IRVFactcheck fails to deal with majority failure

The folks at the pro-IRV/RCV astro-turf group "IRV Factcheck" are at it again - this time Rob Richie and the folks at FairyTaleVote are using some really bogus ENRON-type "math" to explain how IRV really does deliver majorities:

Saturday, June 12, 2010
Rebutting the "Majority Failure" Argument Against IRV

One misleading argument made by some IRV opponents is that a "real" runoff (top two runoff, with a second election weeks or months after the first) produces a "real" majority, but that IRV may not produce such a majority. This argument is based on using different standards to compute majorities under IRV and traditional runoffs.

OK Rob - IRV and traditional runoffs are two different types of elections - why not use different standards to compute majorities?

In a traditional runoff, you start from ZERO and you then count all the new votes. You don't add the new votes to the old votes like you do with IRV. Traditional runoff elections are easier to count than IRV elections also. And as Minneapolis has proven, two elections (a primary and a general election) are cheaper than one IRV election!

These IRV opponents argue that there is a failure to produce a "real" majority under IRV because they use the total number of votes in the first round to compute a majority, not the total number of votes cast in the instant runoff. Sometimes the number of exhausted ballots - that is, ballots that don't rank any of the remaining candidates in the final instant runoff - can mean that neither of the two finalists has more than 50% of the votes cast in the first round.

Sometimes? Rob - try the largest freaking majority of the time!

The mayoral election in Burlington (VT) in 2009 is used as an example of this "failure." In the first round of that election, the results were:

Kurt Wright 2,951
Bob Kiss 2,585
Andy Montroll 2,063
Dan Smith 1,306
Write-ins 36
James Simpson 35
(With four invalid ballots, three of which were later found to be valid in a partial recount.)

OK - are we talking about 8976 total votes, or 8976 ballots of which only one was found to be invalid? What the hell is an "invalid ballot" anyway?

OK - let's play their game. Let's go with 8975 - and a majority would be 4488 votes (50% would be 4487.5 and rounded up one would be 4488). What did Bob Kiss get?

In the final result of the election, the results were:

Bob Kiss 4,313
Kurt Wright 4,061
(with 602 exhausted ballots and the 4 invalid ballots)

OK - so are you counting 3 out of the 4 invalid ballots in the first round but then claiming all 4 to be invalid in this round?

4313 is 175 votes short of the number of votes needed to have won in the first round. This is an example of "ENRON vote counting" that you get from IRV. How can 4313 votes be a majority in any subsequent round of IRV when it wasn't enough to win in the first round? Rob and the True Believers will no doubt explain.....

IRV opponents argue that although Kiss won a majority of the valid ballots in the final round of voting, he failed to win a "real" majority because his final round votes were only 48% of the votes case in the first round.

Yes - that's right - Kiss didn't win a real majority. Nice to finally hear you admit it!

IRV advocates point out that the result was due to some voters exercising their option to abstain from a choice between the two finalists - just as many registered voters abstained from voting in the first place. That doesn't change the fact that winner Bob Kiss earned majority support from voters who chose to indicate a preference for either him or Kurt Wright.

No Rob - we claim that Kiss didn't win a real majority of the first column voters. Most voters don't understand the subtle differences that you are trying to explain. But they do understand that you are trying to sell them two different explanations of what a "majority" is: one for the first round, and a totally different one for IRV.

Australia avoids this possible outcome by requiring voters to rank all candidates in its IRV races for the House of Representatives. That's certainly an option for those who care about this definition of a majority, and it does ensure the voters take the time to indicate their last choice along with their first choice. But if eligible voters have the right to skip voting altogether, some will argue that they have the right to skip ranking candidates they don't like.

Actually Rob, all such a requirement ensures is that voters will rank one or maybe two candidates per race - the rest will just be meaningless place fillers to ensure that their first one or two votes counts. Because they really don't know a damn thing about the other candidates - it's called "donkey voting" and my friend Lisa's husband who lives in Australia says that's how they vote!

But it's not fair to say that in contrast to IRV, traditional runoff produces a "real" majority while discounting the total number of votes cast in the first round when calculating a majority.

Actually Rob - it's very fair to say that. That is because a traditional runoff election a totally separate election from the election that required the runoff. It gives the voters a chance to consider the two remaining candidates in a totally new light from the original election. If your candidate made it to the runoff, you are free to vote for the same candidate again if you like, vote for another candidate, or vote for no candidate. You don't have those freedoms with IRV.

In fact, with some types of IRV where you can only vote for 3 candidates, and there are more than 3 candidates in the race, you might very well vote for candidates that never make it past the 1st round. You had two additional choices - and none of those counted. Which means that you don't even have a chance to participate in the IRV runoff.

Compare and contrast that with a traditional runoff where, if your candidate doesn't make it, you can vote for one of the remaining two, or not vote at all. But at least you have a chance to be heard in the runoff - you don't always get that with IRV.

But it's not fair to say that in contrast to IRV, traditional runoff produces a "real" majority while discounting the total number of votes cast in the first round when calculating a majority. By this argument, Vincent Dober won a "real" majority in the March 2009 Burlington's City Council Ward 7 election even though he received considerably fewer votes in the second round of the runoff election than his opponent received in the first:

Round 1:
Ellie Blais 461
Vincent Dober 612
Eli Lesser-Goldsmith 619
Write-ins 4

These are the results from the March 3, 2009 election where there was no IRV. 1696 votes cast on March 3, 2009 - 50% plus one vote is 849. No one got 849, so they had a runoff. So any runoff had to start again from ZERO - got it?

Round 2
Vincent Dober 515
Eli-Lesser Goldsmith 425

This is from the runoff election held on March 24, 2009 - totally separate election. Not an IRV election. That means you start at ZERO - you don't add totals from one day's election to the totals from another day's election. Out of a total of 940 votes cast on March 23, 2009 - Dober got 54.79% of the votes (a clear majority) and Goldsmith got 45.21%.

But Rob and the gang don't seem to understand that that Ward 7 had an election and a separate runoff. So IRV rules (whatever they happen to be at any given place and time with their slippery always changing thresholds) don't apply.

Under the standards that IRV opponents apply to IRV, we would use the first round totals to compute a majority, and Dober in the runoff would have secured only 30% of the vote - a considerably worse majority "failure" than in the Mayoral election held at the same time with IRV.

Actually - IRV supporters can't seem to tell the difference between IRV and non-IRV elections, or understand why the total number of 1st round votes in a general election wouldn't have any bearing on a runoff.

IRV opponents can't have it both ways.

Really Rob - isn't it you IRV advocates who are trying to have it both ways? Selling IRV as a single election but applying two different standards for victory?

Either Bob Kiss and Vincent Dober both won majorities or neither of them did. Under normal usage, the candidate with more than 50% of the votes counted in the final round is called a "majority winner."

Actually Rob, that's an incredibly lame argument you are making. First off, the Kiss election was an IRV election and the Dober election was not. You are arguing for sliding thresholds in elections - something that most people object to even when you try and obfuscate by talking about % turnout in subsequent IRV rounds vs. traditional runoffs.

With IRV when you starting ENRON election math, you run into the old sliding scale. Where a winner of an IRV election settled with votes in the rounds beyond the first round has fewer votes than needed to have won in the 1st round of the IRV contest. In fact, it's entirely possible for someone to win an IRV election with not a single additional vote counted from one round to another. In fact, if fewer voters just decided to stop ranking their choices, someone who wasn't a winner in the 3rd round of a race might be the winner in the the 4th round without gaining a single additional vote! Dropping turnout could cause someone to win!

A more consistent standard to compare IRV and traditional runoffs would be to look at the decline in participation from the first round to the last. In the Mayoral election under IRV, 93% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the final round. In the City Council election under a traditional runoff, only 55% of the voters who cast a ballot in the first round ended up participating in the second round.

But what does that prove? More voters participating in all the rounds of the IRV election for mayor didn't result in a winner with a clear majority of the votes cast in the first round. But the City Council Ward 7 races were two separate races. And there was a clear majority winner in the runoff.

Just like there was a real majority of Burlington voters who spoke loudly in 2010 when they voted to dump IRV in Burlington.

Another revealing example is the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Georgia. Incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss won re-election in a December runoff after falling short of a majority in November. Turnout in the second round was only 57% of the first round in spite of the fact that a Democratic filibuster-proof majority was at stake in the Senate.

First round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,867,097
Jim Martin 1,757,393
Allen Buckley 127,923
Write-ins 72
Total 3,752,577

Second round:
Saxby Chambliss 1,228,033
Jim Martin 909,923
Total 2,137,956

Rob - there was no second round in the 2008 GA US Senate race. There was a separate general election and a separate runoff. Are you deliberately trying to confuse people by comparing a separate runoff election to IRV?

And many people felt that the reason why the runoff went the way it did was because Chambliss made the runoff a race about "race" - the race of President-elect Obama. Chamblis turned out the vote in the runoff by making the runoff all about overturning the Obama victory in November. He even got McCain and Palin to campaign for him.

Martin was very conscious of his role in perhaps being the 60th vote in the Senate. Indeed his whole runoff campaign was about continuing the change to help Obama. What a pity that Obama For America (the president-elect's campaign operation) folded up their tents and didn't do the work in GA that would have given Obama a veto-proof majority. That short-sightedness on the part of Obama For America (and the successor organization Organizing For America) cost the President and the Democratic Party victories in the NJ and VA governor's races in late 2009 and the Mass Senate special election in early 2010.

If this election was held under IRV, the number of ballots cast for the final round would have been at least 96.6% of the first round total. It would likely have been higher, as most of Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley's supporters probably would have indicated a second preference. Even if Buckley won a far larger share of the vote and none of his supporters cast votes for their second choice, it would have been mathematically impossible for final round votes to fall to only 57% of the first round total as under a traditional runoff.

What the hell difference would it have made what % of the ballots cast in the final round of an GA senate race held under IRV? First off, GA uses DRE touchscreen voting machines and they can't even be sure they can count them correctly. It was proven that uncertified software patches were administered to the Diebold DRE machines in 2002 - which probably had an effect on giving the race to Chambliss in 2002. Buckely was a Libertarian, and we have no way to know what percentage of them would have ranked a second choice. And those that had cast a second choice would have been more likely to vote for Chambliss than for Martin. Sort of like how the 2007 Cary District B race would have been different had it been a traditional runoff vs. IRV

Another point is that there was no certified software that could count the IRV ballots in this race. They would have most likely had to be counted by hand and given the turnout in the November 2008 election, the IRV tabulations would not have been calculated before the results of the simpler to tabulate separate GA senate runoff elections were done.

To be fair, it is possible for second round turnout to exceed that of the first round under a traditional runoff - and every now and then it happens. However, large declines in turnout seem to be the norm under traditional runoffs - sometimes dramatically so, with turnout falling on the order of ten times in statewide primary runoffs in Texas and North Carolina in 2008. Federal primary runoffs in the several stats that hold them provide particularly strong evidence for large declines in participation from the first to the second rounds of traditional runoffs. From 1994 to 2008, turnout declined in 113 of 116 regularly scheduled federal primary runoffs, and the average decline was about 35% - see FairVote's data on these runoffs.

Perhaps the reason why large declines in turnout seem to be the norm is because we've lowered the thresholds (and standards) for many other elections. If you only have one runoff every so often, your turnout will be down. In the 2008 NC statewide runoff for Democratic candidate for Labor Commissioner, turnout was very low in those areas where that was the only race - and those areas voted for candidate Mary Fant Donnen. In other areas where there were more than one race in the runoff, turnout was higher - lots higher. And in those counties, the higher turnout gave more votes to candidate John Brooks. Had more counties had more runoff elections, the results could have been very different. Perhaps the key to greater voter turnout in runoff elections is to have more runoffs, not less?

Bottom line: you can't make a majority of voters like one of the candidates running. But you can enact IRV to make sure you always elect the candidate who has majority support over his or her top opponent in the final round and to ensure the defeat of the candidate whom a majority of voters see as their last choice - a result that plurality voting makes all too possible.

As we have proven the only sure-fire way to make sure that you elect a candidate who has majority support over his or her top opponent is to have a traditional runoff election. IRV does not ensure that the IRV winner has a true majority. IRV can even award a win to someone who didn't get a single additional vote.

And when you compare the additional extra added cost of conducting IRV elections vs. the cost of a general election and rarely needed runoffs (or even the primary elections FairVote is trying to get rid of), you have to wonder why anyone would be trying to push this costly, complex and confusing election system as an electoral reform? That is perhaps why Election Integrity advocates call Rob Richie's organization "FairyTale Vote"!

Rob Richie: electoral reform bully!

Rob Richie must be getting desperate - he's attacking NC Verified Voting's Joyce McCloy again, all but calling Joyce McCloy a liar in his latest IRV FactCheck blog. Why does he feel the need to create a whole new blog to misrepresent IRV as beneficial instead of using the FairVote blog of the group he founded and continues to be the paid Executive Director I don't know.

Some folks in the verified voting movement suggest that Rob and the rest of the FairyTaleVote crew had to set up IRV Factcheck as a astro-turf blog hiding the connection to FairVote means that Rob and the merry band at FairVote et alia are feeling a little defensive. Hey - you'd be feeling defensive after so many losses to real grassroots groups like RangeVoting, NC Verified and other groups that oppose IRV on verified voting grounds.

But I do know that this is a new low even for IRV advocates like ol' Rob Richie. Rob is starting to reminds me of bullies I faced up to on the playgrounds of my youth. The only thing you can do to a bully is face up to them and call them out when they say stuff like Rob is saying now.

Let's look at ol' Rob's BS paragraph by paragraph:

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Joyce McCloy and McCarthyism: Her Latest Distortions

NC Voter's Joyce McCloy is at it again. It's fine to be against instant runoff voting, but Ms. McCloy unfortunately seems ready to oppose it in a matter I associate with Joseph McCarthy -- distortions, innuendo and even outright lies, as detailed earlier this week.

It's hard to pick a "lowlight" from her litany of attacks on us and other backers of instant runoff voting, but I suspect it was her effort in the wake of verified voting champion John Gideon's death last year to spread the allegation among his friends that I was seeking to use his death to promote instant runoff voting. I received tearful communications asking me how I could do this, given his neutrality on the subject when in fact my blog post featuring a tribute to him was entirely focused on a subject he and I regularly had discussed at our conferences he attended and by email: public ownership of voting equipment.

Rob - you posted a obit to John Gideon where you all but claimed he was was calling for IRV as a electoral reform, when you know perfectly well - because Joyce and others have provided proof - that John Gideon didn't want to push IRV until we had a way to count 100% of the first column votes accurately 100% of the time. John knew that IRV was much more complicated than single column voting, and that it would be a serious mistake to push for IRV at this time.

You mentioned IRV in the obit (which was later changed) so please do not claim that your obit was entirely focused on public ownership of voting equipment. If you had not manipulated John's opinion of IRV in your obit - why did you have to post an disclaimer at a later date?

From your first posting at http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/John-Gideon-R-I-P--and-by-Rob-Richie-090428-746.html

With such limited competition, it's easy for these companies to shake money out of state governments via unscrupulous means: They can stop producing, and stop servicing, certain models artificially early, compelling states to buy new ones. They have reason to meet just the bare-bones requirements of contracts and limit the plasticity of their hardware so that they can force upgrades on states that want to reform their voting systems — making it difficult to implement innovative voting methods like instant runoff voting (IRV). (The firms also may have reason to stymie IRV because more elections means more business.)

You later posted a note on April 29, 2009:

(Note added by author on April 29: Although FairVote promotes a range of electoral reforms, we are particularly well-known for our advocacy of ranked voting systems, particularly instant runoff voting. I've heard that some readers thought I was capitalizing on this tragedy to suggest that John Gideon was an ally on instant runoff voting

To be clear, John liked the idea of IRV, but believed that advocates should not push for implementation before certified equipment was ready to implement it. But this article is not about IRV. It's about another subject that John and I had several email exchanges about -- kicking private vendors out of our elections and having a publicly owned process. We both liked how Oklahoma did that years ago with its optical can equipment and New York with its equipment.

I apologize to anyone offended by this piece. I knew John a little from his coming to conferences we organized and from several email exchanges, but I did not know him in the way that so many leaders in the election integrity struggle did. I do think he might have liked the idea of a Gideon Initiative to pursue publicly owned election administration, but at this point I'm only raising the idea as part of my effort to salute his dedication.

The main problem people who knew John had with your obit was that you work IRV into every freaking thing you write about. You used your first article on John to push IRV, and then when his friends objected, you used your apology to push IRV some more. Do you include a plug for IRV when you write a note to your kid's teacher?

You are really turning into a "one-trick" pony Rob. If you fought for voter owned elections and paper ballots in your own home state of Maryland one tenth as hard as you do for IRV all over the country, Maryland would have accountable voting. But Maryland has barely made a dent in their election accountability. So why don't you get your own house in order Rob before you go sticking your nose elsewhere?

Now in a post at several of her blogs she is distorting a comment on a news article by FairVote's board chair Krist Novoselic where he was defending IRV against typical over-the-top attacks from Ms. McCloy. The context of Krist's comment was that reformers have a lot to do in different areas of the electoral process, but in no way was he suggesting that seeking secure elections wasn't important. But once again I've already heard from some of our reform allies concerned that we don't take issues like manual audits and transparent elections seriously.

Rob - you fail to understand that Joyce was responding to an assertion by Mr. Novoselic that there was some outright vote fraud in IRV elections, when Joyce made no such assertion. What Joyce and I and others have claimed is that IRV is so complex to count that most auditing procedures are useless - and that there is no way to audit only a percentage of the votes to see if they are counted correctly because, with the additional rankings, the whole thing becomes so complex that the only real meaningful audit would be a full recount. And how does that happen in one race when there might be other IRV races to count?

When you say that IRV elections are as easy to audit and count as single column races, you can't really expect to be taken seriously. I was one of several people who saw the Wake County BOE count an entire single column race in a precinct in 15 minutes. For IRV, it took an entire day to count 3000 votes across 8 precincts - and the procedures were so complicated that the Wake BOE couldn't follow them and screwed up the count. The Board conducted a secret non-public recount of all the ballots the next day which gave a different result - but there was no one present who could observe the secret recount and object and call for another count. Is that verifiable and transparent?

And when you claim that taking digital images of ballots to enable your software to count them somehow makes them easier to audit than a regular paper ballot, that's even more reason not to take you seriously. Come on Rob - which is easier for someone to hack - a digital file on a hard drive or a paper ballot under lock and key and physically sealed in a box? Right there you are condemning people who don't have or want computers from being able to independently verify an IRV election.

What you fail to understand is why verified voting activists feel that IRV undermines election integrity and transparency in election administration. Vote counting procedures should be simple enough that anyone eligible to vote should be able to count the votes on their own and not need to have a graduate degree in math or game theory or a hi-speed computer to know how to do it.

I've seen IRV do just that in my own county - Wake County, NC - where Dr. John Gilbert - the chair of the Wake Board of Elections (and the father-in-law of your paid FairVoteNC staffer Elena Everett) was IRV biggest pusher in my county. Gilbert and the BOE staff set up Elena Everett and DemocracyNC's Bob Hall to practically run IRV for Cary NC - which was not what the IRV pilot law required. So much of what was done with the 2007 IRV pilot in Cary and in Hendersonville was done under the table and off the books by folks either working or volunteering for FairVote and DemocracyNC that I wondered if they didn't have their own desks at the NC State and Wake County Boards of Elections.

After I single-handedly killed IRV in Raleigh in early 2007, your minions worked in secret with municipal leaders from Cary and Hendersonville NC so they would only see and hear from IRV advocates. That's the reason why verified voting advocates got a law passed requiring public hearings for IRV pilots - something that didn't exist before 2009, which IRV advocates fought hard against!

And you are following Elena's example of sinking very low and calling people liars. She called me a liar in the Democracy4NC yahoo newsgroup when I wrote about a PR firm doing pro-bono work on the IRV pilot. When I produced an e-mail from her own father-in-law where he referred to that pro-bono PR firm, she said it made perfect sense to accept that in-kind contribution, but she never apologized for calling me a liar. Was that something I should have brought to the attention of Torrey Dixon (the head of FairVoteNC) or to you as the head of FairVote?

That's of course not true. We were the first national group to propose establishing an affirmative right to vote in the Constitution, highlighting a full range of federal, state and local laws and practices undermining suffrage rights. For years, we have helped lead the call for public interest voting equipment, with open source software and removal of profiteering from elections -- for instance, see this excerpt from a Tompaine.com commentary in 2004;

Rob - you are confusing verified voting with other types of electoral reform. Being able to vote isn't the same thing as making sure your vote is recorded and counted properly. And doesn't FairVote profit from election administration?

"Public Interest" voting equipment. Currently voting equipment is suspect, undermining confidence in our elections. The proprietary software and hardware are created by shadowy companies with partisan ties who sell equipment by wining and dining election administrators with little knowledge of voting technology. The government should oversee the development of publicly-owned software and hardware, contracting with the sharpest minds in the private sector. And then that open-source voting equipment should be deployed throughout the nation to ensure that every county -- and every voter -- is using the best equipment.

Define best equipment? Does that mean the most accurate equipment to count single column votes in a verifiable and transparent manner, or the equipment that can best be adapted to whatever form of Instant Runoff Voting/Ranked Choice Voting/Single Transferable Voting that you can sell to civic leaders through your slick snake-oil sales pitch?

We've proposed procedures for auditing ranked choice voting elections and periodically highlight our views in communications to our members, like this November 2009 Innovative Analysis. Here also is a link to our statement on election security and audits overall.

You/your friends/your organization/your friend's organization have proposed some rather Rube Goldberg-esque methods to count the votes using hybridized and largely untested procedures that have not yet been included in the certification procedures for the voting equipment in use in most jurisdictions.

In NC, your minions worked with the State Board of Elections to use a complicated set-up of 4 scanners to run paper ballots through, which each scanner required to be programmed based on the count of the previous scanner. In DRE counties, BOE staffers will have to port the data from the first column count over to an MS Excel spreadsheet where observers won't be able to verify the results.

NC's Public Confidence In Elections Act requires all voting to be subject to random audits and to be verified by hand to eye recounts, with the hand count taking primacy over the machine count in the event the results don't match. What is the process for doing a hand count of IRV on touchscreen voting machines with 300-foot thermal paper trails? Are you going to cut up the paper rolls to do a hand-counted tabulation? What happens if you need some of the records on the thermal paper roll to hand count other IRV elections? What if you need them to be in order of votes cast to detect and fix other problems at the polls?

So tell me Rob - how does it help verified voting if IRV elections are so complicated that you have to advocate the use of outside private companies like True Ballot to use proprietary software, use the wrong counting method (Cambridge instead of the method authorized by the Aspen Council), sort the test votes in the wrong order and then not correct the problem until an outside observer notices it, then have the private company certify the election then destroy the ballot images?

But Ms. McCloy charges that we don't care about secure elections and suggests that our "outside money" is why so many people in her state support instant runoff voting. The fact is that the two staffers we had in NC for parts of 2007-2009 were funded by an in-state foundation in the wake of a new state law establishing an IRV pilot program, and we were in a support role to such influential reform groups as the League of Women Voters NC, Common Cause NC and Democracy NC, all of which continue to support IRV. Other in-state backers include several of the state's leading newspapers, as reflected by recent editorials in the Rocky Mount Telegram, Charlotte Observer, and Southern Pines Pilot -- and so do most voters in the two communities in the state that have had a chance to use IRV.

OK Rob - what was the in-state foundation that funded your two staffers in NC for parts of 2007-2009? Where they your employees or did they work for this foundation? Where do you get ALL your funding from? Don't you make some money from selling IRV solutions to either governments, schools, or businesses?

You weren't just supporting those influential reform groups in NC - you were their partners, and you were getting to them first to use your leverage to get them to support IRV when some of them, like the NC League of Women Voters continued to support paperless DRE touchscreen voting machines even after those machines lost nearly 5,000 votes in Carteret County in the November 2004 general elections?

When I single-handedly took on 4 pro-IRV advocates in front of the Raleigh City Council to argue against using IRV, the Raleigh City Council didn't vote not to use IRV - they were so not interested in IRV that no one wanted to make a motion to consider using it.

So then the coalition of state and county election officials and non-profit IRV advocates decided to work on the Cary Town Council for 6 weeks in total secrecy - denying voters in Cary or Wake County the opportunity to get information on both sides of the IRV issue. It's hard to claim that IRV is a more democratic process when you resort to such anti-democratic means to sell IRV to civic leaders and use tricks to get voters to like IRV.

You join the LWV so that you can have access to their leadership. Isn't Terry B. an officer in the Vermont LWV?

Rob - you know that FairVote was recommending less secure voting methods for IRV in San Francisco back in 2003 and 2004 - it's in writing in your long-winded complaint against the San Francisco BOE because they were going too slow for you. You even had to sue them because they didn't want to listen to you or other IRV/RCV advocates.

And it really doesn't matter if a whole bunch of groups support IRV if it ends up being a turkey. Some of those organizations and media groups have a momentum to them that they can't admit to being wrong about something once they've taken a certain position. People are funny that way.

Before long we'll have more on North Carolina and Ms. McCloy's attacks on the procedures developed by the State Board of Elections for implementing it. For the moment, let me end with the famous quote from Joseph Welch, head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities in the 1950s:

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. ... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Rob - perhaps you should look in the mirror and ask yourself how decent of a person you and others in FairVote are. Many people in the voting movement have pointed out many many times how you have distorted or deliberately misrepresented things like how much money IRV saves and how it increases voter turnout, how it ensures a majority win in a single election, how simple it is for voters to understand and for election administrators to implement, how Roberts Rules of Order endorses IRV - the list goes on and on.

And I've seen how your employee Elena Everett called me a liar in public and then never apologized when I provided proof that I was right all along. Another one of your employees - Dianne Russell from Maine - came down to Cary in 2007 to work on the IRV pilot. She admitted in writing to deviating from her BOE-provided voter education instructions in order to provide a more positive outcome for the IRV exit polls which she also conducted - and she admitted to faking an southern accent when interviewing voters. Ms. Russell was working as the Director for IRV America - a part of FairVote - at the time, wasn't she?

So how dare you compare Joyce McCloy to Joe McCarthy when you have two FairVote employees in my state do some less than honorable things which neither they nor you have ever apologized for?

Why not come to NC sometime and make those accusations to our faces? Or are you only able to attack people's character in print - like your buddy Bob Hall from DemocracyNC did when he attacked Joyce McCloy in print in the Winston-Salem Journal article on Sunday, November 4, 2007?

Hey - even better - come down here and call me a liar to my face like Bob Hall did back in January 2007 at the NCDP State Executive Committee meeting in front of Perry Woods and State House member Grier Martin (who were witnesses).

Is name calling and being a bully part of the FairVote Standard Operating Procedures? I don't think Rob Richie would show his face in North Carolina and tell his tall tales about IRV in the same room with Joyce of myself. I doubt he has the guts to do it.

This new blog is the latest IRV con job!

Friends! Have you heard the latest "good news" about IRV? There is a new blog out there called IRV Factcheck.

Don't take my word for what the site is supposed to do - read it for yourself:

IRV Factcheck

This site is designed to allow election reform activists, charter commissions and election officials who are looking at instant runoff voting (also called "ranked choice voting" and "alternative voting") to find answers to questions that have been raised about it. You'll find news about important developments and detailed refutations of misrepresentations.

Well this reads like it might be a very valuable site full of facts that aren't available anywhere else written by people who don't publish anywhere else......wait a minute, take a look at those names at the bottom of the page:

Terrill Bouricius
Rob Richie
Jeanne Massey
Bob Richard
Jack Santucci
Greg Dennis

Wait - I recognize some if not all of those names as people that are affiliated with FairVote.

• Terrill Bouricius - Senior Analyst at FairVote
  
• Rob Richie - Executive Director at FairVote
  
• Jeanne Massey - Executive Director of FairVote Minnesota
  
• Bob Richard - on the board of Californians for Electoral Reform, and very closely allied with FairVote: A small portion of membership dues are sent to FairVote.
• Jack Santucci - former FairVote analyst
  
• Greg Dennis - current Google test engineer, and former PhD student at MIT and still responsible for the http://www.somervilleirv.org web site. Some of his work is cited on FairVote's main website.
  

Hmmm - this makes me wonder. Isn't FairVote already doing a pretty heavy-handed job of providing information on IRV to election reform activists (other than those already working for FairVote and their fellow travelers), charter commissions, and election officials? When you "google" IRV, don't you always get most of the stuff from FairVote anyway?

Isn't FairVote and their state organizations, the New America Foundation, and other groups already doing a bang-up job of answering questions raised about IRV?

Aren't all the employees, interns and volunteers already making friends with all the right people in the news media to trumpet the important developments and refute in detail the misrepresentations of those scurrilous anti-IRV people (myself included)?

Does FairVote really need another site devoted to promoting IRV - unless of course they want a site that doesn't appear to be yet another production of FairyTaleVote.org, so that it can appear to be a fair and balanced (like Fox News) attempt to educate election reform activists, charter commissions and election officials without having to link directly to FairVote?

So it looks as though the http://irvfactcheck.blogspot.com is just another attempt by Rob Richie and his co-horts to hog more of the Internet in their desperate attempt to con election reform activists, charter commissions and election officials into believing that IRV is a great electoral reform and that anyone who opposes it is a liar and/or a tool of special interests.

It's an indication that those of us verified voting activists who oppose IRV are having some success if so many of the leading IRV pushers created a website to pretend to appear to be separate from the main IRV advocacy groups that in some cases (like with Rob Richie) they helped to start in the first place. Sort of like a faux astroturf group.....

I've already downloaded and saved all the pages they have - especially the BS about IRV in NC, and the MD fiscal reports, and I will refute it in detail as I have time.

But if you are looking for a few laughs, keep checking back with the Rob and the rest of the FairVote crew on their brand-new blog that of course is totally separate from whatever else FairVote is doing!

The end of the beginning: Bradblog calls IRV an "election virus"!

Joyce McCloy just called me up and asked me if I was sitting down and had some beer handy. I said I was outside finishing up the last bit of painting I have to do before getting my new roof installed.

She told me something BIG had happened - and she was right! Brad Friedman, who blogs at BradBlog.com, just published a piece on IRV. And it was devastating!

Blogged by Brad Friedman on 6/2/2009 1:38PM

'Instant Runoff Voting' (IRV) Election Virus Spreads to Los Angeles County

Joins 'Internet Voting' and 'Vote-by-Mail' schemes as the latest bad ideas poised to further cripple American democracy

PLUS: IRV count fails in Aspen's first instant runoff election...

Gautum Dutta, of the Democratic-leaning Asian American Action Fund blog notes a recent L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting which "discussed a study on the cost of special elections and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)" [emphasis added]...

While speaking to the Board of Supervisors, Registrar Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan testified how low voter turnout and high costs have plagued our special elections. Logan urged the County to seriously consider anything that would reduce voter fatigue and save money.

In the past two years alone, $9.3 million of taxpayer dollars have been spent on special elections. Of that amount, over $3.6 million dollars were spent on special runoff elections (counting the upcoming July 14 runoff in CA’s 32nd Congressional District).

If IRV had been used instead of special runoff elections, taxpayers could have saved up to $3.6 million.

Note to Messrs. Dutta and Logan: Taxpayers could save even more money if we simply allow you two to just decide for us who gets elected!

As Logan, chief election official of the nation's largest voting jurisdiction (larger than 43 states combined) has had more than enough problems with the current voting system which can't even add one plus one plus one accurately, such that it is virtually impossible for anybody to verify the accuracy of results, the last thing this county needs is to complicate the math even further by confusing matters with IRV's complicate scheme of ranked choice voting where voters are asked to select a first and second place choices, etc.

For that matter, unless, and until, we can simplify our election procedures such that any and all citizens are able to oversee and verify the accuracy of their election results, no jurisdiction in this country should employ schemes like IRV, no matter how well-meaning supporters of it may be in hoping to allow a broader range of candidates and parties to have a shot at winning an election.

Along with the emerging nightmares of Internet Voting and Vote-by-Mail, IRV is yet another one of the horrible wack-a-mole schemes being endlessly advanced by advocates and profiteers who put winning elections and making money off them, over the idea of transparent, verifiable, secure democracy and self-governance expressed of the people, by the people and for the people.

Addendum... From last Friday's Aspen Daily News:

More than three weeks after Aspen’s first-ever instant-runoff election, city officials announced an error in the tabulation of the final-round vote totals for mayor. ... The error did not surface in either of the council tallies or in any other rounds of the mayoral instant runoff voting tally, officials said. ... Accuracy tests were publicly conducted before the election but they did not catch the problem that ultimately occurred.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7198

I feel good about this latest development. We have IRV on the run in NC. Only two communities wanted to pilot IRV in NC in 2007. None in 2008 (but our State Board of Elections knew IRV wouldn't be used in 2008) and only one community voted to pilot IRV. The only NC community that used IRV to tabulate votes for a winner beyond the 1st column turned it down flat and voted to continue using traditional non-partisan majority elections with runoff if needed. Next year there will be a big Senate election in NC and I know the SBOE won't want to risk using IRV in violation of state election law and federal regulation during a big federal election. So IRV is on the way out in NC.

And thanks to verified voting bloggers, we've kept people aware of the problems with IRV, and shown how it's a danger to election integrity. And we've done it in the face of people who call us all sorts of names (liar comes to mind - I'm still waiting for my appology Elena!), and been called a "Republican" by the Democratic Chair of my county Board of Elections (I am a die-hard Dem who is an officer in my county's Progressive Democrats club). At times it's felt like Joyce and I (and a few others) have been going it alone.

But we are seeing people wake up to the dangers IRV poses to election integrity and to democracy itself. in places like Aspen, Burlington, Pierce County even while Rob Richie and Co. (aka FairyTaleVote) crow about how well IRV elections work. Now that a visible progressive like Brad has called IRV an election "virus", I feel I am not standing alone against the really bad idea that is IRV.

But I was stuck by the symbolism of this posting today - and finding out about it at the same time as I finished painting the last of the roof trim prior to getting the roofers over. Just like my home-improvement work, I saw this posting by Brad in the words of Sir Winston Churchill:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning!

What happened to ncvotes123 sites?

FairVote and other pro-IRV groups used to host a site that either went by ncvotes123.com or ncvotes123org.

When you go to ncvotes123.com, you get directed to the following site: http://sites.securepaynet.net/redirect_0.html

The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

---

Please try the following:

• Make sure that the Web site address displayed in the address bar of your browser is spelled and formatted correctly.
• If you reached this page by clicking a link, contact the Web site administrator to alert them that the link is incorrectly formatted.
• Click the Back button to try another link.

HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

---

Technical Information (for support personnel)

• Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 404.
• Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Web Site Setup, Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages.

If you go to ncvotes123.org, you get redirected to this site:

This site is currently unavailable.

If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience.

Does this mean that FairVote and other IRV advocates have thrown in the towel? I hope so - I have some home-improvement work to get caught up on.

But I somehow doubt it - eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!

IRV does no better than plurality or traditional elections and runoffs in Aspen

It is interesting to see how IRV advocates are touting any community - no matter the size or the results of the election - that uses IRV as a success for the complex and confusing method. I made some comments in an article on IRV coming under fire in the Aspen Times, and some IRV advocate who has drunk the FairyTaleVote kool-aid responded that IRV worked well in Aspen. He told me to look up the history of IRV elections and see why IRV was needed.

Well I did look up IRV, but I saw that IRV was not needed. Why? Because I saw from an analysis of Aspen elections by a writer from the Aspen Times, and it pretty much confirmed what I already know about IRV - that it isn't a more democratic election method.

Aspen voters have used plurality elections, majority elections with runoffs, and now IRV. But as history has shown, the leader in the May general election won in the June runoff. In the recent IRV election, the leader in the first round wins the eventual runoff. In IRV, the first round lead is rarely overcome by other trailing candidates.

So majority elections with runoffs and IRV all deliver wins to the person who has the plurality lead in the first election or round, why use IRV?

Some say that IRV saves money over a traditional election and runoff. That is only true if you accept the rather simplistic argument that one election is cheaper than two and don't honestly and accurately account for all the costs of doing an IRV election - including the cost of election integrity.

Are runoff results predetermined?

Leader in first go-round consistently wins the runoff

By Carolyn Sackariason – The Aspen Times
May 10, 2007

ASPEN — If history does repeat itself, then the results of the upcoming city runoff election are already a done deal.

Since Aspen instituted runoffs in 2001, the majority of voters have selected the same candidates in both elections.

"The runoff positions have not changed the May positions," said City Clerk Kathryn Koch.

There have been three runoff city elections in the past eight years, all of which have generated the same outcomes of the prior votes. In 2001, Helen Klanderud got 850 votes in the mayoral election, and Rachel Richards received 658. In the runoff, Klanderud won.

In May 2003, Torre got 566 votes in the race for City Council, and Tony Hershey received 542. Torre won the runoff. In May 2005, Jack Johnson received 823 votes for council, and Dee Malone got 671 votes. Johnson won in the runoff.

Where it began

The impetus for runoffs was born out of the 1999 mayoral race between Richards and Klanderud - with Richards winning by 14 votes. Some felt it wasn't a clear enough mandate, so City Council posed a charter amendment to the voters in the fall of 2000. Voters approved runoff elections by a margin of 3-to-1, Koch said.

Before the charter amendment, whoever had the most votes won. It was a called a "plurality" election. The runoff system is part of a "majority" election in which a mayoral candidate must win with 50 percent of the vote, plus one, and City Council candidates must win by 45 percent, plus one vote.

Koch estimates that the runoff elections have cost taxpayers more than $21,000. "That doesn't include man-hours," she added.

What's more, history has shown that fewer people make it to the polls in runoff elections. In May 2001, 2,003 people voted; in the June runoff, it was 1,810. In May 2003, 1,903 people voted; in June, 1,566 cast ballots. May 2005 drew 2,318 voters, and the next month attracted 986.

'It helps'

Toni Kronberg is the only current candidate who supports runoff elections - she benefited from the majority election Tuesday. She inched into the runoff by placing third with 487 votes. She'll go up against Steve Skadron, who placed second with 862 votes. Dwayne Romero won a City Council seat outright by placing first with 1,126 votes.

"It helps because it ensures that the person gets the majority," Kronberg said, adding that it's difficult for voters to differentiate among candidates, especially in a field of eight like in Tuesday's election.

Kronberg said that because of the runoff, she has a second opportunity to reach more voters with her message. In order for Kronberg to win, she'll have to get most of the 800 votes that went to other candidates.

"Is it a daunting task? I don't think it is," she said. "It's doable."

The other three candidates all support some sort of election reform that would either do away with runoff elections altogether or implement an instant voting system, where voters would note their second and third choices on the ballot.

"This whole runoff thing, I don't see how the community benefits waiting a whole month," Skadron said, adding he only needed 28 votes to win on Tuesday. "My total was almost double [Kronberg's]."

Mayoral candidates Mick Ireland and Tim Semrau will face off June 5 as well. Ireland, who garnered 1,036 votes, needed 57 more votes to beat Semrau, who brought in 747. Ireland favors moving the municipal election to a time when more people are in town, particularly because the economy has shifted in town, and summer attracts high numbers of residents.

"Instant voting is worth looking at and so is having the election at the end of June," Ireland said.

Problems and solutions

Many candidates have complained over the years that low voter turnout hurt their chances because the elections take place in the height of offseason, when people leave town for extended vacations.

A citizen initiative posed a ballot question in 1989 asking to move the municipal election to the general election in November. It passed, 1,041 to 932. But then a little more than a year later, another citizen initiative prompted a special election in July 1990 asking to repeal the earlier vote. It was approved, 342-175, moving the municipal election back to May. City residents never had a chance to vote on municipal matters in November, another offseason month when fewer people are in town.

Councilman Johnson in July 2006 convinced his colleagues to pursue possible changes to the election system, which ultimately would require voter approval. Koch did some initial research on instant voting, finally determining that it would be nearly impossible with multiple candidates vying for more than one seat up for election on a single ballot, as is the case in the council race. As a result, the effort lost momentum.

State Rep. John Kefalas, D-Larimer, introduced a bill to the state Legislature earlier this year that would create a study group to investigate this summer "advanced voting methods," which includes instant voting and other processes that would allow voters to express preferences on multiple candidates. Lawmakers rejected a proposed pilot project, but the study group is still pursuing the endeavor, said Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a Denver-based nonprofit that supports instant voting.

Flanagan recognizes that there are challenges to instant voting, similar to what Koch has pointed out, but she said she is confident solutions can be found.

Common Cause believes instant voting elects public officials with higher voter turnout and encourages candidates to run campaigns that are less negative.

"Instant runoffs would save municipalities a lot of money, as well as the candidates," she said. "We're hopeful more municipalities pursue advanced voting methods."

But while IRV advocates like to claim that runoffs result in lower turnout, it is interesting to note that more people turned out in the June 2005 runoff (986) than voted in the November 2007 election (837) where IRV passed. And interestingly enough, the IRV vote took place at another time where fewer people are around in Aspen than in the summer months.

Just because someone declares a voting method to be "advanced", it doesn't mean that it is better all around. This article referred to the difficulty voters would have with a slate of 8 candidates. Do you really think that voters ANYWHERE can possibly know enough about all the candidates on a slate to rank them in a meaningful way? That is why Robert's Rules of Order does not recommend IRV (referred to as "Preferential Voting") over traditional elections except for reasons like voting by mail.

Aspen voters went from plurality to a majority election with runoff because they felt that plurality didn't deliver a clear enough mandate. Then they wanted to explore other options (like IRV) because they objected to the higher cost of holding traditional runoff elections with lower turnout. They also considered moving their general election from May to June when more people would be in town. But they later rejected that move.

Interestingly enough, their study commission originally found that it would be too difficult to use IRV to select multiple candidates in an at-large election.

One wonders why Aspen didn't implement easier to understand moves like publicly-financed campaigns, or moving the elections to June, or going back to plurality elections instead of the much more complicated IRV method that their own Election Commission couldn't certify either the method before the election or the results afterwards?

The Town Council of Cary, NC (a community with over 100K registered voters - 20 times as many as Aspen) recently rejected participating in a second IRV pilot election. Cary went from plurality elections to majority general with runoff (if needed) and then decided to participate in the 2007 IRV pilot. In 2009, the Cary Town Council rejected going back to plurality because they liked the idea of majority winners. But they rejected IRV because it was too experimental and didn't deliver performance as promised (mostly that it didn't ensure a majority winner in a single election). They didn't have the complex and convoluted batch multi-member election method to deal with, otherwise I am sure that even Erv Portman would have turned thumbs down to it.

And IRV didn't really save all that much money. True Ballot was paid $7,500 to run the IRV election, while the previous three runoff elections cost $21,000 - or $7,000 per election. Even though the costs of runoff elections didn't include the man-hours, runoffs were $500 less than the cost of doing IRV.

But does the bill for IRV include the cost of election integrity and transparency? I don't think so.

Think IRV was wildly popular in Aspen? Guess again!

IRV supporters in Aspen like to claim that IRV was wildly popular - winning by a 72% margin. But 72% of how many voters? Turns out to be a pretty freaking small number.

Well, I went onto Google for a look-see, and here is what I found.

Voters approve instant runoff voting

John Colson
November 7, 2007
Aspen, CO Colorado,
ASPEN — Aspen voters decided Tuesday that they were tired of lengthy runoff campaigns and going to the polls twice for the same electoral contest.

Or, as Mayor Mick Ireland quipped when voters overwhelmingly approved instant runoff voting, "They're tired of me showing up at their door," a reference to his well-known campaigning tactic of roaming neighborhoods in search of votes.

City voters also approved the other four ballot questions, by wide margins, in an election that drew only 837 voters to the polls.

Did you see the number of people who voted in this election? Out of 5,167 registered voters in the city, they only got 837 voters showing up at the polls. Aspen has roughly the same number of voters in my subdivision, and 837 is roughly the number of registered Democratic voters in my precinct (my subdivision used to be one precinct - but they split it into two precincts a few years ago.

I can't imagine how anyone could claim that anything was wildly popular if only the registered Democrats in my precinct were able to decide something that everyone else in the subdivision had to live by. Sure - the rest of them didn't show up to vote, but that hardly makes it wildly popular!

That comes to just more than 16 percent of the 5,167 registered voters in the city, according to figures the Pitkin County Clerk's office released. By comparison, in the first round of voting in Aspen's municipal election last spring, the turnout was roughly 44 percent.

Because there were no candidates or hotly contested issues in Tuesday's election, observers accurately predicted a low turnout. Only in the absentee ballots were the tallies even close regarding the individual questions.

One of the biggest winners of the evening was the decision to enact instant runoff voting, which won by a margin of 608 to 186, or 72 percent to 22 percent.

So only 837 voters - only 11.7% of 5167 registered voters - decided that Aspen was going to use IRV. That hardly seems fair, does it? One wonders why communities that decided to put an IRV referendum on the ballot do it during lower-turnout elections when fewer people show up to the polls? In the Fall elections, only 16% of voters turnout. In the Spring 2007 elections, 44% turned out.

And according to analysis of elections and runoffs in Aspen, the lowest reported turnout in a June runoff election was 986 votes - or 149 more than voted on the IRV issue. How can IRV supported claim that IRV is the answer to low-turnout runoffs then scheme to put IRV on the ballot at a time when they know there will be low turnout?

Why do IRV backers put IRV on the ballot during lower-turnout elections - what are they afraid of?

Identified as ballot question 2E, instant runoff voting was ahead from very early on election night, beginning with absentee and early voting tallies, as were the other four questions.

Voter Doug Allen said he favored instant runoffs, which gives voters the option of ranking candidates in order of preference - first, second, third, etc. First choices are tabulated, and if a candidate receives the majority of first choices, or 50 percent plus one vote, he or she is elected. If no one receives the majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs are simulated using each voter's preferences, indicated on the ballot.

"It gets it all over with much more expediently," Allen said.

Several voters noted the expense of having a second round of elections - both for the city and candidates, who must muster a follow-up campaign - as sufficient reason to change the system.

Runoffs are "a drain for people after they've already gone through one campaign," said Karen Day-Greenwood. "It's so hard on everybody and expensive."

Voters amended the city charter in November 2000 to institute runoff voting and the first runoff took place in June 2001, when voters chose Helen Klanderud over Rachel Richards for mayor after neither candidate received 50 percent of the votes cast, plus one, in the first go-round.

One voter Tuesday said she voted against 2E, swayed by this year's mayoral race between Mick Ireland and Tim Semrau. Ireland ultimately won the post in the June runoff after the candidates spent an additional month stumping for votes and clarifying their stances on the issues, while voters mulled over their choice for mayor.

"I guess it doesn't hurt to have a second thought about it," she said.

John Colson's e-mail address is jcolson@aspentimes.com

Then there's the "expediency" thing that IRV backers tout. They claim it's easier for voters to go to the polls only one time with IRV rather than going for a partisan primary (and potential runoff) and general election (and potential runoff), or even for non-partisan elections with potential runoffs. They do make a good case saying that runoffs don't usually have a turnout as high as the election which came before the runoff. And they do claim that primaries are for party activists and not the general public, and that voter turnout is lower for primaries than for general elections.

But the whole thing about expediency bothers me. I grew up with a grandfather who was a skilled craftsman - a carpenter and a contractor. My grandfather and his brothers built houses and churches in the Scranton, PA area. And his father was a stonemason back in Italy, where other family members were makes of rope as well. All skilled trades back in the old country. I grew up with a work ethic where if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right. And expediency bothered my grandfather, because it usually means people cut corners and accept a thing that might not done correctly just so they can get it done faster.

It used to be back in the day of buying name-brand merchandise from local stores, the things I bought worked right out of the box - and for many years after. So I didn't mind on those rare occasions when I had to take something back to the store and get a refund or exchange because it didn't work right out of the box (very rarely) or it stopped working at some point.

However, so much junk today is being made by slave labor in China and other countries. It gets a name-brand label slapped on it - and arrives DOA in big box stores. The result is that quality and high standards suffer for world trade, free markets, and for "expediency". Quality dies - and few people object. Mom & Pop stores on Main Street go out of business. Small business owners used to run for local office and sponsor Little League teams because they had a link to the town or city they were based out of. How many managers of "big box" stores run for office? How many Little League teams are sponsored by The Home Depot? I mean - you might as well just pay less for the same junk at Harbor Freight, and pay a few extra bucks for the "warranty" which just means you get to bring it back and swap for a new one forever! Of course, the time you lose not being able to work and go back and forth to the store you won't get back.

The result of this "race to the bottom" is that I get very offended when anyone tries to apply this to our political processes - especially elections. Why? Because it's pretty damned hard to take an election back to the store and get an exchange when the "product" fails to deliver what was promised.

Here are some quotes on "expediency" - see if you feel as I do that "expediency" shouldn't be a factor in deciding what election method to use:

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.” - Lao Tzu, 6th Century B.C. Chinese philosopher

“Where principle is involved, be deaf to expediency.” - James Webb, Senator from VA

“There's an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence.” - Jonathan Raban, British novelist

The more complicated you make an election, the less likely people are going to be able to understand what went wrong before the election is "certified" by someone who really doesn't know what happened and is only signing off because they don't want to admit they don't understand. Do we really want to out-source our elections to black-box consultants who tell us everything worked well when we really don't have the time or enough information to know for ourselves?

American Idol is like IRV - which is like Fizzbin!

After I got done with my recent posting slamming Rob Richie for comparing American Idol to IRV (on how AT&T possibly gamed the American Idol elections), I noticed that Joyce McCloy created an amusing post using a clip from "Star Trek" on the game of "fizzbin" - an game that Kirk pulled out of his "Asspen" to provide a distraction. Here is a good description of the game from the wiki article:

Fizzbin is a fictional card game created by Kirk in the Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action". While being held hostage on Sigma Iotia II with Spock and McCoy, he spontaneously invented a confusing card game to distract the henchmen guarding them.

The rules were intentionally very complex. Each player gets six cards, except for the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays. Kirk dealt the henchman two jacks, which are a "half-fizzbin." When the henchman said he needs another jack, Kirk warned that a third jack is a "shralk" and is grounds for disqualification. With two jacks, one wants a king and a deuce, except at night, when one wants a queen and a four.

At this point, Kirk dealt a third jack, but to keep the ruse going, he ignored the disqualification rule he had just made up. He explained that, had a king been dealt instead of a jack, the player would get another card, except when it's dark, in which case he'd have to give it back. The top hand is a "royal fizzbin," but the odds of getting one are "astronomical": when Kirk asked Spock what the odds are, Spock truthfully replied that he had never computed them.

Kirk called the last card a "kronk" and then purposely dealt a card such that it fell on the floor. As the henchman being taught reached down, Spock nerve-pinched him while Kirk and McCoy attacked the other guards, allowing the three to escape.

Once in Deep Space Nine, Quark mentioned the game as a way for him and Odo to while away the time while traveling on a runabout;^[7] whether it had become a real game or if it had been a reference was never explained. Playable versions of the game have been invented, and it featured in the episode "Nantucket Sleighride" of the animated series Starcom.

I admit that when I first started to read the complicated Aspen IRV rules, I felt a lot like the henchmen in the clip when they were trying to understand Kirk's explanation of "fizzbin". Should anyone have to work that hard to understand how to vote, or how the votes are counted?

How American Idol is like IRV!

In an earlier posting I wrote about a "huff piece" written about IRV elections in Aspen CO by FairyTaleVote's Rob Richie. At the very end of the piece, Rob mentioned the following:

A Timely Quote: How American Idol is like IRV:

"Despite never having been among the bottom-three vote-getters this season, Danny [Gokey] wound up on the short end of 88 million votes Wednesday night, which eliminated him from the competition. With only a million votes separating Kris and Adam this week, Danny's sizable voting bloc could still influence the outcome. Will his supporters throw their weight behind dark-horse-turned-contender Kris? Or will they stay away from the phones? The answer to that question could determine your next American Idol." - Brian Mansfield, in May 14 story for USA Today, "'American Idol': Danny voted off; Kris and Adam are final 2."

Voting on American Idol is not something I take very seriously. I always wondered why anyone in the election reform biz would ever hold up a show like 'American Idol' as an example of good elections. But then again, this is from a group that uses examples of voting for flavors in ice cream socials as a reason why we should use IRV in big-people elections for stuff that matters a whole lot more than what flavor of ice cream you get to eat.

I fell asleep with the TV on (MSNBC) and I awoke this morning to a little something about how AT&A May Have Swayed 'Idol" Results - they are even talking about it on "Morning Joe" where they admit to not understanding exactly how this could happen. Wonder how they feel about IRV? ;-)

So I googled "AT&T tainted American Idol vote" and ironically I got an article in The Huffington Post (the same place that posted Rob's crowing about IRV) "AT&T May Have Swayed 'Idol' Results":

New York Times:

AT&T, one of the biggest corporate sponsors of "American Idol," might have influenced the outcome of this year's competition by providing phones for free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, the Arkansas singer who was the winner of the show last week

So I went to the article in the NY Times:

May 27, 2009
AT&T May Have Swayed ‘Idol’ Results
By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES — AT&T, one of the biggest corporate sponsors of “American Idol,” might have influenced the outcome of this year’s competition by providing phones for free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, the Arkansas singer who was the winner of the show last week.

Representatives of AT&T, whose mobile phone network is the only one that can be used to cast “American Idol” votes via text message, provided the free text-messaging services at two parties in Arkansas after the final performance episode of “American Idol” last week, according to the company and people at the events.

There appear to have been no similar efforts to provide free texting services to supporters of Adam Lambert, who finished as the runner-up to Mr. Allen.

Since then, angry supporters of Mr. Lambert have flooded online chat boards with messages claiming irregularities in the competition’s voting.

Officials of Fox Broadcasting declined to discuss the situation. In a statement issued Tuesday, a spokesman for AT&T said, “In Arkansas, we were invited to attend the local watch parties organized by the community. A few local employees brought a small number of demo phones with them and provided texting tutorials to those who were interested.”

Details of the voting support were first reported last week in an article in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Representatives of AT&T helped fans of Mr. Allen at the two Arkansas events by providing instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts. Power texts have an exponentially greater effect on voting than do single text messages or calls to the show’s toll-free phone lines. The efforts appear to run afoul of “American Idol” voting rules in two ways. The show broadcasts an on-screen statement at the end of each episode warning that blocks of votes cast using “technical enhancements” that unfairly influence the outcome of voting can be thrown out.

And the show regularly states that text voting is open only to AT&T subscribers and is subject to normal rates.

So American Idol voting was capable of being influenced by a group that engaged in voter education, and that controls both the counting and casting of votes.

I guess Rob was right - American Idol is like IRV. Timely indeed!

Has the Aspen Election Commission certified the May IRV elections?

And if not - why not?

For Mayor - http://www.aspenpitkin.com/pdfs/depts/38/Aspen%20Mayor%20Round5.htm
CANDIDATE THIS ROUND TOTAL STATUS
Mick Ireland (4) 0 1273 ELECTED -- 4th round

For Council Seat 1 - ttp://www.aspenpitkin.com/pdfs/depts/38/Aspen Council Seat 1 Round4.htm
ROUND 4 -- Jack Johnson (2) has been DEFEATED -- transferring all votes.
CANDIDATE THIS ROUND TOTAL STATUS
Derek Johnson (8) +40 1273 ELECTED -- 4th round

For Council Seat 2 - http://www.aspenpitkin.com/pdfs/depts/38/Aspen%20Council%20Seat%202%20Round3.htm
ROUND 3 -- Michael Behrendt (5) has been DEFEATED -- transferring all votes.
CANDIDATE THIS ROUND TOTAL STATUS
Torre (4) +200 1273 ELECTED -- 3rd round

Votes aren't the only things being pulled out of someone's "Asspen"!

Rob Richie wrote a "huff piece" for the Huff Post about IRV. As usual, he put a positive spin on the Aspen IRV election (which I don't think has even been certified yet). And he got stuff wrong.

In a Nutshell
Instant runoff voting is a ranked choice voting system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Recommended by Robert's Rules of Order for postal elections and used in a rapidly growing number of elections here and abroad, it represents a major improvement over the usual plurality-based and two-round systems of voting. It protects majority rule, eliminates the need for costly extra elections and all but eradicates the potential chaos of "spoiler" candidacies. But beyond its clearly established benefits, we are seeing anecdotal evidence that suggests that IRV has a positive effect on the influence of big money on elections, and mitigating the temptation for campaigns to "go negative."

It used to be that FairVote claimed that Robert’s Rules of Order recommended IRV over all other election methods – now it’s just for postal elections. But I am not sure that IRV is being used in a rapidly growing number of elections here and abroad. Those governments that already have a parliament use IRV/RCV or STV. I don't think that any new overseas governments are clammoring to use IRV. In fact, 61% of British Columbia voters recently gave STV (a version of IRV) a crushing defeat - in the second defeat for ranked choice voting in BC.

I am sure FairVote is spending a lot of money trying to push IRV in communities all around the country and the world. But here in NC, IRV is failing to catch on.

In 2007, only 2 out of over 500 municipalities chose to take part in an IRV pilot program. Only one election went to IRV, and that was a disaster! There were no IRV elections in NC in 2008 (probably because our own State Board of Elections felt IRV was too risky to use in the 2008 federal elections with the expected heavy turnout). A bill to allow the Wilmington City Council to have the option to have IRV elections was pulled at the request of the City Council when the language of the bill would have REQUIRED the use of IRV. And even though an IRV pilot program extension bill was passed in 2008, that bill required guidelines that our State Board of Elections could not meet (IRV conflicts with general election laws) so that only one community opted to participate in the 2009 pilot.

That one single community out of over 500 in North Carolina was Hendersonville. They participated in the 2007 pilot only in the front end of the election (the ranking of candidates). As the election in Hendersonville went the same way as two IRV elections in Takoma Park (they had a first round majority and didn’t need IRV to determine the winner by tabulating subsequent rounds), Hendersonville really had no rational basis for assuming that IRV elections would go smoothly. In fact, since they use a largely untested and certainly uncertified workaround for tabulation of the DRE votes on Excel spreadsheets, the IRV method using DRE machines is an untested one. One City Council member claimed that there was a paper trail for the IRV vote, but there has never to the best of my knowledge been a testing of doing a full-scale recount of IRV votes using the thermal paper trail created by DRE machines.

In all well-intentioned attempts to reform our electoral system, the primary goal is fairness: finding mechanisms allowing all eligible voters to have a better chance to participate and be represented. When those criteria are satisfied, we think that government becomes more accountable and more honestly reflects the will of the voters. But sometimes we can be pleasantly surprised when a change designed to improve the political system in a broad sense also turns out to have other desirable effects beyond the initial intentions.

I am not really sure that all attempts to reform our electoral system are well intentioned and have fairness in mind. I am certainly not sure that those are the intentions of FairVote. And I certainly don’t think that IRV elections satisfy those criteria.

I do not believe that IRV is a fair electoral system because it is too complex not only in the front-end voting part of the election, but especially in the back-end of the counting. Candidates in Cary, NC admit to being confused on how to deal with campaigning in IRV elections. Voters in Cary and in Hendersonville were also complaining about the cofusion.

You must have a simple and easy to understand method for counting votes and explaining how the winners will be determined. IRV in almost any form is “black box” voting – hard to explain, hard to understand for educated people and “just trust us – we’re well-intentioned reformers” for everyone else.

