[EM] examination of plaintiff's memorandum re IRV in Minneapolis

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

This is an examination and comment on the document filed in the case of

Minnesota Voters Alliance, et al, vs. The City of Minneapolis

being the

Plaintiffs Memorandum of Law in Support of their 
Motion for Summary Judgment and Declaratory Judgment

At the outset it must be stated that Minnesota 
precedent is actually quite clear. Brown v. 
Smallwood established that any form of 
alternative vote, where, in a single election (as 
distinct from, say, a primary election followed 
by a runoff or general election), voters cast 
more than one vote, making a choice of more than 
one candidate, where it is one candidate to be 
elected, regardless of details as to how the 
votes are counted, is contrary to the State 
Constitution (as interpreted by the State Supreme 
Court). This decision has never been overturned.

While Brown v. Smallwood was, and is, 
questionable, it is precedent in Minnesota, and 
it is perfectly proper for the plaintiffs to 
request summary judgment on this issue. Given the 
clarity of Brown v. Smallwood on the topic, I 
would expect it to be quite possible that a lower 
court would issue summary judgment in favor of 
the plaintiffs; which would then, presumably, be 
appealed (eventually) to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

The reasoning in Brown v. Smallwood applied 
equally to Bucklin voting (then called 
preferential voting, a name also in common use 
for Instant Runoff Voting) and to IRV. There is 
one statement in Brown v. Smallwood where mention 
is made of what is now called "Later no harm," an 
election method characteristic that IRV satisfies 
and Bucklin voting does not. However, other 
arguments presented, and the response of the 
court to an appeal for reconsideration by the 
City of Duluth, make it clear that the court was 
concerned with all forms of alternative vote, 
anything other than a simple single choice by the voter.

My purpose here is to examine the arguments in the Memorandum.

The plaintiffs begin with a summary of the issues presented.

>The Minnesota and United States Constitutions 
>establishes [sic] a person's right to vote and 
>to associate – one vote represents the intent to 
>elect one specific person to office. A city's 
>general election methodology allows ranking of 
>candidates, vote transfers, and fractionalizing 
>votes to obtain a preferential majority to 
>declare a candidate elected to office. Do 
>transfers and fractionalizing of votes violate a 
>person's constitutional right to vote and to 
>associate with one candidate for an elected office?

The first sentence introduces this "right to 
associate," though that right, as normally 
interpreted, has nothing to do with voting. If we 
were dealing with the "right to associate," that 
right presumably allows us to associate with more 
than one person. The court in Brown v. Smallwood 
did not mention, as far as I've noticed, a "right 
to associate," this is a spurious invention of the plaintiff.

Brown v. Smallwood did not address 
fractionalizing of votes, which is a technique 
used in Single Transferable Vote to make vote 
transfers more equitable, for the purpose of 
creating proportional representation. Extending 
Brown v. Smallwood to multiwinner elections is a 
more complex issue than its simple application to 
single-winner elections. Unstated in the 
plaintiff's memorandum is the fact that, when 
votes are "fractionalized," the result is that no 
more than one full vote of the voter has been 
used to elect any winner. However, it is correct 
that this process results in the voter not 
knowing what single candidate was elected with 
the assistance their vote, because there may be 
more than one. It is possible, though, to remedy 
this with a procedural detail and an allowance of 
some degree of approximation. I.e., each voter 
would know whom, specifically, their vote 
elected, because transfers would be assigned and 
referred to voting precincts. All this complexity 
I will set aside as something quite unclear under 
Minnesota law, being possibly imagined as 
conflicting with the spirit of Brown v. 
Smallwood, but not explicitly considered by that 
decision, which dealt only with single-winner 
methods. (Though they mention cumulative voting 
in the decision, they were making a different point.)

The real issue here is vote transfers, and the 
possibility of contingent votes cast by voters. 
Brown v. Smallwood was quite explicit on this. In 
response to a petition from the City of Duluth 
for rehearing, and on review, they held that

>The decision is sound; and we do right in 
>upholding the right of the citizen to cast a 
>vote for the candidate of his choice unimpaired 
>by second or additional choice votes cast by other voters.

FairVote, in its promotion of IRV in Minnesota, 
has claimed that Brown v. Smallwood was concerned 
about a different issue, based on this comment made in the original decision:

The preferential system directly diminishes the 
right of an elector to give an effective vote for 
the candidate of his choice. If he votes for him 
once, his power to help him is exhausted. If he 
votes for other candidates, he may harm his choice, but cannot help him.

FairVote claims that this is a reference to the 
fact that, in Bucklin voting, if you add a second 
preference vote for a different candidate, that 
vote might result in the different candidate 
being elected, where, otherwise, it would have 
been a tie, or it might, the same, create a tie, 
thus harming the favorite candidate. This is 
theoretically possible with Bucklin voting, but 
Single Transferable Vote avoids this by only 
considering lower preference votes once 
more-preferred candidates have been eliminated 
from consideration. Thus, it might seem, the 
lower-preference votes, if any, cannot harm the 
more preferred candidate. Had this been the 
primary concern of the court, it would have been 
a telling argument. But it was not. The court 
went on to say, in the same paragraph:

>Another elector may vote for three candidates 
>opposed to him. The mathematical possibilities 
>of the application of the system are infinite.

This, then, read together with other language in 
the decision, and especially the reasoning 
expressed  in the court's response to the request 
for rehearing, shows that it is the multiple 
votes that were of concern to the court.

There was a cogent dissent expressed, by J. 
Hallam, in Brown v. Smallwood, and it seems clear 
from the rehearing response that there was 
substantial disagreement with this decision among 
legal experts of the time. The court goes so far 
as to note that the petitions for rehearing 
claimed  that the court went wrong on a plain 
proposition involving no difficulty, or, to put 
it in the language of one of the petitions, "If 
one will put the proposition up to good lawyers 
 
who have examined into the question, five out of 
six will say that the statute does not violate 
the constitution." Clearly, the decision was 
unpopular, the court effectively acknowledges (and explicitly disregards) that.

Even though the plaintiff in the present case 
argues on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, 
preferential voting, per se, has been found 
constitutional by nearly all courts. (One variant 
on Bucklin, in Oklahoma, was found 
unconstitutional in that state on the basis of 
its use of fractional votes. However, this was 
quite different from the fractional votes in STV, 
which actually add to the effective voting power 
of the voter whose vote is divided, which the 
effect in Oklahoma was to reduce voting power.

(Perhaps this should be explained. In Duluth 
Bucklin, first preference votes were tallied, and 
if any candidate gained a majority, that 
candidate was elected. Otherwise, second 
preference votes were counted and added to the 
first preference totals. Note that this only 
allows one vote per candidate to be cast. Again, 
if a majority of ballots (not votes!) were found 
to contain a vote for a candidate, the candidate 
was elected. And so on for third preference. 
(With first and second preference, voters were 
only allowed to vote for one candidate, but with 
third preference, they could vote for as many as 
they wished; i.e., they could effectively vote 
against a candidate by voting for everyone else. 
The effect of that, though, would be to abstain 
from all other pairwise elections.) In Oklahoma, 
perhaps assuming that lower preference 
represented some lower approval of a candidate, 
fractional values were assigned to the votes. 
This has the effect, though, of penalizing the 
voter for voting first preference for a candidate not likely to win.)

(Sometimes it is asserted that Bucklin voting, 
like Approval, allows the voter more than one 
vote. However, just as with Instant Runoff 
Voting, only one vote, in the end, is effective, 
at most. All other votes are contingent, and 
moot, they could be struck from the ballots with 
no change to the result. The Minnesota court, in 
its reasoning does consider the difference 
between a single voter and single vote, 
represented by a single ballot, and the number of 
marks on the ballot, yet, in one of the more 
frustrating aspects of the decision, proceeds to 
contradict its own reasoning by being concerned 
that the number of marks on the Bucklin ballots 
exceeded the number of voters. What matters, one 
would have thought, is the number of voters 
expressing support for a candidate for election; 
when this passes a majority, majority rule has 
been satisfied, and all other marks, used in the 
process of finding that majority, are moot. 
Instant Runoff Voting, though, differs from 
Bucklin in a very important way: when Bucklin 
fails to find a majority, it has considered every 
vote cast, not just some of the votes. IRV will 
terminate the process and declare a winner even 
though a majority has not been found and not all 
the votes have been examined, if the votes 
remaining from unexhausted ballots have reached a 
majority, not of all valid ballots cast, but of 
only that reduced set of ballots. Because Bucklin 
does not eliminate candidates, until the very 
end, it is more likely to find a compromise 
winner, one more broadly acceptable, instead of 
merely the one with the most first-preference 
votes, like Plurality, or what amounts to almost 
the same, like IRV. Nevertheless, both methods, 
in most election situations, will perform about 
the same. IRV starts to have real trouble when 
there are three viable candidates; but that's a 
rare scenario. Bucklin probably continues to 
perform adequately. What is truly relevant here is this:

Bucklin, like IRV, in the end has discarded, 
effectively removed from consideration, all votes 
not cast for the winner. This is absolutely true 
if a true majority is required to win. (A 
majority voting for a candidate is a majority 
even if all other ballots, not containing a vote 
for that candidate, were blank or contained 
irrelevant votes, but still were counted as part 
of the basis for majority.) The argument that 
Bucklin violates one-person, one-vote, is based 
on a shallow analysis concerned with the number 
of marks, not the number of voters supporting the 
winner (vs. those supporting other candidates). 
The Minnesota court made the argument, actually, 
then missed the implications and failed to apply it.

The dissenting opinion in Brown v. Smallwood 
should be carefully read. It covers nearly every important argument.

To summarize my response to the plaintiff's 
summary of the issue. Yes, if Brown v. Smallwood 
continues to be upheld, vote transfers violate 
the Minnesota State Constitution. However, Brown 
v. Smallwood was defectively reasoned by that 
court, and should be reconsidered, not merely 
reinterpreted to allow Instant Runoff Voting, 
because of a peculiarity of that method, 
considered a defect by some experts, while 
continuing to prohibit better methods, such as 
the system of voting that was being used in 
Duluth, or other methods under consideration by 
voting reformers or in use in various contexts.

Returning to the issues raised by the plaintiffs:

>II. Under an election system, a formulation to 
>redistribute surplus votes or second-ranked 
>votes can divide a single vote into fractions 
>among other candidates. Also a ballot is 
>exhausted – uncounted – when an elector does not 
>choose the next-ranked candidate although [the 
>elector] may have ranked subsequent candidates 
>on the same ballot. Is the equal protection 
>clause violated when one vote is fractioned, and 
>ballots not counted, resulting in a vote's 
>dilution because of that election system?

Again, there are two issues here. The first is 
the use of fractional votes in surplus transfers. 
The second is the issue of a procedural detail, 
not relevant under some election rules, the 
handling of empty ranks when there are votes 
present at a lower rank. The second issue is thus 
a detail of less importance. If it's a problem, 
it could be fixed. Treat blank votes as if they 
were for an eliminated candidate. I've always 
wondered why this wasn't being done in San Francisco.

So the issue of substance in this second issue is 
the use of fractional votes. It's not clear that 
the plaintiff understands this. Such fractional 
votes never represent a dilution of the voter's 
power, they, rather, represent a restoration of 
it. Fractional vote transfers were used to 
rectify an obvious inequity in proportional representation systems.

Consider a situation where three candidates are 
to be elected to office. One candidate is very 
popular, and let's say that two-thirds of voters 
have voted for this candidate. However, the quota 
for election, called the Droop quota, is not more 
than one vote greater than one-fourth of the 
number of valid ballots containing votes. (Why 
isn't it one-third? Well, it's complicated; and 
it is debated, but if we want to elect the 
most-preferred candidates, if all elected 
candidates are preferred by the Droop quota or 
more, then there are insufficient votes remaining 
to elect any more candidates. If the quota for 
election is one-third, then any exhausted ballots 
will result in insufficient votes to elect the 
third candidate. Systems that do not result in 
exhausted ballots can use the Hare quota, 
assuming proper details.) What do we do with all 
those "surplus votes"”? Do we neglect them, thus 
allowing the remaining one-third of the voters to 
elect the other two representatives? This would 
give two-thirds of votes in a resulting assembly 
to candidates preferred by one-third of the 
voters! Since we have only been looking at the 
first choices of those who voted for the first 
candidate elected, the most popular, clearly we 
should, in order not to dilute those votes, look at the second preferences.

There are two basic ways that it is done. 
Sometimes, in the counting, when a quota has been 
found, the ballots used to find that quota are 
then set aside and counted no further. Then the 
candidate is considered as if eliminated, i.e., 
the next lower preference is counted. In each 
case, one ballot is increasing the total for one 
candidate by one vote. However, there is a 
problem with this: who your vote counts for 
depends on what sequence in which your vote is 
counted. This is considered a problem (how real 
the problem is may depend on unpredictable 
details of the exact election environment), so 
the division of votes was invented. If, say, the 
quota is one-fourth of the votes, and one-half of 
the voters have voted for a candidate, then all 
of the second preference votes are counted, but 
they are "fractioned," in this case multiplied by 
one-half. You got your favorite elected, and 
one-half of your vote was used for that, leaving 
one-half to be assigned to your second 
preference, etc. This keeps, within roundoff 
error, one full vote active until it has either 
been distributed to create winners or it has been exhausted.

