[EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

[Bob Richard [lists]]

Using the 2020 city commission election as an example, the City of Fargo 
reported that there were 18,805 votes cast, but -- according to 
Evangeline Moore -- doesn't explain where it got this number. Moore 
finds other records that show that 23,819 ballots were cast in the 22 
Fargo precincts in that election.

My hypothesis is that 18,805 is the number of voters who voted for at 
least one candidate for city commissioner, in other words the number of 
voters who didn't abstain from the city commissioner contest. Under this 
hypothesis, 5,014 voters went to the polls and submitted a ballot but 
didn't choose anyone for city commissioner. That's 21%, which is 
reasonable for a down-ballot office in the U.S., where many voters  who 
vote in federal and state contests don't vote in the local contests on 
the same ballot.

So, the question is, what is the appropriate denominator for reporting 
percentages? In plurality elections in the U.S., results are always 
reported using the smaller denominator -- if you leave a contest blank 
you are counted as an abstention and excluded from the denominator when 
reporting percentages.

I think that Fargo's choice of denominator is at least as defensible as 
the denominator that Moore wants them to use. At least it is consistent 
with the way plurality results are always reported. The language she 
quotes from state law might seem to suggest including abstentions (blank 
ballots) in the denominator, but if that's what it means then fewer 
plurality elections would have majority winners than is reported. And if 
that's what it means, then local officials are getting all elections 
wrong, not just approval elections.

I think that a far more interesting aspect of these Fargo elections is 
the use of approval voting in multi-winner elections. What was the 
method prior to the adoption of approval voting for the 2020 election? 
Were voters allowed to choose one candidate (single non-transferable 
vote or limited vote) or two (multi-winner plurality or the "block 
vote")? Was part of the argument in favor of approval that it would be 
more proportional than the previous method? If so, how was that argument 
made?

--Bob Richard

------ Original Message ------
>From "Evangeline Moore" <evangeline.moore at ih21.org>")
To election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Date 6/7/2024 9:58:35 AM
Subject [EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

>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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