[EM] FairVote comment on Burlington dumping IRV

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 7/4/13 6:55 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
> 52% is barely a defeat and a huge turnout in wards against IRV could 
> also reflect hard to prove fraud or a possibly an off-the-books 
> well-funded GOTV campaign.
>
> IOW, there is no smoking gun or clear indictment against IRV due to 
> the politicking and slim margin.
> So I'd hope you'd be a more careful in how you treat Burlington...
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
> <abd at lomaxdesign.com <mailto:abd at lomaxdesign.com>> wrote:
>
>     At 01:00 AM 7/3/2013, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>
>         http://www.fairvote.org/lessons-from-burlington#.UdOvX2LE0XY
>         (March 4, 2010)
>
>             Let me cut to the chase. Despite winning in five of the
>             city's seven wards, the use of instant runoff voting (IRV)
>             for mayor was repealed this week by a margin of less than
>             4% in Vermont's largest city of Burlington.
>
>
>     I was just looking at this post and was struck by the way in which
>     the facts were presented. Because wards can have different numbers
>     of voters, and because vote margins make a huge difference,
>     winning in the most wards means very little. But Richie is trying
>     to present a series of "Hey, we almost won" arguments. So I decide
>     to look at the election. The results from some of the earlier IRV
>     elections are no longer available, or, if they are, they are not
>     easy to find. Turns out that some of the places where vote counts
>     were maintained were web sites hosted by IRV supporters, and those
>     have disappeared. Richie, in that blog post, referred to a web
>     site that was used for that campaign. Gone.
>

IRV was used only for the 2006 and 2009 mayoral race.  it was approved 
by voters in 2005 and repealed in 2010.

i have the raw ballot data for both 2006 and 2009 if anyone wants it.  
otherwise, i could harass the town clerk for records, if needed.

it is indeed unfortunate that, while IRV was defeated in 2010 by such a 
small amount, that now the only people that advocate for it are a few 
Progs.  in fact, the common wisdom is that IRV failed but most 
Vermonters still do not understand *what* failed and they just don't 
wanna talk about it, telling me that this issue is long past us.  
consequently i fear that the Vermont Progressive Party may suffer the 
consequences and lose even more ground.

Warren Smith and Kathy Dopp got involved in the Burlington dispute in 
2010 and had their desire satisfied to see IRV repealed, but i don't 
think they can still acknowledge that returning to 40% plurality rule 
may have taken us back to a worse system.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."