Is this complicated? Yes. Is it fair? Well, up to 
the election of the last candidate, yes, it is 
clearly fair. With the last candidate, the 
election effectively becomes the same as an 
instant runoff voting election, with the problems 
associated with that. In summary, fractioning the 
votes, as is done with multiwinner STV, does not 
dilute them in the sense of weakening them; 
rather, it maintains their potency. Votes are 
only fractioned after having been partly used to elect a winner.

However, if Brown v. Smallwood is allowed to 
stand, the court would be consistent if it were 
suspicious of any form of Single Transferable 
Vote, no matter how fair it is. The court in 
Brown v. Smallwood explicitly rejected arguments 
based on election method performance or value: 
their answer to these was, essentially, "Fine!. Change the constitution!"

The third issue raised by the plaintiffs is with 
regard to the right of municipalities to create 
"election systems affecting general elections." 
There was a similar issue, I think, with Brown v. 
Smallwood, but the present issue would have to do 
with details regarding the 1983 statute or other 
relevant statutes. It's not an issue that I feel 
a need to address. My understanding has been, 
though, that Minneapolis was within its rights to 
implement a voting system if that system did not violate the constitution.

Reading further in the Memorandum, I find plenty 
of irrelevant argument. The core, though, relies 
entirely on Brown v. Smallwood or similar 
reasoning, as it should. (Only Brown v. Smallwood 
makes this issue clear enough, on the face, to 
justify a motion for summary judgment.)

However, instead of simply quoting Brown v. 
Smallwood and showing its application to Instant 
Runoff Voting, they dilute their argument by 
rearguing Brown v. Smallwood, which might be an 
unskillful move. It invites re-examination of 
that case, and it's my opinion that a careful 
re-examination will result in its reversal. And 
the arguments they give, at least some of them, 
are novel, and defective. Consider this, 
examining fractional vote transfers in STV:

>Furthermore, in multiseat elections, the single 
>transferable vote scheme reflects the likelihood 
>of a diminished and vanished right to political 
>association and right to vote when surplus votes 
>and transferred votes result in fractions of a 
>vote between two opposing candidates. An 
>elector's intent to politically associate with a 
>candidate cannot be realized if his one vote is 
>divided between two candidates with opposing political beliefs.
>
> From this example, an elector does not know the 
> destiny of his vote, and will not realize his 
> intent for political association. The fraction 
> of ".5" split between the Democrat and the 
> Independent cannot reflect the political intent 
> of an elector since it cannot be associated 
> with two ideologies likely diametrically opposed to each other.

First of all, this concept of "political 
association" is entirely invented by the 
plaintiffs or the plaintiff's counsel. 
“Ideologies” are constitutionally irrelevant. 
And, worst of all, if there are "ideologically" 
incompatible votes, it is because voters vote for 
candidates, not ideologies. The idea that the 
vote, voluntarily cast by the voter, under no 
coercion, "cannot reflect the political intent" 
of the elector, is preposterous. It is a direct 
expression of that political intent. This is 
seriously poor reasoning, period, not to mention seriously poor legal argument.

I will examine the vote transfer chart that they 
present at the end of this document.

In another legal gaffe, the memorandum proceeds 
to rely upon Bush v. Gore as a precedent, when 
the Supreme Court, in a flash of candor, stated 
that Bush v. Gore was not to be considered a 
precedent, but was based on unique circumstances (as I recall).

This argument could be, possibly, quite 
inexpedient politically, and, yes, Virginia, 
politics has an effect on legal decisions. Bush 
v. Gore was highly unpopular with most legal 
experts, and raising it as a precedent is waving 
a big red flag that says, "Watch out for spurious arguments."

The memorandum then considers the legality of 
Minneapolis adopting its own election method, 
and, in particular, the STV method. I have paid 
less attention to this argument; however, one 
part of it stood out to me. The plaintiffs claim 
irreconcilable conflict with state election law 
regarding election contests over "who received 
the largest number of votes legally cast." They 
conflate this with "first preference votes," 
assuming that all other votes wouldn't be a part 
of that number. This is, thus, the same issue; 
the conflict arises only if vote transfers are 
not "votes legally cast." Suppose that the voting 
method was simple Approval voting. Vote for any 
candidate you care to support. I.e., you may vote 
for more than one, but never, of course, may you 
cast more than one vote for any particular 
candidate. With such a system, there is a clear 
definition of which candidate received "the 
largest number of votes legally cast." This was 
the candidate whom the largest number of voters 
chose to support. If we consider alternative 
votes as being similar, as expressions of 
support, but used only if one's first preference 
is eliminated, we still end up with the winner 
being the one whom the largest number of voters 
chose to support, whether through first preference votes or alternative votes.

Now, there is a problem with sequential 
elimination, in that it doesn't treat all 
lower-preference votes equally. Specifically, it 
does not count them until the voter's first 
preference has been eliminated. This can cause a 
candidate to lose who would clearly win in a 
direct contest with the IRV winner, because the 
votes for that candidate were not "uncovered" 
until the candidate was eliminated –- and these 
votes are never even counted, typically. However, 
this is a complex issue, and for this to be the 
basis of a constitutional challenge would require 
far greater legal skill than is being exhibited.

Now, about the STV vote chart they provide. At 
the start, I will explain the Droop quota used. 
It's probably easiest to understand that quota, 
why it is V/(N+1) + 1, rounded down, V being the 
number of valid ballots cast and N being the 
number of candidates to be elected, by 
considering first the case where N = 1. V/2 + 1, 
rounded down, is a simple majority. That is, it 
is the lowest number of votes that is more than 
half. With two candidates, the quota is the 
lowest number of votes that is more than a third. 
And so forth. It seems complicated, but it's actually pretty simple.

Then, when a candidate is elected, the candidate 
usually has more than the quota of votes. If we 
subtract the votes used from the votes needed to 
meet the quota, then we have unused votes, 
"surplus votes." So that this group of people is 
fairly represented according to the proportion of 
this group in the electorate, these votes are 
reassigned according to the lower preferences on 
the ballots. If these voters all voted 
consistently, it would not be necessary to use 
fractional transfers, for, quite simply, the 
excess votes would go to a single candidate. Thus 
a group that was a vote more than half the 
electorate would get two winners if three are 
being elected. (If this seems unfair, then we 
should really look at deeper systems of 
proportional representation that involve electing 
more than three candidates! It's better than the 
standard plurality at-large system that would 
give all the winners to a majority of voters.) In 
fact, however, voters are not robots, voting 
consistently with each other. So what is done is 
to consider that these voters have had a portion 
of their vote used to elect their favorite (if 
these were all first preference votes), and then 
they individually cast their second preference votes at a reduced value.

The plaintiffs consider a two-seat election, with 
four candidates and 10,000 voters. The candidates 
are a Republican, a Democrat, and Independent, 
and a Green, and the first preference totals are 
4000, 3000, 2000, 1000. This is an example, it 
seems, that they created. It's not a realistic one.

They definitely did not create and describe the 
example in order to make the STV system clear. 
Indeed, it may have been part of their desire to 
make it seem as complicated as possible.

Be that as it may, or not, the quota with 10000 
votes and 3 seats is 3334. The Republican is 
first elected, using up this number of votes, out 
of 4000 total, leaving 666 votes unallocated. 
Each voter is then assigned 666/4000 vote to be 
assigned to that voter's next preference. They 
don't explain this part, they just do the math, 
it seems that they don't realize that it is the 
voters who are controlling the vote transfers, 
through their ballot choices. To make the 
expression maximally unclear, they do the math 
backwards, first calculating and expressing, as a 
decimal, the fraction (4000 – 3334)/4000, i.e., 
16.65%, and then multiplying it by 4000 to get 
 666.

They don't state it very clearly, but apparently 
the Republican voters voted second rank as 3000 
for the Independent , 1000 for the Green, and 
none for Democrat. While that's thoroughly 
unrealistic, I can accept it just as an example. So the transfers are

To the Independent, 0.1665 x 3000 = 499.5 votes
To the Green, 0.1665 x 1000 = 166.5 votes.

They seem quite disturbed by the 0.5 vote 
fractional parts, as if there is some voter who 
has half their vote going to the Independent and 
half to the Green. That's not at all what is 
happening. What is happening is that each voter 
is casting, through their second preference, 
0.1665 vote. Which happens to come out to totals 
with exact half-votes in them. It could be any 
number; the method described in the Minneapolis 
procedure calculates the surplus ratio to four decimal places.

