Empty Hyperbole

I see nothing in this tirade that, in any way, shows that instant run-off voting is part of the problem in these elections. Zilch, to borrow your style of language.

It seems there's lack of voter interest, but your narrative provides zero evidence, just a fog of negativity, regarding IRV lilabilities.  

You use no links and you provide no data that in any way shows that IRV is a cause of any problems. 

by Rob Kall (801 articles, 3910 quicklinks, 329 diaries, 1692 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 9:35:21 AM
 

more questions should be asked

First of all, thank you for publishing my op/ed even though it sounds like you disagree with it. My apologies for not having written it better.

My main concern is that not enough questions are being asked before adopting IRV yet it has a major impact on election transparency and voters. 

I have more research on IRV in the United States here at www.instantrunoffvoting.us  Since IRV is complex, it is hard to address in a single piece.

You can see how San Francisco has fared after having IRV in use since 2004, voter turnout in San Francisco, voting systems problems, news articles, effect on incumbency protection in San Francisco. Just some excerpts -

No one is running against S.F. district attorney in fall election Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/16/07. San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris collected more than $500,000 from donors for her re-election effort, lined up high-profile endorsements and launched a campaign Web site. Then the clock at the Department of Elections struck 5 p.m. ... Jim Ross, a political consultant who ran Newsom's 2003 campaign, said ranked-choice balloting might have discouraged challengers to Harris. Promoted by its advocates as a boon to underfunded candidates hoping to avoid a costly runoff, ranked-choice voting actually strengthens incumbents, Ross said.
Voters pay less attention to second and third selections than the top slot and often leave them blank, Ross said. The resulting under-vote means incumbents can prevail with less than the 50 percent-plus-one that they once needed to avoid a runoff. 
 

In Nov 2007: Many SF Voters did not utilize the option to rank choices. 94% of absentee voters did not list 3 choices on their ballots  in the November municipal election, even though the field of candidates for mayor was large. 

There was  confusion over ranking. According to a Nov 8, 2007 Electionline report .  "Voters also questioned the value of ranked-choice voting." "There are a lot of people who only mark one [candidate] or the same person three times," "I don't want to vote for a second one, I want this one." 

There have been many claims about how IRV would help third parties, increase voter turnout, decrease negative campaigning, and the latest - used at the NC legislature - was that IRV would help minorities.  Does it really work?

Civil Rights Atty Anita Earles told NC lawmakers that IRV would help African Americans. Rep Angela Bryant asked Ms Earles if she could cite one instance, and she could not. 

Then there's this in Minnesota: 

 ‘Instant Runoff’ voting reform can empower communities of color Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, MN - Jul 16, 2008 by Isaac Peterson, III There is widespread agreement among analysts that Instant Runoff Voting, or ranked voting, has the potential to significantly empower

Does  IRV help communities of color? Is there any evidence that it does, or a reason that it would?  IRV requires an informed electorate, something many communities do not have.  San Francisco spent about $1.87 per registered voter in IRV related education and had hundreds of public events - will other communities do even half of this?

Afrlican American Leader and Raleigh NC City Council member Dr. James P. West opposed IRV in May, 2007 :  “I indicated that I have some concerns about this especially in disenfranchises certain segment of voters…especially those of lower socio economic level…”

Does IRV help third parties? IRV has been used for decades in Australia. Yes they can hand count it but they have a single contest on a single ballot paper. They do not vote for so many contests in the US.  However, if the US wants to simplify our elections down to one contest, then of course it would work.

Australian Politics  - the "Disadvantages of the Preferential [IRV] System"... promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.

Does IRV incentivize more complex voting technology? It did in Scotland where they abandoned hand counted paper ballots for a form of optical scan/ballot image voting systems. 

Not so much an election as a national humiliation Scotland’s voters were treated with arrogance and contempt

Melanie Reid Times Online May 7, 2007  ...More than 100,000 people – around one in 20 of those who voted – had their ballot papers rejected in the election..

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri  Internationally respected computer scientist and e-voting expert warns - "potential gaming" of the ballot set that may not be independently detectable or auditable, these run-off styles must be prohibited."
 

Pierce County Washington was backed into a corner - they adopted IRV, their voting systems weren't working as hoped. The county felt they had no other choice but to use the systems even though they did not meet the standards of their state law and problems were found.  See John Gideon and Ellen Theisen's report Down Through the Rabbit Hole http://www.votersunite.org/info/uptherabbithole.asp  A Pierce County official said this about counting the IRV ballots: 

 they tried hand-counting just 14 RCV ballots with seven ranked contests and found that it was “horrendous.” Using software to tally this sort of balloting was absolutely essential. She found that it simply couldn’t be done any other way.

There are other election methods that might do more to help third parties, proportional representation seems to have done more to help third parties in Australia by helping them gain strength.  But for elections using IRV, there is no gain in power for third parties.  They stay stuck.

Fusion Voting has worked and is still in use in New York and South Carolina.  Fusion voting gave third parties so much power that some states got rid of it.  It strengthens third parties.  It also has the advantage of being simple to count and not requiring specialized voting systems or complex algorithms. It requires no funding to implement, can be recounted and audited.

There are other voting methods (Approval etc) that may help third parties and do not require complex technology.

We should learn our lesson from HAVA, which was enacted too hastily and which is still creating problems for elections today.  Lets ask questions first.

by ncvoter (13 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 11:44:54 AM
 

One thing for sure ...

If you are going to use IRV-  RCV-   You gotta have open source -  Other than that you are further complicating the debacle-  Brent Turner 

by Brent Turner (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 94 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 4:55:31 PM
 

Joyce -- addressing your hyperbole

Joyce -- Takoma Park passed instant runoff voting with 84% of the vote in 2005 and used it for the first time in a special election in January 2007. Three candidates ran, and the winner just got over 50% of first choices. He applauded the new system, saying it was nifty to talk to a voter, find that the person supported another candidate, but keep talking in order to earn their second choice. We did an exit poll survey and found overwhelming support for the new system. (See results and other info at www.instantrunoff.com)

All city offices were first elected in November 2007. As has been true in most recent elections in the city, most races weren't contested. No race had more than two candidates. Yes, IRV didn't magically CREATE choice nor did it magically elect a person of color. What it would have done, as in the first election with it, was accommodate voter choice.

That's a good thing. You say you're for ballot access reform, which is indeed a good thing, but how do you propose to accommodate voter choice? Do you have an alternative proposal? If not, It woudl seem you don't seem to care too much about the principle of majority rule -- election integrity has different components, one of which is avoiding dysfunctional restuls. IRV prevents someone from winning just because of a vote-split among other candidates -- for that reason, it gives voters a chance to have real choices.

A good example involving a person of color was Ann Arbor, Michigan in its first IRV election in 1975. Republicans had benefited from a split between Democrats and  Green party-like third party, the Human Rights party. The Human Rights party organized an IRV ballot measure and won in 1974. In the first mayor race, the Republican incumbent won about 48% of the first choice vote, an African American Democrat had 41% and the Human Rights Party candidate the rest. After the IRV count, the Democrat won, becoming the first African American mayor in the city's history. Sadly, the Republicans went ballistic at their defeat and organized a low turnout special election that overturned IRV.

Note that IRV is a majority voting system. It's not a proportional voting system, like choice voting. Choice voting more reliably boosts representation of racial minorities, as has been a consistent result in elections in Cambridge (MA) and in places where it's used around the world. IRV accommodates voter choice when it's there -- as opposed to plurality voting which, because it doesn't accommodate voter choice, suppresses it.

No jurisdiction that adopted IRV is moving to get rid of it, contrary to your hyperbole of problems with the system. In your own state, you threw everything you could at IRV in the errant belief that it's a "trojan horse" for touchscreen voting -- and the state legislature rejected your arguments this month and extended the pilot for NC localities to keep using IRV for three more years and the NC League of Women Voters overwhelmingly approved a new position in support of IRV for NC elections.

I hope you will consider constructive work to ensure these IRV elections in NC are run securely and well. Might that be better than lobbing metaphorical spit balls from the back row?

- Rob Richie

by Rob Richie (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 5:25:25 PM
 

Look at Australia with long history of IRV

For sure the latest talking point in North Carolina was that IRV would help African American voters. When asked for proof, none can be given.

So IRV proponents should stop claiming that IRV will help minorities of color or of any sort.

So does IRV help, hurt or do nothing for minorities? Look at Australia, where a form of IRV has been used for decades:

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and racial minorities

Here is a group photograph of all Australian Labour MPs in 1901. There are zero racial minorities present.

Moving forward to the present day, color photos dated 3 June 2008 of every one of the 150 Australian MPs (their MPs are elected via IRV) are available as this printable PDF document which we originally obtained from here: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/42p_Members_photos.pdf. Every single one is white, despite the fact Australia's overall population is (according to the 2008 online CIA world fact book)

White 92%

Asian 7%

Aboriginal and other 1%

(The probability that 150 randomly drawn Australians would happen to be 100% white, is 0.92150≈3.7×10-6.)

Australian MPs are 100% white despite8% minorities in the population; but our USA house and senate meanwhile has lots of minorities in house & senate.

This is a large enough sample to be statistically highly

significant difference.

by ncvoter (13 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 8:33:53 PM
 

Fair Vote wanted San Fran to have touchscreens

Rob as I replied to your similar comment to my other article, it was Fair Vote pushing San Francisco to use touchscreens:

From the Fair Vote webpage entitled "The Real Story: Seventeen Months of Fumbling and Bumbling by the SF Department of Elections and Elections Commission"

October 7
"Elections Director John Arntz goes against advice from his vendor, members of the Elections Commission, and staff from the Center for Voting and Democracy, and makes a decision to have ES&S upgrade the Optech Eagles (precinct-based scanner) for counting IRV ballots, rather than using the Optech IV-C (centralized scanner) or touch screens. "

North Carolina has created a 100 + "work around" to automate counting IRV on touchscreens (since it would be nearly impossible to do on the toilet paper trail)

Did Fair Vote say - hey, don't do that, use paper ballots and count them by hand?  Did you?

IRV would have to be counted manually on North Carolina's optical scan ballots.

Sadly, our best County Board of Elections couldn't even count just 3,000 ballots right.  So it is highly possible that IRV may incentivize touchscreen use.

One small error cascaded into a miscount that had to be corrected at another date. Oct 30, 2007 Critics Take Runoff Concerns To Elections Board ..."What IRV does is violate one of the basic principals of election integrity, which is simplicity," said Perry Woods, a political consultant in Cary. He says a small glitch threw everything into turmoil.

..."In this case, they ended up recounting all the ballots again and calling it an audit," said Woods. "I felt like if they were doing that, the public should have been involved, so no doubt is there."
http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/search.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-10-30-0028.html

A Knightdale resident said. “If the best board of elections in North Carolina had this much trouble counting 3,000 votes, this is too dangerous to try statewide.” (January 22, 2008 Opinion mixed on Cary's instant-runoff trial http://www.carynews.com/news/story/8057.html )

IRV or STV is still very complex whether counted by optical scan or touchscreen. 

Scotland ditched hand counted paper ballots because of STV:

Scottish officials followed the advice of  "experts" and switched from hand counted paper ballots to computerized voting in May '07 to support STV, a form of ranked choice balloting:

3.3.1 Experience of counting STV elections elsewhere led the Scottish Executive to examine the feasibility of counting the ballot papers electronically. Following a procurement exercise in late 2005 DRS Data Services Limited (DRS) was selected as the preferred supplier to provide the equipment and support necessary to support such a process. DRS provided the e-counting services in the Greater London Authority / London Mayoral Elections in 2000 and 2004. DRS also involved Electoral Reform Services (ERS) in their proposals – ERS having extensive experience of STV elections. http://www.pkc.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F26CB0C8-EE76-46CD-953A-43B39495261B/0/07271.pdf ("Electoral Reform Services" is related to the Electoral Reform Society, a non profit whose goal is to spread IRV).

