[EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
> 
> 
> Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
> 

Could work 99.6% of the time.  Or we could revert to FPTP and it works 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs in who is elected).  The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.

But not interested in correcting their own flaws.  So much so that they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the objective failures when they do occur.

A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable.  But elections are less important than bridges.

You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates become important.  The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is favoring a particular side).

As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more often.  Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens.  Like repeal efforts that get on the ballot.

So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches?  Or continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?

You are clearly in the latter group.  You haven't learned yet that course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the voyage.  We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need for adjustment.

The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).  Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement.  Right now, with FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly* from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening of the election.  This is what protects us from some corrupt official simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."

Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is.  We need process transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the numbers from the tallies.  We need decentralization and process transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims that accurate tallies were fudged.  We lose all that with Hare RCV.  And like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.

But you're still in denial.

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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