[EM] Aspen CO's IRV/STV Election - Fwd: "Good Things Come to Those Who Rank?"

[Kathy Dopp]

Friends,

Aspen, CO demonstrates how Single Transferrable Vote (STV) counting
procedures, if actually followed can *not* fill all the seats because
many voters' ballots become exhausted.

So if STV counting procedures are strictly followed, STV commonly
requires another runoff election to fill the seats.  However, in
Aspen, CO the rules were not followed when the STV counting procedure
could not fill the seats.

As described by Chris Telesca below, in Aspen, CO, a clearly unfair
counting workaround, giving some voters much more power than other
voters to select the winners was used to find some extra "votes" to
add to some candidates' totals so that it could be claimed that the
threshold was met.

Joyce McCloy posted Mayoral Candidate Marilyn Marks' letter here.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RangeVoting/message/11116

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Telesca <cjtelesca at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, May 20, 2009 at 5:49 AM
Subject: Re: Marilyn R. Marks on Aspen IRV election (open letter to R.Richie)
To: kathy.dopp at gmail.com

On thing that Marks hasn't hit on (yet) is where the threshold
crossing votes came from once there were:

1)   only two candidates left standing AND

2)   all the other ballots were exhausted AND

3)   the threshold had not yet been crossed.

You know how they did it?   They took a look at the subsequent
rankings for the ballots belonging to the second place finisher at
that point, and saw if there were any votes for the first place
finisher - then added just enough votes to cross the threshold.  They
stopped counting as soon as they got 1273 - which is why all three
winners have exactly the same number of winning votes.  Boricious
(sp?) claims that is Cambridge IRV rules, but it seems more like
"street football" (comedy routine by Bill Cosby, where he who brings
the football makes the rules).  I say this is pulling votes out of
your "Asspen" (funny "South Park" episode).
Chris Telesca



-- 

Kathy Dopp, LWV, UT

The material expressed herein is the informed  product of the author's
fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician,
Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll
discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

Post-Election Vote Count Audit
A Short Legislative & Administrative Proposal
http://electionmathematics.org//ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/Vote-Count-Audit-Bill-2009.pdf

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf