[EM] Burlington VT reconsidering IRV 10 years after IRV failed to elect the Condorcet Winner

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On December 3, 2019 5:13 PM Juho Laatu <juho.laatu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  
> My simple thoughts on this:
> 
> - You ask: Do you agree that in problematic situations, like what happened in 2009, the result should be different?
> - They answer: Yes.
> - You say: This is a problem that is fortunately quite easily to fix. The most straight forward way to enhance the method is to use the Bottom-Two Runoff. The losing candidate one of the two candidates with least votes will be eliminated.
> - They say: Ok, let's see if that would be our ideal solution.
> - You say: Ok, let's start from there.
> 

Juho, this is **exactly** my strategy.  But there is a little bit of an issue about "let's start from there".  Here is the latest news regarding yesterday's Council meeting and RCV:

 https://vtdigger.org/2019/12/03/burlington-considers-instant-runoff-voting-for-most-city-races/ 

What has happened is that the Progs have "succeeded" in fending off an amendment to take more time and investigate alternatives to the IRV method of RCV.  They want, really badly, to get this on the ballot for this coming Town Meeting Day in March 2020.  The latest that the Council can decide to include this on the ballot is in 13 days.  And in 6 days is when the Charter Change Committee will consider this proposed ballot item, fix any language, and recommend it to the Council on Dec 16.

I am afraid that putting this on the ballot "half-baked", with effectively no change from what we had in 2009 and acknowledging no error from the 2009 election, will result in March in rejection by the majority of voters and will, again, set back voting reform for another decade.  So I want to make a good effort at changing the language from regular-old IRV to BTR-STV.  And hopefully get that change adopted by the Charter Change Committee and sent up to the Council to consider for inclusion on the ballot.  Then we can tell voters that this IRV is different from the 2009 IRV and would have corrected the failure of IRV we had in 2009.

I believe that Schulze is technically the best RCV, but since Schulze and Ranked-Pairs will elect the same candidate when the Smith set is 3 candidates or fewer, my favorite would be RP using margins for a governmental election because its method is easier to understand and encode into legal language that laypersons can read and understand.  Also, we would be able to say to the IRV haters that this RP RCV is not IRV at all.

However, we can't say that about BTR-STV because, after all, it *is* a form of Instant Runoff Voting, but and IRV method that *will* elect the Pairwise Champion (the term that I will use to denote the Condorcet Winner).  But, given the circumstances (that an IRV proposal is in the works right now), I think this is the best action I can hope to take.  I would have to admit that this Condorcet-compliant IRV is still IRV.  The Progs won't mind and other naive RCV supporters won't mind, but the IRV haters, particularly those who hated the IRV winner in 2009 will always hate IRV or any RCV, but I would still rather be promoting an RCV that is *not* IRV (no runoff rounds).

I am taking Kristofer's language suggestions and possibly modifying.  I would like to see language suggestions from others.  Either way, I will post what language I finally will submit to the Charter Change Committee.  They will probably reject my submission, but I will tell them plainly that if they are offering RCV that is no different from the IRV that resulted in the 2009 failure and was repealed by voters the following year, that their proposed charter change will be rejected by the majority of voters on Town Meeting Day.  And this will likely set back voting reform by another decade.

> BR, Juho

and also to you, Juho.  i am appreciative of any help or language or analysis suggestions from you or anyone.


--
 
r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
 
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."