[EM] new simple legal strategy to get IRV

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 10/1/15 1:33 PM, Sennet Williams wrote:
>
>       btw,  We might consider keeping IRV distinguished from RCV.

yes, Sand you might well consider doing that.

might i suggest reading up in Wikipedia (maybe start at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-member_district#Comparison_of_single-member_district_election_methods 
) and http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Special:AllPages .

Ranked-Choice Voting (that which we do with a Ranked-Order Ballot) is 
*not* the same as IRV despite what apologists at FairVote would suggest.

while IRV may be better than simple plurality voting, it *has* problems 
and *has*, at least once, failed seriously in a governmental election 
(Burlington Vermont Mayoral 2009) which led to its repeal.

there are better methods than IRV, and every time IRV fails, it sullies 
not just IRV but all methods of ranked voting because sometimes ignorant 
voters and dishonest advocates conflate "IRV" with ranked voting.  same 
ballot (or nearly the same), but different methods of evaluating or 
tabulating the ballots to discern whom the majority choice of the 
electorate really is.


>   I know that locally (in the bay area), four cities voted for "IRV." 
>   Instead, SF and Alameda county  supervisors bought machines that can 
> only count three rankings, and they call it Ranked Choice, and that is 
> inferior to true IRV where only 3 rankings are allowed.  An anti-IRV  
> Berkeley council member did his own research study that proved that 
> all rankings should be allowed, but the county made the final 
> decision.  Now it should be obvious that he was right, because both 
> the Oakland and SF mayoral elections were so close that the # of 
> expired ballots vastly outnumbered the top three ranked candidates, so 
> there is no way to know which candidate was actually preferred by the 
> most voters.

this has to do with the number of ranking levels available on a ballot 
with finite area on paper.  3 ranking levels when there are 20+ 
candidates is a problem.  a voter might well find out after the election 
that they "threw away their vote" because none of the candidates they 
ranked ended up being one of the top contenders.

>   (From my observation, the final winner would not have won either 
> election if all rankings had been allowed.
>

because you cannot have infinite area on a paper ballot (and i am still 
for the killing of trees to leave a paper trail for election integrity), 
the only solution to keep the number of candidates from outstripping the 
number of ranking levels are reasonable ballot-access laws.  if your 
ballot has, say, 5 levels of ranking, then the ballot access laws (the 
number of petition signatures needed to get on the ballot) should be 
sufficiently strict to prevent, in a typical election year, more than 5 
candidates (plus one write-in) on the ballot.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."