[EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

[Michael Garman]

Still an error that led to lies. Seems bad!

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 10:51 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael—as mentioned, the error was a minor mistake in converting the vote
> totals to percentages, because Fargo didn’t report turnout (so it had to be
> estimated based on votes on other ballot initiatives).
>
> It’s not a tabulation error, like the ones we’ve seen for IRV elections.
> IRV races have sometimes even declared the wrong winner because of the
> complexity of aggregating all the votes (non-summability).
>
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 7:47 PM Michael Garman <
> michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>> Turns out approval has its own counting vulnerabilities. I hope someone
>> lets Harper’s magazine know!
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 10:42 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the information. Though some of us will write to them about
>>> the mis-reporting, I hope that you will too, or already have. They should
>>> definitely hear from the person who noticed it, & not just 2nd-hand.
>>>
>>> It’s a relief that the winners have been correctly reported.
>>>
>>> Again, thank you for pointing that error out.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 05:28 Evangeline Moore <evangeline.moore at ih21.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> I work at a Czech institute researching voting methods, and a while
>>>> back I took an interest in the approval voting elections in Fargo. While I
>>>> was running the numbers, trying to build a model for a separate project, I
>>>> noticed that the approval vote results have never been accurately reported
>>>> in Fargo. The winners are right, but the percentages are not. They've never
>>>> crossed 50% approval despite being widely reported that way.
>>>>
>>>> I posted an explanation of this on our website:
>>>> https://www.ih21.org/aktuality/approval-voting-in-fargo When I
>>>> realized that another election is coming up and that, as far as I can tell,
>>>> nobody else has made the methodology publicly known yet, I wanted to get
>>>> this out there. I also thought you guys might find it interesting.
>>>>
>>>> EM
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>
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