[EM] Legacy IRV limitations

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

On 12/16/2023 9:04 PM, Michael Garman wrote:
> The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center is an independent entity fully 
> unaffiliated with FairVote. Hope this helps!

Thank you, Michael, for clarifying that the Ranked Choice Voting 
Resource Center RCVRC is not officially(!) affiliated with FairVote.

Then why does RCVRC have the same misunderstanding that the leader of 
the FairVote organization has been pushing for decades?

Especially, I'd like to understand why RCVRC pushed onto the Portland 
Oregon election officials the idea that skipping(!) "overvotes" was a 
recommended option.  That's worse than ignoring the remaining rankings!

That skipping option works in Australia where a voter hand-writes a 
number next to each candidate's name.  (They don't have to worry about 
"ballot real estate" because there is just one box for each candidate.) 
But it doesn't make sense here in the U.S. where we mark ovals in 
"choice" columns.  And where ballot real estate is very important.

(In fact, the upcoming statewide referendum for Oregon adopts RCV for 
just a limited number of contests because election officials were 
concerned that adopting it would cause Oregon ballots to require more 
than one sheet of paper.)

I see that your website -- RankTheVoteNYC.org -- shows that in your NYC 
elections "The scanner will reject any ballot where you mark more than 
one candidate for the same rank  – in other words, if you fill in more 
than one oval in the same column."

Does RCVRC not know that it's easy to correctly count those marks? 
(Just pair up equivalent ballots and allocate those "paired" ballots in 
equal numbers to those same-ranked candidates.)

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy