Think Hoboken is "hot" now? The voters will be steaming if they catch the Instant Runoff Virus!

Back in the mid 80's, I used to work in NYC as a photographer's assistant. My college room-mate Victor Ongkingco introduced me to all the charming places to go eating and drinking in NJ - and we tended to end up in Hoboken at the end of the night. Parking was a pain, but I always enjoyed visiting the place and I developed quite a fondness for one bar (which is no longer there) where I had my first wheat beer.

Hoboken showed up in the news the other day, when an article in the Hudson Reporter claimed that the Hoboken City Council was going to be considering IRV. I thought they must be joking of course. IRV is hardly a "new idea" - maybe just new for Hoboken or NJ in general?

And unlike the merde that FairyTaleVote is pushing in NC - that IRV gives better pluralities - they are still pushing the story that you can keep counting IRV ballots until someone gets a majority. But at least the reporter admits that it could be confusing.

Turns out they weren't really voting to institute IRV in their town. I went to the Hoboken City Council website, and found that there was merely one of many resolutions on the agenda asking the NJ legislature to pass a bill creating an IRV study commission. The Hoboken resolution merely asked the legislature to pass the bill and expedite their study so that Hoboken could possibly rush to do IRV for their November 2009 general elections. Of course the rationale for using IRV was a slightly different variation of the usual Fairytale vote propaganda. Here is the resolution with my comments under each relevant section:

A RESOLUTION TO CUT AN ESTIMATED $75,000 IN TAXPAYER EXPENSE WHILE INCREASING VOTER PARTICIPATION THROUGH USE OF INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING (IRV)

WHEREAS, Hoboken runoff elections cost the taxpayers of the City an estimated $75,000 to $100,000 every two (2) years; and

TELESCA COMMENTS: IRV advocates claim that IRV saves money if you buy the simple assumption that one election is cheaper than two. That is not true if you factor in all the costs of the more complicated IRV method: voter and candidate education, pollworker and election administrator training, documentation, and voting system upgrade or replacement. And there are no voting systems that are federally certified to handle IRV tabulations.

You can see the high cost of IRV both from governmental studies done in jurisdictions considering IRV, and from the jurisdictions already doing it.

The Maryland State Legislature considered doing IRV three times - in 2001, 2006 and 2008 - and did fiscal studies in 2006 and 2008.
http://mlis.state.md.us/2008rs/fnotes/bil_0002/hb1502.pdf
http://mlis.state.md.us/2006rs/fnotes/bil_0002/sb0292.pdf

Their costs for voter education alone were estimated to be $0.48 per registered voter - the cost of a 1st class stamp. Think that's enough? San Francisco has spent $1.87 per registered voter per year in the IRV elections they have done since 2004 - and a recent San Francisco civil grand jury report indicates that might not be enough, because voters still don't know enough about IRV after 4 IRV elections.
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/courts/divisions/Civil_Grand_Jury/year-of-five-elections-for-sf.pdf

That's just the cost of voter education. The same MD fiscal studies estimated that it would cost an additional $3.50 per registered voter to implement IRV in 2006 when they were using paperless DRE touchscreen voting machines. In 2008, they estimated it would cost an additional $3.08 per registered voter if they switched over to using op-scan paper ballots. But the 2008 study didn't include the cost of federally certified IRV voting machines and software that didn’t exist then and still does not exist!

Actual costs of implementation in places that have used it is even scarier! Pierce County, WA used IRV in 2008. It cost them $2 million to implement an uncertified system for 375,589 votes - or $5.33 per registered voter! That is on top of the regular costs of their election system. And in two of the three races that used IRV to decided the "winner", the "winner" didn't get a majority of the first column votes cast! Now 2 out of 3 voters in Pierce County want to ditch IRV after their first election!
www.aocweb.org/aoc/Portals/0/Content_Managers/feb0909govcommrev.pdf

WHEREAS, multiple elections annually foster the disenfranchisement of voters, reducing voter turnout and public confidence in the process; and

TELESCA COMMENTS: I don’t know of any formal studies that show traditional elections and runoffs reduce voter turnout and public confidence in elections.

