[EM] Open letter to STAR voting promoters

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

Below the dotted line is the beginning of my open letter to STAR voting 
promoters.

Here's some background info for the benefit of election-method forum 
readers:

In November, throughout Oregon, Oregon voters will vote to approve or 
defeat a referendum that adopts ranked choice voting for electing Oregon 
governors and Oregon members of Congress (and the Oregon secretary of 
state).  This referendum was passed by the Oregon state legislature! 
This is huge!  All other states that have adopted ranked choice voting 
have needed to gather signatures to get their initiatives on their 
state's ballots.

Here's the full text of the referendum:

https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB2004/Enrolled

The vote-counting details begin on page 2 in Section 4.  Importantly the 
words do not mention anything about "overvotes."  Also importantly it's 
well-worded so the counting details can be refined in the future.  Also 
it gives explicit permission to later adopt the single-transferable vote 
(STV) for electing city-council members (which Portland recently 
adopted) or for electing Oregon state legislators.

Note:  The following "open letter" is long because election-method 
reform is not a simple topic, and numerous misunderstandings are involved.

........................

Here's my open letter to STAR voting promoters:

The recent defeat of STAR voting in Eugene triggered a conversation on 
the r/EndFPTP subreddit in which the comments from you, the promoters of 
STAR voting, reveal some misunderstandings.

These misunderstandings easily could lead to expensive or embarrassing 
mistakes regarding support for, or opposition against, the upcoming 
statewide Oregon November referendum that will adopt ranked choice 
voting for some Oregon elections.


I'll start with areas where you, the STAR voting promoters, have 
correctly identified relevant information.

* Yes, the FairVote organization has a long history of promoting 
misrepresentations.

* Yes, (as far as I know) the FairVote organization was a big source of 
money that paid for "vote-no" postal flyers mailed to Eugene voters.

* Yes, those flyers helped defeat the STAR voting initiative.

* Yes, it's likely that FairVote helped pay for "opposition" arguments 
in the Eugene Voter's Pamphlet, which was mailed to every Eugene voter.

* Yes, those statements of opposition in the voter's pamphlet helped 
defeat the STAR voting initiative.


(E-M forum aside: Here's the link to the Eugene Voter's Pamphlet: 
https://www.eugene-or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/74017/0524-Voters-Pamphlet )


However, I get the impression you, the promoters of STAR voting, are 
overlooking the most important issues that account for why STAR voting 
was defeated.

Here are the issues I suggest you re-consider more carefully.

* You seem to believe the FairVote organization is your enemy, without 
understanding they are basically just supplying money to the huge(!) 
number of Oregon voters who understand that ranked choice ballots are 
much better than STAR ballots.

* Opposition statements in the voter's pamphlet pointed out the 
unfairness of score voting during the first step of STAR counting, when 
a majority-supported candidate can fail to reach the runoff round.  Yet 
your rebuttals about majority support focused on the top-two runoff 
step, which is not what they were criticizing.

* You seem to dismiss the important difference between your 
single-winner method and a good multi-winner method such as the 
single-transferable vote (STV).  STV really does increase representation 
for minorities, women, etc.  In fact STV with three seats per district 
(as chosen for Portland) guarantees representation for at least 66 
percent of that district's voters.  Yes, a single-winner method such as 
STAR or instant-runoff voting (IRV) increases this representation 
guarantee from zero to 50 percent.  But that does not reach the higher 
level that minorities want, and deserve.

* Pointing out you have a few minority advocates who support STAR voting 
is a weak defense against the attacks from the many(!) minority voter 
advocates in Portland who have been learning about the 
single-transferable vote (STV).  Remember STV will be used in Portland 
in November to elect our city councilors.

* Your suggestion that ranked choice voting is vulnerable to vote 
splitting, but STAR voting is not vulnerable to vote splitting, is a 
lie.  This lie undermines your credibility for all your other claims. 
If you try to define "vote splitting" as something that STAR voting 
avoids and instant-runoff voting can fail, then you are guilty of the 
same kind of misrepresentation that comes from the FairVote organization.