The way they state it is, "The transferred vote 
in this example fractionalizes one vote into 
one-half for two candidates, the Green and the 
Independent." Which is quite incorrect. What has 
happened is that 3000 votes for the Independent 
have been reduced in weight to 499.5 votes, due 
to those voters having already elected a 
preferred candidate with most of their vote, and 
likewise 1000 votes for the Green are fractioned 
to 166.5 votes. There is no "vote" which was split in two.

At this point, no other candidate has reached the 
quota, so vote transfer due to elimination 
begins. The Green is eliminated. The Green votes, 
1000 votes, will be transferred to the second 
preference expressed on the Green ballots, and 
the third preferences of the Republicans who 
voted for the Green as second preference will 
likewise be transferred. They lump these together, increasing the confusion.

They don't provide the ballot data, just totals, 
which they do not explain. Of the 1166.5 votes 
held by the Green before elimination, they assign 
166.5 to the Democrat and 1000 to the 
Independent. This is exceedingly odd. 166.5 is 
the number of votes transferred from the 
Republican voters to the Green as second choice. 
It is 1000 ballots with Green marked as second 
preference, and deweighted. So are they imagining 
that the Republicans who ranked the Green second 
would all rank the Democrat third? Maybe. But 
they have, then, every voter who ranked the Green 
first preferring the Independent as second 
choice, which is astonishingly unlikely if these 
labels mean anything. Even if they are purely 
arbitrary, i.e., "Republican," "Democrat," etc., 
might as well be "Candidate A," "Candidate B," 
etc., vote transfers like this wouldn't make sense.

The vote transfers from the Greens put the 
Independent over the quota, so the Independent, 
while trailing the Democrat in first preference 
votes, by a large margin (2000 to 3000), wins the 
second seat. This kind of election behavior, 
quite simply, doesn't happen in real IRV 
elections. The norm is that leaders in first 
preference win the elections. However, strongly 
partisan elections could possibly show different 
patterns. IRV in Ann Arbor, Michigan, resulted in 
the election of a Democrat when previous 
elections had been spoiled by a Human Rights 
Party candidate gaining some significant 
percentage of the vote (I forget the number, it 
was high for third parties, 10%?). But a loss to 
a candidate initially leading by a ratio of 3 to 
2? In order to show that, they had to use 
drastically slanted vote transfers that seem to 
assume ideological voting based on clear party 
differences , yet which also don't make much sense even then.

Further, they neglected exhausted ballots 
entirely. They show none. Again, highly unlikely. 
Two candidates are being elected, but they show 
no exhausted ballots even though some are 
reaching down to third preference (the 1000 
Republican first-preference voters who ranked the Green second preference.)

But they still try to make hay from this. When 
they return to examine this sample election, they 
state that "The City cannot declare that creating 
fractional votes, splitting the political 
associational intent of one voter between two or 
more political ideologies is a small infraction 
of constitutional rights to rationalize the need 
for single transfer voting." Sic. They really should find a good proofreader.

In fact, that "split"” vote  refers to the 0.5 
vote fractional part of the vote totals 
transferred, and does not, at all, represent a 
single voter's vote being split between 
candidates that were not chosen by the voter. 
Rather, 3000 Republican voters cast a lower 
preference vote for the Independent, and 1000 for 
the Green, at 0.1665 vote each, having 
experienced the win of their first preference. 
They will not be complaining. The Green votes 
ended up with the independent and the Democrat; 
in no case did this happen without a voter 
explicitly assigning their remaining fraction of 
a vote to that candidate. By not reporting the 
actual ballot breakdowns, they make it hard to 
see this, but I can hope that the court will not 
be taken in. Voters do not necessarily vote 
"ideologically." They vote for candidates, and 
"ideology," manifested through party affiliation, 
is not a designed part of our system, some might 
even consider it a parasitic growth. I highly 
doubt it is mentioned in the Minnesota 
Constitution, so this memorandum is not legal 
reasoning as to the constitutionality of the 
voting method, it is rationalization.

IRV is, compared to other, simpler alternatives, 
an expensive election method that makes only a 
modest improvement in performance over Plurality 
and which actually degrades performance compared 
to Top Two Runoff.. But it is properly 
constitutional, and preferential voting was only 
found unconstitutional in Minnesota (and nowhere 
else) through some very poor legal reasoning that 
just might, indeed, be analogous to Bush v. Gore, 
but it's hard to tell after this lapse of time. 
Bucklin voting, like other voting reforms, indeed 
like any movement toward purer democracy, could 
be feared to allow third parties to rise in 
prominence, and thus it had to be stopped. And 
for that kind of purpose, court majorities have 
been known to manufacture entirely spurious arguments.