[EM] Question on RCV/IRV multi-seat method used in Minneapolis

[Paul Kislanko]

There is no confidence in the US regarding EITHER the counting OR the
maintenance of the rolls. Parties in power purge the rolls of voters known
to be for party-not-in-power so regularly it's not even addressed by the
courts any more, and NEGATIVE votes for candidates have been known to be
certified as true by authorities who coincidentally are activists for other
candidates in the election.

There are several collection methods that preserve the secret ballot but
allow auditability of election results. Until one of those are mandated in
the US, no one in the free world should consider any US election (whether
for mayor or president) "honest and fair" in any sense of the terms.


-----Original Message-----
From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com
[mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Raph
Frank
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:38 PM
To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Question on RCV/IRV multi-seat method used in Minneapolis

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:25 PM, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is similar in Ireland, confidence in the count is high.  The
>> electoral register on the other hand isn't trusted quite so much.
>
> Unfortunately in most US states, we have utterly SECRET ballot
> security procedures and no publicly verifiable ballot reconciliation,
> so that no one can know if the ballots have been tampered with,
> substituted, properly handled, or what.

Secret ballot security measures are clearly a bad idea, especially if
they are the only measures.
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