* The voter's-pamphlet statements in support of STAR voting wasted lots 
of words talking about issues that are not as important as the above 
issues.  In my opinion these minor issues include the size of summarized 
ballot data, how simple it is for calculating, the monotonicity 
criterion, whether it works well among friends, etc.


Clarification:  Yes, STAR voting is well-designed for use among friends 
where religious, dietary, etc. concerns can be expressed strongly, and 
where selfish people can be excluded, and where voting is conducted as a 
single round of ballot marking and counting.  However the 
strength-of-expression advantage becomes a disadvantage in governmental 
elections.  That's because voters get extra influence by exaggerating 
their ratings, such as not marking any candidates at levels 2 and 3.


Now let's talk about possible future collaborations, and barriers to 
collaboration.

I too dislike the FairVote organization.  I've been fighting against 
them for three decades.

Yet if the FairVote organization offers to pay the fee (about $2,000 I 
believe) to publish in the Oregon Voter's Pamphlet a statement from me, 
Richard Fobes, the VoteFair guy, in support of the November referendum, 
I will gladly accept their assistance.

Or if the FairVote organization asks for permission to use my name as 
being in support of the upcoming November referendum, I will agree -- if 
the promotion does not imply blind support for the FairVote organization 
and does not imply the Burlington and Alaska elections yielded the 
correct winner.

I'm open to this collaboration because they, the FairVote organization, 
and I, the VoteFair guy, agree that RANKED CHOICE BALLOTS are needed for 
election-method reform.

Reaching areas of agreement, and working in collaboration, is how 
election-method reform is going to happen.

This brings us to the core point in this letter.


"Voters must be allowed to mark two or more candidates at the same 
preference level."

These are the words I spoke to the Oregon legislative "rules" committee 
several years ago, back when the FairVote organization was attempting to 
push their flawed idea of how they think ranked choice ballots should be 
counted.

Because of your testimony against that flawed FairVote bill, and because 
of my opposition, the Oregon lawyer who writes these bills later worked 
with Oregon election-method experts to create the dramatically improved 
wording that is now in the November referendum.

The referendum wording does not contain any mention of "overvotes." 
This is huge!  Of course "overvote" is FairVote's terminology for 
marking two or more candidates in the same choice column.

This means you, the fans of STAR voting, can take credit for 
dramatically improving election methods here in Oregon!

If you want, you can think of this refinement as a concession by the 
fans of the FairVote organization.

Or you can spin it as a FairVote "lie" that is finally being exposed.

The result is that, possibly in 2028 when we have the first statewide 
Oregon election using ranked choice ballots, we can be using software 
that correctly counts so-called "overvotes."

As a reminder, when a voter marks two candidates at the same preference 
level, and when the counting reaches that pattern, that ballot can be 
paired with another ballot that has the same equivalent pattern, and one 
of those two ballots is counted as support for one of those two 
candidates, and the other ballot is counted as support for the other 
candidate.  (Software can simulate this counting using decimal numbers 
and rounding down to integers, but certified election software must not 
use the decimal-number shortcut.)

The remaining barrier to this correct counting of mythical "overvotes" 
is the lack of "certified" ballot data against which upgraded election 
software can be tested.  Writing software is easy, but getting it 
certified requires certified data.

The Oregon lawyer who wrote most of the referendum wording calls this 
"overvote" issue a "counting detail."

Why is this "counting detail" so important?

This software refinement eliminates a valid criticism that you, STAR 
voting promoters, have against FairVote's version of instant-runoff voting.

Your criticism shows up in your recent pro-STAR scholarly article where 
the authors (Quinn, Wolk, and Ogren) misrepresent ranked choice ballots 
to be "user unfriendly."  It's a misrepresentation because it does not 
apply to ranked choice voting when mythical "overvotes" are correctly 
counted.  (There's another related user-friendly issue I'll get to shortly.)


