On March 2, the voters of Burlington voted to repeal Instant Runoff Voting. The vote was 3,972 to repeal, and 3,669 to keep it. See this story.
On March 2, the voters of Burlington voted to repeal Instant Runoff Voting. The vote was 3,972 to repeal, and 3,669 to keep it. See this story.
Too bad. Because of the sour grapes of the LEAST preferred of the three major candidates and his supporters in the 2009 Mayoral election, Burlington reverts to an inferior voting system.
Some of the anti-IRV crowd has been appallingly dishonest about Burlington. Everything that they criticized about the 2009 election would have happened under the system that Burlington just reverted to. It’s the old, old disingenuous cry of anti-reformers everywhere:
Reform < Utopia. THEREFORE, Reform = Worthless Garbage. So, let's go back to the old status quo.
P.R. and A.V. = REAL Reforms
IRV = EVIL BOGUS *reform* — since IRV ignores most of the data in a Place Votes Table.
Congrats to the People of Burlington in getting rid of the EVIL fraudulent IRV.
As the news story makes clear, this was all about turnout. The folks who dislike IRV (because their candidates are more likely to win without it) are the same folks who usually turn out for local elections in greater numbers. And — somewhat by chance this time — also the same folks who had contested city council races to vote on, further increasing the difference in turnout.
I agree with Demo Rep; proportional representation or approval voting (I think that’s what he’s acronyming at) would be real reforms.
Unfortunately, I think the experience with IRV has probably exhausted Burlington’s interest in voting experimentation for a good number of years, and for that reason, I also agree with Tom Yager.
I got into something of an argument over here http://repealirv.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-you-didnt-vote-for-kiss-or-wright.html trying to keep reform on the move… but as you can see from the comments, it wasn’t go so great 🙁
FairVote, who is/was pushing for IRV, seems to think that IRV will lead to PR via STV… and time after time, that’s shown to not be the case, because IRV falls back to plurality. Chalk up another one.
I have advocated for a long time that ranked choice voting has a place in reform. But for now, RCV is too complicated for most of the public to feel comfortable with. And RCV cannot be implemented beyond a single election jurisdiction without a major retrofit of voting equipment. In a statewide election, every county would need to standardize its equipment with every other county to accommodate the transfer of ranked votes across jurisdictional lines. Also, if ever RCV were used in full-fledged presidential-year general election with multiple contests and multiple candidates–all requiring a ranked choice ballot–it seems impossible to do that on anything but touch screens. Optical scan would require giving a folder full of ballots to every voter. Let’s look at some simple, straight-forward methods like limited and cumulative voting. Once the public is comfortable with those, perhaps they could be persuaded to go for ranked choice voting.
In 2005, 7354 persons voted on the referendum that approved IRV.
In 2010, 7641 persons voted on the referendum that repealed IRV.
That is, 3.9% more persons voted on the repeal than voted on the installation.
In 2005, 42.2% of the total vote was cast in Wards 4 and 7. In the 2009 mayoral election it was 40.8%. Only in presidential election years, when the city election was coincident with the presidential primary is the turnout in 4 and 7 somewhat comparable to 2/7 of the population.
Ward turnout is not yet available for 2010. However we can compare turnout in the contested city council races between 2005 and 2010. WD 1: -79; WD 2 +94; WD 4 +101; WD 5 +61; WD 7 +1. There is not enough difference there to account for the increased overall turnout, so turnout may have also been up in WD 3 and 6. In 2005, WD 3 was also not contested. There did not appear to be an overal impact on turnout, but rather about 1/4 of voters refused to vote for the one choice on the ballot.
Of course it is possible that turnout was up more for the IRV election, but that would belie the claim that it was contested city council races that were driving turnout.
So it appears that there is a modest overall increase in turnout from 2005 to 2010, and it does not appear to be disproportionately concentrated in Wards 4 and 7. While these modestly favored IRV in 2005, they opposed it in 2010, but it is quite likely that the support for it had declined in other wards as well.