The results were disastrous - see

May 7, 2007 "Not so much an election as a national humiliation  - Scotland’s voters were treated with arrogance and contempt". 

Rob, did Fair Vote urge that Scotland keep its hand counted paper ballots?

by ncvoter (13 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 8:54:16 PM
 

Just a reminder

that IRV was the basis for one of the most exciting mayoral elections in 2003.

It took two rounds of voting in order for Democrat Gavin Newsome to defeat Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez to become mayor of San Francisco.

One more point about IRV is that, if "what we see is truly what we get" in presidential politics - I've expressed my doubts about that -  it's quite possible that, because Progressives actually voted for a Progressive in 2000 and 2004 and weren't frightened into compromising themselves and voting for the lesser evil of two, that lesser evil may have gotten to play president between January of 2001 and today.  Then we could have had Gore taking orders from Dow Chemical instead of Bush taking orders from Cheney who gets his orders from Halliburton (and Dow Chemical).

Michael Bonanno

by Michael Bonanno (84 articles, 19 quicklinks, 24 diaries, 123 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 8:26:55 PM
 

2003, trad runoff San Fran, 100,000 more voters

I have the turnout figures comparing San Francisco's 2003 (last) traditional mayoral runoff election to the November 2007 "instant runoff" municipal election.

Take a look at the numbers from San Francisco's last big traditional runoff, in 2003, (where supposedly "less people" vote in runoffs) 

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 562). . . . . 562 (100%)
REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL . . . . . 466,127
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . . .  253,872
VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL . . . . . . . . 54.46

http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=19802

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 580). . . . . 580 (100%)
REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL . . . . . 419,598
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . . . 149,424
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL CARD 1 . . . . 149,424
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL CARD 2 . . . . 150,098
VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL . . . . . . . .  35.61
VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL CARD 1 . . . . 35.61
VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL CARD 2 . . . . 35.77

http://www.sfgov.org/site/elections_index.asp?id=68841

Lets look at the results for the Mayoral Contest in 2007, with Newsome verses "progressive" Mecke:

2007 Results 

GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 105,596   73.66 
QUINTIN MECKE . . . . . . . . . .  9,076    6.33

http://www.sfgov.org/site/elections_index.asp?id=68841

2003 Results
GAVIN NEWSOM. . . . . . . . . . 133,546 52.81
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 119,329 47.19 

http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=19802

by ncvoter (13 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 8:59:14 PM
 

IRV doesn't create choice -- it ALLOWS and ACOMMODATES it

In 2007, Newsom was a strong candidate. No one was going to take him on regardless of the system.

Note that a fairer comparisos is the first citywide election with IRV in 2005. The turnout in the final round of the IRV count was MUCH higher than it would have been in a traditional December runoff -- see a good article examining this and comparing it to previous s citywide runoffs here:

http://www.sfrcv.com/ 

When IRV was use for the first time in Burlington, Vermont's mayoral election, in 2006, turnout went up sharply because the election was more interesting. Turnout in the IRV mayor's race was higher than anything else on the ballot. Of people voting in the mayor's race, 99.9% cast a valid vote in a vigrous race with 5 candidates.  

by Rob Richie (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments) on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 6:06:02 PM
 

i live in greenbelt

so, to explain a little bit about the article you're quoting, and maybe a little bit about your concerns on irv, i'll tell you about this whole thing with the aclu and the naacp and the voting concerns.

first of all, greenbelt is an incredibly liberal area. but, as many african-americans have fled the economic situation in DC, they have been moving to prince george's county, and specifically, places like greenbelt, and densely in the surrounding apartment complexes. so, for this and other reasons, the town looks a little bit segregated from the center to the outsides, but it is not due to anyone's overt racist tactics.

the big mess occured when the aclu and the naacp wrote a letter to the city council, that basically threatened to take legal action, if they did not change their "at large" election system, specifically proposing a ward system. and while there is a problem with at large elections, these groups proposed a system of wards that nobody really liked at all.

the threatening language of their letter also rubbed folks the wrong way, since many liberal activists in this area are card carrying members of the aclu and naacp. some marched with dr. king. we have holocaust survivors. and we have a large elderly population (obviously if you're old enough to have marched with dr. king and survive the holocaust).

we also have a lot of environmentalists, and progressives (like me!) who were attracted to this city for it's community feel, it's activism, and it's progressive roots (the city was founded by franklin roosevelt, as an example for the country).

no one is trying on purpose to keep elections unfair. but no one really liked the ward system that the naacp came up with (and unasked for), because they felt it was not going to work properly. it was also disapointing, cuz these groups have lots of resources to help good minority candidates out, should they want to run, but they've never bothered to come by and scope out potential candidates and give assistance to them...they only seemed to bother to show up after this poorly worded, threatening letter to sue us. 

anyways, this came up at a city council meeting (i was there) with these two organizations, where they talked about the ward systems, and they were asked a lot of questions, and the very thing that you are seeing, probably in NC and in places like takoma park (also other areas, bladensburg (i think?), which is nearby, is also seeing this). the ward system, etc, helped out immediately with diversity...and then it just sucked. within a few years, most of the elections had few candidates in them, minority or otherwise. and, just like takoma park, etc, they went back to all white members.

now i, in particlular, am against the ward system, for many reasons, but also because i have been thinking of running for city council (and i am half asian, so i guess i kinda count as a "minority")-- but if they divided up the wards the way they wanted, it would actually hurt my chances of winning...because i'd be up against at least 3 of the other incumbents.

(i think it's also important to note, that while our population had changed radically over the last ten years, from mostly white, to today's diverse make-up, something like 50-60% minority, african-americans make up 40% of that, whites make up 40%, and asian and hispanics make up the rest. there's also about 5-10% of the population that is non-citizen, and was counted in those statistics--the same ones that the aclu and naacp used to determine their ward system. anyways, it's kinda funny, cuz there's no real legal action to take based on the numbers, because whites make up the minority now, compared to the ethnic groups totals.)

fairvote also came and talked about their suggestions...they liked "preferential" voting...but no one in the room understood what she was talking about. (except me, cuz i've kinda researched it some beforehand). nevertheless, she explained how "it's kind of like driving a car. no one really knows how their car works, but you know that it works." well, i disagree terribly, i'm afraid. i believe in MORE transparency in voting, not less. after all that i've seen, having lived in ohio for 3 years, watching folks' votes get caged, and wondering why the system is so messed up, i believe very, very firmly that voters should know EXACTLY how their system works...in fact, i'm a bit upset that we have electronic voting, but no hardcopy printout for voters to look at and verify their votes were recorded properly.

there are issues that our city does need to address, esp concerning our minority consitutents, and esp the ones living in the apartment complexes. crime is up, and it's concentrated in those areas. transprotation is a problem, and while many homeowners are feeling a crunch in their pocketbooks from gas prices, the apartment dwellers probably feel more like a brick hit them on their heads. i used to live in apartments, and i know what it is like.

another problem concerning elections is the turnout. the apartment complex areas simply do not pull out votes. the voting turnout in those areas is something like 19%, at the best. at the meeting, one activist talked about putting in lots of shoe leather, door to door, to try to get out voters there...but with results like this. i think the last election with obama, had the best turnout...and i think it was still under 50%. (i'd have to check).

so, for my town, there is a lot more to do. and we are mulling over our elections system...but the most important thing i think we can do in the meantime, is to help provide clear assistance to minority candidates, and figure out how to bring more voters to the polls. rather than wards, it might be more helpful to allow voting to be done absentee, at liberty, for working people who have difficulty making it to the polls. it also would simply be more helpful to help educate voters about the issues, and their candidates.

(i'm also leaving out an important suspicion, and that is the real estate developers in this area, who see places like greenbelt as a gold mine, to tear down older neighborhoods so they can raise up their new spanking mcmansions, or "luxury" condominums...greenbelt gets hit up a lot more than normal, because it has a metro stop. i've only see this mess up otherwise decent areas to live, simply gentrifying neighborhoods, and making them unaffordable for normal folks. those developers in this area, are mostly minority, african-american.

the suspicion is that one of these developers would live in their apartment complexes, then get on the city council by default, as the only candidate in that ward who is running. one of the complexes was looked at for razing and putting up those condos...it was finally talked down. but then, there were mysterious "fires" throughout the complex, for weeks. it smells like schemes we've seen elsewhere. but that's the progressive in me--there's always a corporate plot somewhere...)

by kenshin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 21 comments) on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 9:05:08 PM
 

Greenbelt is considering choice voting -- e.g.,"PR"

Just so we don't confuse readers on terminology, Greenbelt in considering choice voting, the proportional voting system, not instant runoff voting.

 Currently, Greenbelt has a winner-take-all, at-large voting system -- five seats, and voters can cast up to five votes. It's a system prone to inequalities, First, some voters will use all five of their votes while others will use fewer for tactical reasons. Second, some voters will have all 5 of their votes elect candidates, while others will have none of their votes do so.

Greenbelt is taking a look at the ranked choice voting method of proportional representation -- a system where 51% of voters would control the power to elect three seats, but not all five seats. It would take about 17% to win a seat and increase chances of candiadtes with diverse perspectives and diverse backgrounds to win.

That's different than a ward system. While it involves ranking candidates, it's different than instant runoff voting for the threshold it takes to win a seat. IRV is typically used where winners need a majority of votes to win.

Note that the National Civic League includes choice voting as a recommended option in its model city charter and it may be on the ballot in November in Cincinnati. It's been used since the 1940s in Cambridge (MA), and all Irish and Scottish cities use it -- they used it for the first time last year in Scotland and are sure to keep use it and the government is looking to expand it to elect more offices there.

by Rob Richie (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments) on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 6:01:15 PM
 

Selective examples used in Australia info

Thanks to IRV Australia has had at least two Aboriginal Senators, a Chinese senator and several Chinese mayors.

It has also had many many representatives of other minority ethnic groups eg Italians, Serbians and Greek migrants to Australia.

by John Haigh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 106 comments) on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 3:00:36 AM
 

Hats off to Joyce McCloy for dispelling propaganda

Comment from Ratings:   It should come as no surprise that Rob Richie is threatened by this piece, and dishing out his typical misleading propaganda. He and his organiation, FairVote, have a history of deception, and even outright fabrication. See RangeVoting.org for substantial documentation of this.

His goal is to get to proportional representation in America, via the STV method, of which IRV is the single-winner form (thus he sees IRV as a stepping stone to STV). But this is incredibly illogical thinking since

1) Many extremely important elections are single-winner posts, or have staggered terms, and _must_ use a single-winner voting method, and
2) Methods like Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting are simpler than and/or superior to STV, *and* have single-winner analogs which are _excellent_ (unlike the quite poor IRV).
3) IRV historically has maintained two-party duopoly, and in order to break down obstacles to the advent of wide-spread P.R. in the USA, you plausibly need to _first_ end the duopoly with a better *single-winner* voting method (e.g. most of the 27 countries that use a _genuine_, not "instant", runoff have escaped duopoly).

As for claims that IRV has helped minorities in Australia, that appears to be the complete opposite of the case.
=> http://rangevoting.org/IRVraceMinorities.html

Perhaps the author was talking about STV (proportional) races, like in the AU Senate (whereas the House uses IRV).

Also, it does no good to claim that IRV was simple because voters overwhelmingly said they thought it was simple. The fact is that with IRV, voters spoil about 7 times as many ballots, so clearly they find it somewhat more confusing in some sense.
=> http://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html

The bottom line is that there are massively superior and simpler voting methods that do not pose such risk to election integrity. IRV is the loser among the 5 most commonly proposed alternative voting methods, a fact which the vast majority of election methods experts consider non-controversial.

Here is a point-by-point look at the robust superiority of Score Voting (aka Range Voting) over IRV.
http://rangevoting.org/CFERlet.html

Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA

by Clay Shentrup (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 27 comments) on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 4:04:37 AM