(E-M forum aside:  Here's a link to that scholarly article: 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-022-09389-3 )


Yes, your "user unfriendly" criticism does apply when voters are told to 
avoid "overvotes."  Especially when a voter wants to rank a strongly 
disliked candidate as the voter's last choice, and there are not as many 
choice columns as candidates.

However, after mythical "overvotes" are counted correctly, election data 
will reveal a big decrease in "spoiled" ballots.  That will undermine 
part of your characterization of ranked choice ballots as being "user 
unfriendly."

Furthermore, ranked choice ballots with no "overvote" limitation will 
allow a voter to RATE the candidates.

Just like on a score ballot!

This means the voters who think STAR ballots are easier to mark will be 
able to mark their ranked choice ballot as if it were a STAR ballot! 
They just need to look into a mirror -- to reverse the left-to-right 
orientation difference -- and ignore the column labels -- words instead 
of stars and numbers.

STAR voting fans correctly point out that some people prefer to think in 
terms of ratings rather than rankings.  (Other voters regard ratings as 
more difficult to assign.)

When so-called overvotes are allowed on ranked choice ballots, a voter 
can use either a rating or ranking approach, whichever they prefer!

To repeat, this correct counting of so-called overvotes is allowed by 
the wording in November's referendum because it avoids saying anything 
about how to handle those mythical "overvotes."


There is yet another area were I, the VoteFair guy, and you, the 
promoters of STAR voting, agree.  And where we disagree with the 
FairVote organization.

The candidate with the fewest transferred votes is not always the least 
popular.  This is why the infamous Burlington mayoral election, and the 
recent special Alaska election, elected the wrong winner.

You correctly recognize that this unfairness is easy to see in Yee diagrams.

You use this unfairness as evidence that ranked choice ballots are "user 
unfriendly."  Specifically a close election can require some voters to 
mark their ballot tactically (instead of sincerely) to get the fairest 
("correct") election result.

Misleadingly you fail to mention that this "user unfriendliness" will 
disappear when better election software becomes available.

The FairVote organization foolishly attempts to defend the failures in 
Burlington and Alaska.  This is part of why lots of people like STAR 
voting, and why they regard the FairVote organization as their enemy.

Fortunately the referendum wording is written clearly, in a way that 
makes it possible to correct this vote-counting flaw in the future.

I believe that adding just two sentences might be sufficient to correct 
this flaw in a few years when more voters understand this subtle issue.

Specifically, the referendum's counting method can be changed to 
implement Benham's method.  Just add words such as: "If a round of 
counting has a pairwise winning candidate, that candidate is elected; a 
pairwise winning candidate is a candidate who would win every one-on-one 
contest against every remaining candidate."

Or, the wording can be changed to implement the Ranked Choice Including 
Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE) method.  In this case the added words would 
say something like:  "Pairwise losing candidates are eliminated when 
they occur; a pairwise losing candidate is a candidate who would lose 
every one-on-one contest against every remaining candidate."

The result would be an election method that overcomes the criticisms 
against the version of instant-runoff voting that the FairVote 
organization foolishly tries to defend.

Hopefully you recognize that the referendum can, with the addition of 
two sentences, yield all the most significant election-method advantages 
of STAR voting.

Of course some of your STAR-voting fans will not welcome this 
interpretation.

Yet you can claim credit for helping Oregon adopt a 
reasonably-well-designed method that significantly differs from what the 
FairVote organization originally tried to push through the Oregon 
legislature.


Now I'll discuss a concern.

I'm concerned that you, the STAR voting promoters, might try to sabotage 
the November referendum.  That might be based on your belief that the 
FairVote organization is your enemy, and that this referendum is an 
opportunity to "fight back" after losing the Eugene initiative.

Any such sabotage would be a sabotage against all Oregon voters, the 
majority of whom want a better election system.  Remember it would hurt 
Eugene voters too!

And remember the last election for Oregon's governor in which we had to 
vote tactically to avoid vote splitting because of independent candidate 
Betsy Johnson getting money from a Nike co-founder.  The referendum will 
solve that vote-splitting problem.

In case it's important, I did not express opposition against the STAR 
voting initiative.  I remained neutral because I used to know lots of 
people who live in Eugene and I want them to get a better election 
system.  (I agree that STAR voting is better than plurality.)  In fact, 
long ago, I used to tell friends in Eugene we need to be using 
"order-of-preference ballots."  That was back in the mid 1990's, long 
before STAR voting was invented in Eugene, long before the name "ranked 
choice voting" was introduced, and back when I attended so many dances 
in Eugene that some people in Eugene thought I lived there.  Getting 
back to the present, I was genuinely curious to see how Eugene voters 
would respond to your initiative.

The Eugene defeat of STAR voting reveals that a huge number of Eugene 
voters correctly recognize that ranked choice ballots, with a 
well-chosen counting method, are better than STAR ballots.


In a bigger context, any attempts to defeat the November referendum 
could lead to planet-wide suicide!

Back in the 1970's, while living in Corvallis, I did all the coursework 
for a master's degree in Atmospheric Science at Oregon State University. 
  Plus I did a summer fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric 
Research (NCAR) where I found and fixed a bug in one of their climate 
models.  So I have known since the 1970s that our planet is in a very 
bad feedback loop where each loss of snow and ice coverage at the north 
and south poles reduces the sunlight reflected back into space, which 
increases solar absorption, which increases the rate at which the snow 
and ice melt.  That understanding is part of what motivates me to pursue 
election-method reform with a sense of urgency.

Adopting a better election system is the tipping point that will switch 
governments into climate-relevant action instead of further delays.

Plus it will dramatically increase economic prosperity for Oregon after 
we adopt a well-designed election system for electing our Oregon state 
representatives.  (That's the next step after adopting this referendum.) 
  (And consider that better economic prosperity will reduce 
domino-effect symptoms such as homelessness and crime.)


In the meantime our Oregon state legislature is giving us this huge 
opportunity to implement election-method reform that will help 
civilization reach much higher levels of democracy.

At the national level, higher levels of democracy will "uncrazify" our 
crazy U.S. elections so we can fill Congress with problem-solving 
leaders.  They will replace any members of Congress who persist in being 
puppets of their biggest campaign contributors.

You and the fans of STAR voting have helped make this happen.  You 
pushed back against the FairVote organization's flawed version of 
"their" vote-counting method so that Oregon election-method experts 
could write a well-designed referendum.


I'm aware that Mark Frohnmayer, who provides lots of the funding to 
promote STAR voting, originally was a fan of instant-runoff voting. 
That's because decades ago a friend in Eugene sent me a clipping of the 
article in the Eugene Register Guard newspaper about him promoting that 
method.  Since then, you, Mark Frohnmayer, and I have seen and heard 
each other during verbal testimony to the Oregon state legislature.  If 
you should want to meet via video to ask any questions, I'm open to that 
form of communication.

While looking up the correct spelling for Frohnmayer I was reminded that 
Mark's father, Dave, lost an election to become Oregon governor because 
of vote splitting (partly because of spiteful funding to Al Mobley as a 
spoiler candidate).  That's sad because Dave Frohnmayer would have been 
a great governor.

In November we have an opportunity to adopt an election system that, if 
it had been used back then, would have elected Mark's father, Dave, in 
spite of the presence of an intentional spoiler candidate.


All of you who promote STAR voting have lots to be proud of.

* You have helped educate huge numbers of voters about the need for 
better ballots.

* You have taught huge numbers of voters about vote splitting.

* Wisely you have pushed to allow a voter to mark more than one 
candidate at the same preference level.

* You have exposed the FairVote organization's lie that the candidate 
with the fewest transferred votes is always least popular.


Let's build on the election-method reform foundation we have been 
building together throughout many years.

I look forward to working with you, rather than against you, as we take 
advantage of the huge election reform the Oregon legislature has wisely 
given to us.

We don't have time for any more misunderstandings.  Glaciers are melting 
faster than elections are being improved.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy