<div dir="ltr">52% is barely a defeat and a huge turnout in wards against IRV could also reflect hard to prove fraud or a possibly an off-the-books well-funded GOTV campaign.<div style><br></div><div style>IOW, there is no smoking gun or clear indictment against IRV due to the politicking and slim margin. </div>
<div style>So I'd hope you'd be a more careful in how you treat Burlington...</div><div style><br></div><div style>dlw</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr">dlw</div></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:abd@lomaxdesign.com" target="_blank">abd@lomaxdesign.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">At 01:00 AM 7/3/2013, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<a href="http://www.fairvote.org/lessons-from-burlington#.UdOvX2LE0XY" target="_blank">http://www.fairvote.org/<u></u>lessons-from-burlington#.<u></u>UdOvX2LE0XY</a> (March 4, 2010)<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Let me cut to the chase. Despite winning in five of the city's seven wards, the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) for mayor was repealed this week by a margin of less than 4% in Vermont's largest city of Burlington.<br>
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I was just looking at this post and was struck by the way in which the facts were presented. Because wards can have different numbers of voters, and because vote margins make a huge difference, winning in the most wards means very little. But Richie is trying to present a series of "Hey, we almost won" arguments. So I decide to look at the election. The results from some of the earlier IRV elections are no longer available, or, if they are, they are not easy to find. Turns out that some of the places where vote counts were maintained were web sites hosted by IRV supporters, and those have disappeared. Richie, in that blog post, referred to a web site that was used for that campaign. Gone.<br>
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History disappears, often.<br>
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<a href="http://www.burlingtonvt.gov/WorkArea/LinkIT.aspx?itemID=6116" target="_blank">http://www.burlingtonvt.gov/<u></u>WorkArea/LinkIT.aspx?itemID=<u></u>6116</a><br>
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Question 5. - Charter Change - Eliminate IRV<br>
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 totals<br>
Yes 264 185 292 1203 545 477 1006 3972<br>
No 405 428 510 606 793 490 437 3669<br>
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Richie is right. 5 out of 7 wards did support IRV. However, if we look more closely, it is more divided than that.<br>
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Percentages:<br>
<br>
Yes 39.5% 30.2% 36.4% 66.5% 40.7% 49.3% 69.7% 52.0%<br>
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Notice that Ward 6 *almost* approved the initiative to eliminate IRV.<br>
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Wards 4 and 7 very strongly voted to eliminate it.<br>
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We have two wards very much opposed to IRV, and four who wanted to keep it, and one on the fence, really.<br>
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Notice the wards where the number of votes were greatest. The wards with the two highest vote totals also had the largest number of voters.<br>
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Under conditions in Burlingon, conditions caused IRV to effectively damage the Republicans, or at least Republicans would see it that way.<div class="im"><br>
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Richie wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
In the repeal, the two wards where Wright ran most strongly voted against IRV by a margin of two-to-one after supporting it when first passed in 2005.<br>
</blockquote>
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I haven't checked this, but it's likely. Actual experience with IRV soured them. So?<div class="im"><br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
The rest of the city voted 60% to keep IRV.<br>
</blockquote>
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He's just manipulating statistics to create an impression. While the overall vote was not a landslide, it was still a clear margin, 52%.<br>
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Notice that he states the 60% figure. Okay, I'll cherry-pick my own: The two largest wards in the city, by turnout in this election, Wards 4 and 7 -- voted 67.0% to dump IRV.<br>
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IRV produces erratic results. It's a shame that Burlington, instead of returning to top-two runoff with below 40% being the margin that triggers a runoff, was not educated in voting systems. This is precisely how FairVote's monomaniacal focus is harming voting system reform. The runoff system they went back to *could* produce the same results. There are simple systems that could avoid the problem, but FairVote has campaigned against them and has conspired to prevent their testing anywhere.<br>
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(If "conspired" seems strong, then let FairVote actually show that they support real voting system reform, by opening up and truly suppporting election science, instead of arguing against it and creating mountains of misleading propaganda.)<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>