[EM] Legacy IRV limitations

[Michael Garman]

The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center is an independent entity fully
unaffiliated with FairVote. Hope this helps!

On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 8:35 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:

> On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>  > On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
>  >> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something
>  >> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
>  >> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank
>  >> exactly as many of them as they wish?
>  >
>  > I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway (e.g.
>  > some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And I
>  > *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can
>  > only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain
>  > number of holes.
>
> One reason for limiting ranking to just 3 "choice" levels is the issue
> of "ballot real estate."  Specifically, more choice levels take up more
> ballot space.  That's a big issue in U.S. elections where there are so
> many election contests.
>
> Otherwise, when there are more than 3 candidates, the number of choice
> columns interacts with the issue of "overvotes."
>
> It's the FairVote organization that promotes the myth that IRV cannot
> handle "overvotes."
>
> Apparently FairVote does this to allow using old data from Australian
> elections to certify new or revised IRV software.
>
> Australia previously, before machine counting of ballots became
> available, counted their ranked-choice paper ballots manually, by
> stacking ballots in piles.  (That's what I've read.)
>
> To speed up that manual counting, apparently Australia adopted the
> shortcut of stacking ballots according to which candidate is highest
> ranked after removing eliminated candidates.
>
> That shortcut means that during each counting round only a single stack
> of ballots needs to be looked at, and sorted, based on which candidate
> has become the newly highest-ranked candidate (after the latest
> elimination).
>
> An important part of this shortcut is to reject/dismiss/ignore any
> ballot when there is no longer just one highest-ranked candidate.
> That's probably when the term "overvote" appeared.
>
> In turn, this is why FairVote promotes the myth that when there are only
> three "choice" columns each choice column can have only one mark.
>
> If there are only three choice columns and a voter wants to indicate
> that one particular candidate is worse than all other candidates, and
> there are 5 or more candidates, all but the most-disliked candidate need
> to be ranked at choice levels "first," "second," and "third."
>
> Now that election officials in the United States and Australia count
> paper ballots using machines that read ballots, it's time to at least
> question this legacy limitation of not allowing "overvotes."  And
> hopefully we can soon abandon this legacy limitation.
>
> For clarification, in Australia a voter writes a number inside a box
> located next to each candidate's name.  Software can recognize those
> handwritten numbers as reliably as a person, yet much faster.  When
> there is uncertainty a photographic image of the ballot can be displayed
> on multiple computer screens for verification from several humans.
>
> This limitation of not ranking more than one candidate at the same
> choice level is due to a lack of ballot data (including results) against
> which new software can be verified.
>
> It's time to end this ridiculous limitation.
>
> Part of my frustration comes from the fact that Portland Oregon recently
> adopted counting rules that are even worse than just ignoring ballots
> with "overvotes."
>
> With "advice" from the FairVote-controlled "Ranked Choice Voting
> Resource Center" the Portland election officials chose to skip over
> overvotes instead of dismissing the remainder of the ballot.
>
> This means a voter who ranks candidates A and B as their "second choice"
> and candidate C as their "third choice" will get their ballot counted as
> support for candidate C even if candidates A and B have not been
> eliminated.  Yet ranking candidate C higher than A and B is exactly the
> opposite(!) of what the voter clearly intended!
>
> As a reminder there is a simple way to correctly count such "overvotes."
>   Just pair up the ballot with equivalent similar ballots during that
> counting round.  Specifically, if two ballots rank candidates A and B as
> equally preferred, one of those ballots goes to support candidate A and
> the other ballot goes to support candidate B (during this counting round).
>
> Now that we have machines and software to handle the correct counting of
> "overvotes," this extra "effort" does not impose any significant delay,
> or any significant increase in electricity to power the computer for a
> few extra milliseconds.  It does require extra effort from the
> programmer who writes the code, but that just involves extra effort from
> one person for a few hours.  (And if they don't know how to write that
> code they can copy from open-source software that correctly does this
> counting.)
>
> To repeat, the only reason for the legacy of dismissing "overvotes" is
> that we lack certified ballot data against which to certify upgraded
> software.
>
> Allowing overvotes will make it possible to meaningfully rank more than
> 6 candidates using only 5 or 6 choice columns.
>
> (A complication is whether an unranked candidate is ranked at the bottom
> printed choice level, or lower than all ranked candidates.  And this
> interacts with the complication of how to rank a candidate who is a
> write-in candidate on someone else's ballot.)
>
> Limiting ranked choice ballots to 6 choice columns is reasonable, even
> when the election contest has 10 or more candidates.  But doing so does
> require correctly counting 2 or more candidates at the same "choice" level.
>
> Richard Fobes
> The VoteFair guy
>
>
> On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> > On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
> >>
> >> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something
> >> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
> >> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank
> >> exactly as many of them as they wish?
> >>
> >
> > I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway (e.g.
> > some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And I
> > *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can
> > only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain
> > number of holes.
> >
> > I'm not sure, though.
> >
> >> I prefer Smith//Condorcet, but accept that that is more complex to
> >> explain and sell and probably the most approved candidate
> >> will nearly always be in the voted Smith set.
> >
> > Do you mean Smith//Approval?
> >
> > -km
> > ----
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> info
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> info
>
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