But this is all a dream. RCV, whether IRV or Condorcet, takes away power from the big two, so TPTB will make damn sure that RCV never sees widespread adoption. Howard Dean was just a henchman of TPTB making sure the IRV got deep sixed.

    More importantly for the few of us who care about this — please stop badmouthing IRV. It is superior to FPTP. Right?

  11. FPTP – 46.1 pct extremist

    RCV – rigged 50.1 pct extremist

    BIG difference – 5 pct.

    18 States have voter petitions for State Const Amdts
    — if the SCOTUS 9 fail to quickly act to save REAL Democracy
    – in ballot access and gerrymander cases.

    Yours truly saw Dean in an *insiders* local meeting when he was running for Prez
    — like seeing Lenin in 1917 rallying the commie gangster troops.

    ALL the leftist extremist cliches coming out of his mouth — NOT used in public.

  12. DW asks –

    I have one question for Condorcet supporters – Do you prefer FPTP to IRV?

    Answer- Sorry – NEITHER — like death by shooting vs death by poison.

    see above 46.1 vs 50.1

    A > B

    C comes along

    IF C > A and C > B, THEN C should be winner — YES or NO ???

  13. @DW, There were 94 offices on my primary ballot this year. I literally voted early and often (94 times). Is it realistic to expect voters to rank candidates for 94 offices? No.

    If a candidate does not receive a majority, there will be a runoff. This gives voters a second chance to evaluate the top vote-getters, perhaps to consider endorsements of their favorites.

  14. More basic points —

    Number Voting is ONLY *relative*

    Approval Voting is YES/NO *absolute*

    Should be both for all offices.

    Defaults —
    NV LAST
    AV NO

    AV can be tiebreaker in Condorcet.

  15. The 34-33-32 example could be the result after lower choices were eliminated using RCV.

    What is the magical *realistic* example – with 3 choices remaining ???

    43 Extreme-42 Extreme-14 Moderate ???

    How often will the RCV top 2 (with 3 choices remaining) be EXTREMISTS ???

    How often in the CA top 2 primary era HAVE BOTH top 2 candidates been EXTREMISTS ???

    IE– ANY *EXTREMISTS* been elected in CA in the CA top 2 primary era ???

    Any *extremists* in the 1860 Prez election — causing the 750,000 DEAD in 1861-1865 ???

    PR and AppV — pending Condorcet.

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