tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189394510616215190.post475429059624483219..comments2010-08-23T08:43:28.753-04:00Comments on No RCV in NC!: MASS IRV koolaid drinker claims to know that IRV was a success here in NC!Chris Telescahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00786439494988497977noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189394510616215190.post-40833582965314331322008-09-02T15:33:00.000-04:002008-09-02T15:33:00.000-04:00Greg - I tried several times to post a response on...Greg - I tried several times to post a response on your blog, but your blog wouldn't let me make that one posting. That is why I posted the test. But it is no lie for me to state that I was not able to place my posting on your blog.<BR/><BR/>The Wake BOE did not renew the IRV pilot program - where did you get that from? Mr. Hudson embarrassed himself by claiming that Joyce McCloy had no business writing about IRV since she had no experience either administering or witnesses an IRV election. Those two things should have stopped Mr. Hudson dead in his tracks since they apply to him as well.<BR/><BR/>And with all due respect to Ms. Everett, she didn't observe or administer an IRV election either. Dr. Gilbert is another matter entirely - he's been biased in favor of IRV for years, so much so that it blinded him to several irregularities with the Cary IRV election - #1 being that there was no majority winner as we were told IRV would ensure. So Joyce's arguments were not debunked by Gilbert or Hudson.<BR/><BR/>I wish you could hold an intelligent chat with me. If you start out a race where no one got a majority of the ballots where there were 3022 first column votes cast - you would know that there I was not counting blank ballots. Thus, we set the denominator for the race at 3022 votes, and the threshold under NC law was 50% plus one vote. Got it? 3022 first column votes contain no abstentions.<BR/><BR/>Now for IRV advocates to claim that IRV has a runoff in one election and not two, how can you claim then that you can change the denominator to only consist of the total votes received by the too-two candidates when you have no way of knowing what that denominator will be until you get done counting the votes? It especially makes no sense when you are also taking second and third column votes from candidates who where originally included in the first column vote total of 3022. To say that The denominator drops from 3022 to some lower number is manufacturing a majority out of ENRON-style vote counting!<BR/><BR/>Let us look at how utterly ridiculous it would be to have the sort of shifting denominators that Greg suggests:<BR/><BR/>At the end of the first column, here are the vote totals:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1150/3022 or 36.07%<BR/>Maxwell: 1075/3022 or 35.558%<BR/>Roseland: 793/3022 or 26.25%<BR/>3 write-ins: 3/3022 or 0.10%<BR/><BR/>We are not discussing undervotes or blank first column votes here. Since no one got 50% plus one of the 3022 cast first column votes, there was no winner.<BR/><BR/>Even before the Wake BOE counted the Absentee By Mail or Provisional Ballots, then began to process the 2nd and 3rd columm votes by sorting out the ballots with 796 1st column votes for Roseland and the write-ins from the the rest of the 1st column votes for Frantz and Maxwell.<BR/><BR/>Here is the result of that talley (adjusted for calculator error and missed count on 10/11/07):<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 248/796 or 47.51%<BR/>Maxwell: 274/796 or 52.490%<BR/><BR/>Those percentages are using 796 as a denominator. Clearly we can't do that - otherwise Maxwell would be the winner.<BR/><BR/>So if we add those second column votes to the first column votes, we get:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1399/3022 or 46.29%<BR/>Maxwell: 1349/3022 or 44.64%<BR/>No one has a majority of the vote using 3022 as a denominator<BR/><BR/>If you change the denominator, what do you change it to and why? And if you did change the denominator at this time - why can't you declare the winner right now - why do you count the 3rd column votes?<BR/><BR/>If you add up the totals of the Frantz and Maxwell votes - 1399 abd 1349 - you get 2748. IF you use 2748 as the denominator, then you get different percentages:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1399/2748 or 50.91%<BR/>Maxwell: 1349/2748 or 49.090%<BR/><BR/>Clearly using 2748 as a denominator, Frantz has a majority. But what happened to the 274 votes that you would subtract from the original denominator of 3022?<BR/><BR/>But the Wake BOE did not declare Frantz the winner with 1399 out of 2748. So they ran their tabulation procedure and found a total of 7 3rd column votes. Vicki Maxwell got 4/7 or 57.143% of those votes, and Frantz got 3/7 or 42.857%.<BR/><BR/>Using the original denominator of 3022, here is what you are left with:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1401/3022 or 46.38%<BR/>Maxwell: 1353/3022 or 44.79%<BR/>Clearly after counting the third column votes, no one has cleared 50% plus one vote out of 3022. So there is no winner.<BR/><BR/>But wait - the Wake BOE claims that Frantz is the winner with 1401, which was 50.871% - but of what number of votes? 2754 to be exact. But 2754 is 268 votes short of the 3022 votes originally cast in the first column - what is the justification for not counting those 268 first column votes toward the winning threshold?<BR/><BR/>Now if you are only going to take the total number of votes eventually cast for the top two in IRV, here is where my example of counting one and only one 2nd or 3rd column vote comes into play.<BR/><BR/>If at the end of the first column vote totals you had the original numbers:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1150/3022 or 36.07%<BR/>Maxwell: 1075/3022 or 35.558%<BR/>Roseland: 793/3022 or 26.25%<BR/>3 write-ins: 3/3022 or 0.10%<BR/><BR/>And then you only one one and only one 2nd/3rd column vote was cast - let's say for Maxwell - and you used the total number of votes for the two candidates as your denominator:<BR/><BR/>Frantz: 1150/2226 or 51.66%<BR/>Maxwell: 1076/2226 or 48.33%<BR/><BR/>How would you explain to voters that 1150 wasn't a majority on Election night, but somehow it becomes a majority with IRV? And how would you explain why you are using 3022 on Election night, but 2226 the next day - where did 796 votes disappear to?<BR/><BR/>For that matter, using that rationale, if no one who cast a first column vote voted for Maxwell or Frantz in the 2nd or 3rd column (because Roseland did tell his supporters to vote for him 1st, 2nd and 3rd) - you could have been left with the exact same number of votes at the end of the second column tally as you had at the end of the first - 1150 and 1075. How could you pull a majority using IRV from numbers that weren't a majority on Election night?Chris Telescahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00786439494988497977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189394510616215190.post-30598787259708793372008-08-28T19:37:00.000-04:002008-08-28T19:37:00.000-04:00Yes, it is true, North Carolina allowed another IR...Yes, it is true, North Carolina allowed another IRV pilot. As usual, the IRV pilot was buried within a large omnibus election law bill where few lawmakers would notice it, and ultimately passed. <BR/>It would never have passed in a bill by itself. <BR/><BR/>Some lawmakers tried to amend it to delay or kill the experiment to 2011, but intense lobbying by well funded sources prevailed. Lawmakers were desperate to get out of session and go home, and several had items in the big bill that they cared about.<BR/><BR/>The little bit of good news is that lawmakers put several restrictions on the pilot and will require that this pilot adhere to existing election laws.<BR/><BR/>WUNC has the story of a last ditch bi partisan effort to kill the IRV pilot:<BR/><BR/>Instant runoff nearly went down in flames <BR/><BR/>More here at <BR/>http://irvbad4nc.blogspot.com/2008/08/instant-runoff-messing-up-north.html<BR/><BR/>IRV doesn't even work - see Have Third Parties Been "Punked" By Instant Runoff?<BR/>http://www.opednews.com/articles/Have-Third-Parties-Been-P-by-ncvoter-080821-150.htmlJoyce McCloyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05639953244478293701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189394510616215190.post-26570420421319253912008-08-28T13:44:00.000-04:002008-08-28T13:44:00.000-04:00Greg, here.Chris, you are completely mistaken or d...Greg, here.<BR/><BR/>Chris, you are completely mistaken or deliberately lying about my denying this response from being posted to the blog. I did delete one comment recently because it contained a single word -- "test" -- as if someone was testing the site or something. I haven't denied or deleted any other comment.<BR/><BR/>The fact that the Wake BOE and the NC legislature both renewed the IRV pilot program is a testament to its success. John Hudson (chairman of the Transylvania County Election Board, the president of District One Election Board Officials, and a member of the Executive Committee of State Election Board Officials) and John Gilbert and Sharon Everett (Chair and Secretary of the Wake County Board of Elections) both recently embarrassed your colleague Joyce McCloy in the pages of the <I>Citizen Times</I> and <I>Raleigh News and Observer</I>, respectively, debunking each of her (and your) arguments one by one.<BR/><BR/>For your information, I haven't drunk the "IRV kool-aid", if there such a thing. I have studied election methods for years and independently came to the conclusion that it is the best single-winner election method available. Perhaps you have drunk the "anti-IRV kool-aid".<BR/><BR/>IRV is well-understood by election experts to be a voting system that requires a "majority threshold". In voting criteria terms, it is said to satisfy the "Condorcet Loser" criterion, meaning the winner must be preferred by a majority over some other candidate.<BR/><BR/>According to your definition to "majority winner", there is no method that guarantees it. You said that the denominator should include "all the ballots cast". Well, then it only takes 50% + 1 blank ballots cast to ensure no one can ever receive a majority of "ballots cast".<BR/><BR/>My point is that it is silly to count deliberate abstentions when determining whether someone has a majority. When someone leaves the second and third columns blank on an IRV ballot in a public election, they are deliberately abstaining from the instant runoff election, should one take place. <BR/><BR/>You wrote: "had there been no winner at the end of the first round, and only one total second or third column vote cast for either one of the two remaining candidates, you would still have a winner with only one more vote cast. You are essentially taking a plurality and manufacturing it into a preferential majority."<BR/><BR/>There's no "manufactured" majority -- everyone but one person deliberately abstained from the runoff election.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, in the first round of a traditional runoff, if every voter casts an entirely blank ballot except for one person, you would still have a "majority winner" in the first round. Abstentions never count in public elections when determining whether someone has a majority.<BR/><BR/>Now there are some non-public contexts where blanks are not counted as abstentions, rather they are counted as a binding "none of the above" vote. In these situations, blanks can count in the denominator when determining whether someone has a "majority", and it is possible for no candidate to receive a majority. In these contexts, if no one receives a majority of all ballots cast (including those with blanks), there is a revote. This is the case in some private groups and college elections where revotes are feasible, but not in any public elections to my knowledge. Blanks in public elections are always interpreted as abstentions, and voters are well aware of that. If you don't put down a choice, you don't get a say -- nothing new here.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com