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--></style></head><body><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><span>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.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span>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?</span></div><div><br /></div><div>--Bob Richard</div><div><br /></div>
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<div>------ Original Message ------</div>
<div>From "Evangeline Moore" <<a href="mailto:evangeline.moore@ih21.org">evangeline.moore@ih21.org</a>>")</div>
<div>To <a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a></div>
<div>Date 6/7/2024 9:58:35 AM</div>
<div>Subject [EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results</div></div><div><br /></div>
<div id="xdb4a8d02580945c"><blockquote cite="CAGH4iH_0j4YBO4Jk2_2ZhSqVUJysmE=zGjhcNV1odbQ1uOmPVQ@mail.gmail.com" type="cite" class="cite2">
<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Hi everyone,<br /></div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><br /></div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">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.</div><br />I posted an explanation of this on our website: <a href="https://www.ih21.org/aktuality/approval-voting-in-fargo">https://www.ih21.org/aktuality/approval-voting-in-fargo</a> 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. <div><br /></div><div>EM</div></div>
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