PS Question for PR advocates, if Wards 4 and 7 consistently cast 3/7 of the votes, wouldn’t they get 3/7 of the seats under PR rather than 2/7?
#8: Jim points out that PR is based on votes rather than population or voter registration. But his question seems to reflect a basic misunderstanding. In a fully proportional system, wards/districts don’t get representation. People do. If Republicans (or any group) consistently cast 3/7 of the votes, they would consistently get 3/7 of the seats. This would happen without respect to which wards Republicans do and don’t live in.
So, yes, if Republicans have better voter turnout than other groups, then they would be “overrepresented” (relative to the whole population) under PR. But PR gives everyone more incentive to vote because every vote helps elect a representative the voter really wants. It is clear that countries with PR have higher turnout than countries with winner-take-all. Correlation doesn’t prove causation. But it’s a clue.
P.R. = Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner — via pre-election candidate rank order lists — to transfer surplus and loser votes.
KISS = Keep it [very] simple, stupid — ex-Prez Bill Clinton.
Due to the rotted to the core publik skooooools the political I.Q. of the population is approaching ZERO — with the EVIL control freak party hacks in governments in a nonstop terrorize the population mode since 1929 — domestic economy chaos, foreign wars chaos, etc. — TOTAL party hack EVIL.
P.R. and A.V. — Approval Voting
R/e Burlinton 3/2 election turnout.
From a Burlington Blog;
More people voted in 2010, same voter distribution across the wards!
2005 — 7,550, 42% of the total vote was in Wards 4 and 7, 58% in other wards.
2010 — 7.695, exactly the same distribution, 42% in wards 4 and 7.
http://repealirv.blogspot.com/2010/03/fact-checking.html
Turnout in 2010 was 2% higher than 2005. Votes cast on the repeal-IRV proposition were 4% higher than the impose-IRV proposition in 2005. The other 2% was due to a larger share of voters voting in the IRV proposition (97.4% in 2005 vs. 99.3% in 2010).
In general, Burlingtonians participate in issue votes to a greater extent than they do in council races, even when they are contested. Participation in issue measures is typically in the high 90s, while contested council races are in the mid to low 90s.
Turnout was up the most in Ward 2 (+14%), perhaps because it had 2 council races, or perhaps because it was the most pro-IRV ward in the city.
Turnout was down the most in Ward 1 (-10%). It had a contested council race in both elections, so other factors may have been at play. Turnout was slightly down in Ward 7 (-1%).
Turnout in the other 4 wards was up 1% to 5%, with only a slightly smaller increase in Wards 3 and 6, the two without a contested council race.
Having a contested council race does not appear to have any correlation with increased turnout.
All 7 wards swung towards the anti-IRV position. This swing was the strongest in Wards 4 and 7, 24% and 26%, respectively, but was also significant in Wards 1 and 6, 14% and 15%, respectively. Wards 3 and 5, were 9% more anti. Ward 2, was only 2% more anti-IRV, but they had the greatest increase in turnout.
The difference between 2005 and 2010, is that in 2005 voters were more equivocal and willing to give it a try. In 2010, after having tried it, they were willing to repeal it.
Given the relative closeness of the repeal (4% margin), there may be other factors that played into the final outcome, such as the issues over Burlington Telecom. Some have suggested a lack of leadership from Mayor Kiss, even though he is apparently universally regarded to be a nice guy. It is possible that IRV elects nice guys rather than effective leaders.
Clint Reilly, the campaign manager for Quentin Kopp’s San Francisco mayoral campaign against Dianne Feinstein, has suggested that it was in the (conventional) runoff that Feinstein found her voice and defined who she was. Had it not been for that, she might never have become senator, even if she might have won an IRV election for mayor.
How many Stalin and Hitler clones will be elected via IRV and claim a mighty majority *mandate* for their party hack EVIL ???
See the 2009 ratings of the gerrymander Congress by the American Conservative Union — a rightwing ratings group.
Nearly ZERO folks in the 35-65 percent range — i.e. nearly all Donkey and Elephant party hack extremists — even if the marginal hacks get elected with a plurality or by 50.1 percent in their local gerrymander area.
See the fall of the Roman Republic in 120 B.C. – 27 B.C. — due to lots of party hacks.
While not a big fan of IRV (range voting is hands down much better), I think it’s clear IRV is better than plurality. Unfortunately, it appears that a section of the voters didn’t like the results (the vote not splitting within the liberal side) and decided to argue under the guise of “this is too complicated.” The reporting on this seemed to be pretty bad in the video link in that it refused to dig past superficial reasoning.
If voters were genuinely upset at the complexity, they should have voted to upgrade to range voting (or approval if they were feeling especially dense) — NOT repeal IRV and go back to plurality. We have a common enemy whose name is plurality, and we should consistently unite against it.
One reform approach may be for the city council to organize a citizens assembly much like British Columbia, Canada did. This more objective discussion on the merits of voting systems may prove more palatable to the voters as something they are a part of. Though the assembly in Canada did not get the 60% necessary to pass their proposed system (STV- a favorite of mine), they were able to get 57% their first time around. I sincerely hope this repeal doesn’t cause Burlington residents to abandon vote reform efforts.
#12 Burlington uses conventional runoffs for both its mayor and city council. It has a 40% plurality threshold, which has apparently been there forever.
In both 2006 and 2009 the leader had less than 40%, so if there was not IRV, there would have been a conventional runoff. Burlington is not a very big town (less than 40,000) so there will rarely be too many candidates. The previous mayor had served for 15 years, and had often been re-elected with practically no opposition.
Of the 36 city council results that I could find a record of, 2005 to 2010, excluding 2006, 10 had 3 candidates and 1 had 4. 7 of these had a majority winner. So only 11% of city council races did not have a majority winner. Only 1 of those required a runoff.
So basically the reasoning went like this:
(excitedly) Oh no the sky is falling in, we can elect a mayor without 50% support!!!
What are you talking about? We have runoffs.
(more excited, stabs at the screen of a laptop) Looky, looky, see this 40% in the charter.
Oh yeah. It always bothered me that Bernie Sanders was elected with less than 50% support. So let’s change the “40” to “50”. A simple change. (shrugs)
(jumping up and down) No! No!! No!!! That would be too simple! We need something much more grandiose and complicated and and progressive !!!
(Skeptical) Do you think the voters will buy it?
We will tell them it is a simple change from 40% to 50%. We will bury the rest in the fine print.
And what about the city council races?
(Quizzical look) What are you talking about?
The city council elections. We have 21 of these for every mayoral election.
OK. We’ll leave those at 40%. Simple enough.
(sighs)
Thank you for informing me that the loss of IRV wasn’t a jump back to plurality, but rather a switch to a second round runoff. Still, this adds the cost of another election. This is not to say that IRV is the same cost as one round plurality, but it should be compared to the cost of a plurality election plus a runoff.
Regarding council elections, it’s silly to elect in single districts as this distorts representation. Especially in a small town, who needs geographical representation over ideological representation? Even if that council member won in a landslide, it’s likely 40% still don’t even like that person. With an election system like STV or even the simple limited or cumulative voting, there’s better representation than a winner take all system. It likely won’t change the majority on the council, but other voices that have sufficient support in the city actually get a say.
Finally, if you’re looking for something simple that avoids vote splitting without requiring another round of elections, I would recommend range voting (for single office elections). If you think that is too much to ask of voters, then approval voting is a good alternative.
Approval voting is subject, potentially, to its OWN “Burlington.” NO alternative to plurality voting can guarantee a majority-vote winner.
And, to be honest, some approval voting touters strike me as quasi-cultist in their intensity.