This is exactly what we're seeing with the growing implementation of instant runoff voting (IRV) in municipalities across the country. With IRV, voters have one vote, but are allowed to indicate their backup choices in the event that their favorite candidate lacks enough support to win. After voters rank candidates on a ranked choice ballot, the first-choice rankings are tabulated. If no candidate wins a majority (50% plus one), a series of "instant runoffs" take place. The weakest candidates are eliminated and ballots for that candidate are added to the totals of the remaining candidates until one candidate earns more than half the votes. The winner is the majority, consensus choice. (Minnesota Public Radio recently did a charming video demonstration of IRV in action using Post-It notes, which you can watch here.)

One candidate earns more than half of what votes? The total number of votes cast in the first column of each race, or more than half the votes of the last two candidates standing?

A successful IRV election was held in Aspen, Colorado last week (the city's first IRV election), in which incumbent mayor Mick Ireland defeated three challengers in a contest with a record-breaking turnout; 45% versus the usual 37-38%. Analysis of the election by TrueBallot showed that every single vote cast for mayor was valid, meaning 100% of those who opted to vote for mayor had their vote count. There were more voter errors in the novel use of IRV to elect two at-large city council seats, but still less than 1% of those at the polls.

Who says it was successful? The election hasn't even been certified yet! Comments by many people suggest that the reason for the turnout was that people wanted a change in administration. Ireland was pushing IRV because of the advantage it gives incumbents. Ireland and other pro-IRV candidates got themselves on the IRV commission to figure out how to run IRV in Aspen. Were other candidates on this commission? If not - why not?

Also notable were the fundraising figures. Challenger Marilyn Marks outspent Ireland, breaking Aspen records with almost $40,000 in funds. Ireland mustered less than half of Marks' total, with less than $18,000 raised. Despite this disparity in resources, Ireland emerged victorious. The biggest spender in the city council race also was defeated in an election in which the two incumbents were upended.

Where did Rob Richie get these figures from – did he pull them from his "Asspen"? According to the public spending reports, Ireland had spent $14,513 up to 4/29/09 vs. $10,149 by Marks during the same period. The final reports won’t be out until June, so where did Rob Richie get his “almost $40,000 in funds” figure from? Did he make that up?

We knew IRV helped level the campaign finance playing field when avoiding costly runoffs, as would have happened previously in Aspen. We didn't anticipate an impact within single elections, but here's why there might be a connection. In a typical campaign, campaign money is often spent attacking one's major opponent through ads. That tactic assumes the "zero sum" logic of a two-person race in which every vote lost by an opponent helps you by default. But with IRV, voters are more likely to have more than two choices. Candidates have a greater motivation to make an affirmative case to earn support because negative attacks may hurt another candidate without helping you.

There "might be a connection"? This is quite a stretch! How much would a runoff election cost in Aspen's 4 precincts (5 including ABM and in-person Early Voting)? Would it have cost the $7,500 paid to True Ballot to run the election - including the fix of that pesky "inverse" problem that declared the lowest vote-getter in a pre-election test to be the "winner"?

That is not what folks in Aspen say about the campaigns. Most everyone agrees that the lack of the run-off and having 9 candidates in the field allowed the candidates to run “motherhood and apple-pie campaigns.” There was no real substance to the answers, and positions. They were able to run popularity contests without having to take positions. There was too much noise to pick out a real message. That is one of the big problems with IRV!

One of the reasons why Robert’s Rules of Order favor traditional election and runoffs over preferential voting is the real lack of choices. In Aspen and elsewhere, the month of run off among only 6 candidates (4 council and 2 mayor) would have allowed for real issues to be debated and discussed. From my own experience in the 2008 primary campaigns in NC, with so many candidates running, no one got a real chance to tell other voters what the real differences were between the candidates. Both of the runoff candidates for Labor Commissioner – John Brooks and Mary Fant Donnan (disclosure – I know John Brooks and supported him in the runoff) – felt that the runoff gave them a chance to explain the differences between each other but also between them and the current Republican Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry. Had we had IRV in that primary election, I doubt few voters would have been able to make responsible and informed choices in the Labor Commissioner race that had a 33% falloff from the Presidential and other top-ticket races.

I am convinced that in the future, if there are more IRV elections, candidates will hire math consultants to learn how to game the system, and run campaigns for a month that focus on popularity (lots of bbq’s and pizza parties) and not on ideas and substance. Is that really how we want to elect our officials?

Because voters get the option to rank their preferences, candidates also have a new incentive to make their case to backers of other candidates. Negative attacks perceived to be unfair are particularly counter-productive if the candidate on the receiving end loses early in the counting and that candidate's backers punish the attacker by ranking other candidates higher on their ballot. Attacks will still be leveled at opponents in IRV elections, particularly when there is a clear frontrunner as was the case in Aspen, but overall IRV encourages more positive, substantive campaigns in which candidates try to earn first-choice support from opponents while remaining attractive to other candidates' supporters. The Aspen Times weighed in after the election, writing, "[We] have been impressed with the professionalism displayed...[C]andidates have treated each other respectfully during these stressful times."

That is not what some observers who chose to remain anonymous have claimed about the Aspen elections. Some supporters of Marks were threatened by people in the Ireland campaign.

Let's take a look at another example. Earlier this year in Burlington, Vermont, the Progressive Party's Bob Kiss was re-elected as mayor, vaulting from second place after the first count in an IRV election to win with 51% against Republican state legislator Kurt Wright. Just as in his initial upset win in 2006, when he was outspent by approximately four to one by a Democratic state senator, Kiss was heavily outspent by his three main opponents. All three wielded larger war chests, including Wright who spent twice as much as Kiss.

So what? Progressive candidates have won election for Mayor since the 70s or 80s WITHOUT IRV. IRV was not necessary for Progressives to win elections in Burlington, VT.

But once again money seemed to mean less when negative attacks aren't useful. Burlington's candidates participated in forums across the city, and, in part due to IRV, spent little time debasing each other. The positive, substantive tenor of the campaign even won IRV some new converts of past skeptics such as Democratic city councilor Bill Keogh who told the Burlington Free Press, "This campaign has been very, very good," and that the four leading candidates had been "as forthright as they can be with their views. This is the most respectful and informative campaign in Burlington in a long time."

Other observers have found that IRV tends to drive the negative campaigning underground.

Obviously, in the Aspen and Burlington cases the mayoral victors had the benefit of incumbency despite their deficits in cash. But they also showcase a trend that is emerging in IRV races across the country. Similar results have been seen in San Francisco, which has used IRV for city elections every November since 2004. Numerous highly competitive races have gone to candidates who were outspent, including several neighborhood-based candidates targeted by downtown business in the 2008 elections. The editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2008 wrote that in the highly contested open seat race for District 9 on the Board of Supervisors:

Not really sure these examples are accurate – since Richie got his numbers wrong in the Ireland v. Marks race.

"[The winner] will probably be the one who gets the most second-place [rankings]. So it's in everyone's interest not to go negative. If Sanchez, say, started to attack Quezada, the Quezada backers would get mad and leave Sanchez off their ballots -- and that would hurt Sanchez when the second-place votes are counted. So everyone has been pretty well behaved in [District 9]. I've heard a few whispers here and there, and a few people have tossed off a few nasty comments, but overall the candidates and their supporters recognize that it's better to stay positive."

So that results in bland campaigns that have little focus on issues and the differences between candidates. That is not very democratic!

Indeed, the winner was in fact one of those candidates that embraced the idea of forging alliances over burning bridges. One result of this is that with every member now elected through IRV, the city's Board is far more diverse and community-based than ever in its history. Its 11 members include three Asians, two Latinos, one African-American and one Iranian-American.

Does this have more to do with who runs for office in those communities vs. who votes for them? If IRV is supposed to bring diversity – why doesn’t Takoma Park MD (home of FairVote) have a diverse elected government?

This is not a definitive, scientific case study proving beyond a doubt that IRV will always negate the advantages of money or unfailingly produce smiley-faced campaigns. But what is certain is that because candidates must appeal beyond their die-hard supporters in order to rank highly on as many ballots as possible, the efficacy of negativity becomes at best highly questionable, while reasoned, substantive debate and coalition-building become far more attractive. And when discussion is valued over destruction, the relentless raising and spending of campaign funds can be less decisive.

It it not very scientific or accurate. But if you have read as much of this pro-IRV drivel as I have, you would not wonder why I call this organization “FairyTaleVote”.

In our view, IRV is already a significant improvement simply on its technical merits alone. But if it can also produce such positive byproducts -- even only occasionally -- it only serves to make a good idea even better.

Many people would not agree that IRV is a significant improvement based on technical merits alone. Many people feel that IRV threatens election integrity and verified voting. And now what do we make out of Rob Richie’s claims of “gee whiz” Pollyanna election wonderfulness when he pulls numbers out of his "Asspen" to cast the incumbent mayor as a little guy who got elected over big-spending people who, by default, must be evil?