[EM] The critical importance of Precinct Summability.

[robert bristow-johnson]

From: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
 Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 10:08 AM
 To: Mike McCarthy <MMcCarthy at leg.state.vt.us>; Robert Hooper <RHooper at leg.state.vt.us>; Carol Ode <COde at leg.state.vt.us>; Abbey Duke <ADuke at leg.state.vt.us>; Irene Wrenner <IWrenner at leg.state.vt.us>; Thomas Chittenden <TChittenden at leg.state.vt.us>; Sarah Copeland Hanzas <sarah4vermont at gmail.com>
 Subject: [External] The critical importance of Precinct Summability.
[External]
 
August 6, 2024

Dear Representatives and Senators and Secretary,

I know we're in the middle of our primary campaign season, but this morning I heard on NPR Morning Edition an extremely telling article about why Precinct Summability in our elections is critically important.  Why we *must* hang on to that component of process transparency.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/06/nx-s1-5064231/the-integrity-of-the-venezuelan-presidential-election-is-under-scrutiny

The article is about the apparently stolen Venezuelan election.  International observers have a very good idea what the *true* tallies are because they have copies of the tally sheets from the various precincts and they are able to add the numbers.  They concluded that the opposition won by a 2 to 1 margin.

But they couldn't have known what the various precinct tallies were if they were not reported locally, at each precinct.  And local precincts cannot report tallies if the ballots are not tabulated locally in the first place.

The Hare method of Ranked-Choice Voting, formerly known as Instant-Runoff Voting, is *not* precinct summable.  If the electoral district is wider than a single voting precinct, Hare RCV requires that the individual ballot data be transported opaquely to a central tallying location and commingled with all other precincts before the IRV rounds can commence.

Precinct Summability is a protection of our democracy.  It is something we have and that we use right now with First-Past-The-Post.  And we lose it when we go to Hare RCV.  But we do *not* lose it when we move from FPTP to Condorcet RCV, which despite the protestations from FairVote, is the *only*  correct form of Ranked-Choice Voting.

Condorcet RCV can be tabulated locally with a feasible number of tallies reported at each polling place.  No centralization of the tabulation is needed.  And these tallies can be added together to see who wins the election.  This is critically important.

This Precinct Summability is what exposed the Venezuelan election as stolen.  President Maduro maybe wasn't considering that people were watching each polling place (or a sufficient number of polling places) and recording the tallies reported at each place and adding the results.

So also, President Trump might not have been expecting that when he told Georgia Secretary of State  Brad Raffensperger to "... find, uh, 11780, uh, votes."   Brad Raffensperger was honest and did not attempt to do that for Trump, but what if he wasn't honest?  There would be no possible way for him to pad or change any tallies from any counties, cities, or polling places by enough to significantly change the results.

Precinct Summability is one thing we *need* to keep elections honest.  Precinct Summability protects us.  We *must* have it.  And we lose it with Hare RCV.  We must not lose this critical component of process transparency.  It also is needed to prevent a 15 day delay (as was the case  in Alaska) in reporting RCV election results.

Please review and listen to that NPR story.   And please reconsider this issue.  Two relevant links:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YtejO54DSOFRkHBGryS9pbKcBM7u1jTS/view 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view 

Best regards,

Robert Bristow-Johnson
Burlington Vermont

802-310-4096

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."