Instant Runoff VotingThe Literacy Test of the 21st Century
Demand one person, one vote, on paper, publicly audited, no exceptions
North Carolina adopted a pilot program for instant runoff voting for up to 10 cities in 2007 and up to 10 counties for 2008. "The State Board of Elections shall closely monitor the pilot program established in this section and report its findings and recommendations to the 2007 General Assembly." The city of Cary used IRV for municipal elections in October 2007 and the city of Hendersonville will use IRV for municipal elections in November 2007. The IRV proponents' next step is to quickly rope in 10 Counties. The best way to do this is without public discussion.
Instant Runoff Voting is not Instant, and not as easy as 1-2-3
San Francisco re-named it "Ranked Choice Voting" because it isn't "instant"
It opens us up to a gaming of the ballot, and makes election transparency as clear as mud.
We have done a lot to clean up elections in North Carolina.
Some special interests kept us from ditching all the touch screens, so we are still very vulnerable in some parts of the state.
Efforts to block the vote just keep coming:
1st, only certain people could vote.
then, some people only had 3/5 of a vote
next, came poll taxes,
then, came literacy tests,
We would never tolerate these barriers to our franchise today.
Today's barriers to voting are more sophisticated and promoted sometimes by people we trust and respect:
Paperless Electronic Voting.
Votes are lost, switched, added or subtracted by voting machines with no paper record to check the electronic count against. We corrected that by passing the Public Confidence in Elections Act in August, 2005. Voter registration databases.
When registering to vote, people have to provide a social security number, and a drivers license number (if they have one) etc on it.
Then the State Board of Elections has to match this information with the DMV and the Social Security databases. 20% of social security numbers don't match, and they don't give a reason why. The last 4 digits are what are used to run the match, and any woman who has had a name change, or anyone with a mis spelling etc can be disenfranchised. If you didn't match, then "No Match, No Vote"! They aren't registered. We corrected North Carolina's "No Match No Vote" rule in August, 2007 Once approved by the DOJ (we are a Jim Crowe state and have to get clearance) then if you don't match, you will just have to provide the typical NC required id the first time you vote. You will be registered!
What is new in Blocking the Vote?
How about Instant Runoff Voting, a new, sophisticated voting method -marketed as "Its as easy as 1-2-3". (some voters took this promo too seriously and put numbers on their ballots instead of shading in the circles).
Lucky you, you get to mark 3 choices for one contest in a local election!
Many people will be embarrassed to say - but I don't get it, how is my vote counted?
What if I rank the only candidate I care about - 3 times? (hint - your 2nd and 3rd choices won't count)
What if I don't have a 2nd and 3rd choice, will my vote count as much as other peoples? (No!)
What if I don't read the same papers and hear the same radio that "educates" the public about IRV? (You won't be on equal footing.)
1 | 2
Editor of the Voting News. The Voting News is a free national newsletter about election integrity issues, voting machines, election fraud, voter access and legislation in United States and international news.
(Or you can
set your preferences to show all comments, always)