As a precinct chair and an officer in my county’s Get Out The Vote program, I do know that voter turnout in runoff elections can be lower than for the initial election. But that could be due to many factors including lower voter interest, weather, burnout, or just not liking any of the other candidates.

San Francisco first used IRV in 2004. They have used IRV in every subsequent election since then. From 2004 to 2007, voter turnout has dropped along with the number of registered voters, so IRV does not increase voter turnout. And the percentage of people who showed up at the polls who didn’t know they were supposed to rank their choices increased from roughly 33% in 2004 to almost 50% in 2005.

One problem with IRV is that it very rarely ensures an authentic majority winner in a single election. In the majority of elections where there is no winner in the first column and IRV is used to tabulate votes in subsequent columns, the winner rarely wins by a majority of number of 1st column ballots. A winner is manufactured using IRV vote tabulation methods that seem more like ENRON accounting methods.

There is a movement across the country not to trust the results of “black box” elections. IRV is such a complex tabulation method that few people understand it – including election administrators. If trained election administrators don’t understand it, what chance does the average voter have of understanding and trusting it? Many verified voting and election integrity advocates feel IRV is a step backwards, not forwards.

WHEREAS, the Council is committed to the democratic process and wishes to encourage voter participation while simultaneously reducing the cost to the taxpayers; and

TELESCA COMMENTS: There is always going to be a trade-off between voter participation and election costs. You could cut costs by having one place in a municipality to cast your vote in person in order to reduce costs, but you would end up disenfranchising voters who live further from the location. Perhaps you really can't do both. Maybe try finding a savings someplace else?

WHEREAS, Instant Runoff Voting has proven to be successful nationwide, in such diverse places as Aspen, Colorado, San Francisco, California, and the States of Louisiana and South Carolina;

TELESCA COMMENTS: This clause is somewhat misleading. IRV has been used in Aspen and San Francisco, but it could hardly be called successful. They voted to use IRV in elections without knowing how they would implement it. As such, they were forced to use the method under threat of lawsuits from IRV advocacy organizations like FairVote.

Costs have gone up, and election transparency has done down. Aspen had to hire an outside consulting company to run their complicated IRV elections – which cost more than holding a regular runoff election. And there are almost daily reports coming from Aspen about election irregularities – and this is from an election that took place in early May. It was not certified by the Aspen Election Commission because they wouldn’t sign off on a method they didn’t understand.

South Carolina and Louisiana passed laws to allow for the use of IRV for overseas absentee by mail voters, but they do not use IRV for any other elections.

North Carolina passed a law creating an IRV pilot program for 2007-2008, and extending it from 2009 to 2011 (inclusive). Even after a full-court press by the State Board of Elections and many IRV advocacy groups like FairVote, they could only get two communities to use IRV in 2007 – Hendersonville and Cary.

Even before Cary voted in May 2007 to pilot IRV, the State Board knew it was too risky to use in 2008 elections because state law and federal regulations require using only certified voting systems to tabulate IRV.

Only one NC community – Cary - needed IRV to tabulate votes beyond the first column. Due to my work in verified voting, I was appointed an official observer to the IRV pilot by the Chair of the Wake County Democratic Party. IRV did not do well in Cary.

The 2007 Cary IRV pilot program was largely managed by IRV advocacy groups, with no advance guidelines. Some voter education volunteers admit deviating from Election Board instructions to create a more positive outcome on the exit poll surveys — also conducted by IRV advocates.

The Wake Board of Elections couldn’t follow simple IRV hand tabulation procedures. Ballots were mis-sorted, simple calculator mistakes were made and a non-public recount turned up missing votes. The winner did not receive the 50 percent plus one vote majority advocates claimed IRV would ensure in a single election. He got 1401 out of 3022 first-column votes.

There has been no analysis of the 2007 pilot. The proffered reason given for extending the pilot beyond 2008 was cost savings, even though fiscal studies done by other jurisdictions show IRV elections cost more than traditional election methods.

The original IRV pilot extension bill had the same flaws as the first pilot program. Election integrity groups requested an improvement which required “… the pilot program shall be conducted according to … standards consistent with general election law …” Unfortunately, this legislative requirement has not been met.

After passage of the pilot, election integrity advocates (including myself) pointed out how IRV conflicts with general election law not written with IRV in mind, and recommended ways to make IRV comply with general election law. The State Board ignored those recommendations and approved IRV guidelines that conflict with general election laws.

North Carolina and other states have laws requiring that votes be counted where cast until the count is completed to prevent ballot tampering. But State Board IRV guidelines call for partial ballot counting at polling places, then moving the ballots to a central location for further counting. The federal Help America Vote Act requires voters be notified of over-votes before a ballot is cast. Our voting system can’t notify voters of second and third column over-votes on IRV ballots.

From early 2007 through January 2009, State Board members and staff claimed we needed federally certified software to automate IRV tabulations. The State Board recently developed automated procedures they now claim need no federal certification. Those procedures were developed with no input from election equipment vendor ES&S. We still do not know if the new IRV procedures violate any contracts, warranties or other agreements with ES&S? Will NC voters be required to foot the bill in the event of election problems?

Very few NC communities considered taking part in the 2009 IRV pilot. Cary – the only NC municipality that used IRV to tabulate an election winner in 2007 – voted not to participate in the 2009 IRV pilot. The consensus of the Town Council was that IRV didn’t work as advertised in 2007, and they didn’t want to be an election lab rat again. Don Frantz – the most vocal opponent for IRV on the Cary Town Council – was the elected with the method. He didn’t like it in 2007 and he doesn’t like it now. Councilperson Julie Robison – who voted to participate in the IRV pilot in 2007 – doesn’t support the IRV election method because she doesn’t trust the tabulation procedures. On April 30, 2009 – Cary voted to stick with traditional majority non-partisan majority elections with runoffs if needed because they are more transparent than IRV.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the Council of the City of Hoboken, County of Hudson, State of New Jersey, that it fully supports Senate Joint Resolution No. 43, sponsored by Senator Bill Baroni of District 14, creating a commission to study instant runoff voting and the implications of IRV within the State of New Jersey and to encourage the commission to act promptly so that the City can introduce a referendum for voter consideration establishing IRV during the next general election on November 3, 2009.

TELESCA COMMENTS: It appears according to SJR 41 that they will actually study IRV - something that was not done in North Carolina before the pilot passed in 2006. If they don't rush the study, they will find out more information about IRV than they ever wanted to know – including all the extra costs and perhaps even the many ways that IRV conflicts with existing elections laws in NJ. It will take a while – possibly years – to resolve just the conflicts in their election laws if they decide to use it.

Based on the experience of other jurisdictions that are using IRV, NJ should not rush into using the method until they can take the time to weigh all the evidence. Or heaven forbid, be required to use it and then realize just how problematic it will be.

From the way the resolution is written, Hoboken wants to rush the actions of the state IRV Study Commission so they can have a special referendum on IRV sometime this summer enabling them to use IRV during their November 2009 general election? That is not a good idea.

Does it make sense to go to the trouble and expense of holding a low-turnout special referendum on IRV just to use IRV in November and supposedly save money not having to hold a runoff election? That’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Furthermore, the turnout in special elections for IRV tend to have even less turnout – and therefore are less democratic – than even the runoff elections they are using to replace. That is what happened in Aspen, CO.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a certified copy of this resolution be transmitted by the City Clerk to Senator Baroni and our 33rd Legislative District Representatives.
Meeting Date: June 3, 2009

A friend of mine attended this meeting and told me that - unfortunately - the resolution passed: 6 voting yes, 2 voting no and 1 abstention. There was no discussion of how IRV might effect election integrity. But that is to be expected. Cost cutting at all levels of government tends to be the biggest concern on elected leader's minds these days.

But I am really sure that this IRV study bill will go anywhere. Doesn't their legislature have a research staff that can study this issue for them and make a report? Or is this gonna turn into a Rob Richie "dog and pony" show (or is it "chili cook offs" and "ice cream socials") where FairyTaleVote will control the agenda for the meeting?

Rest assured that election integrity and verified voting activists will be paying attention to what goes on in the Garden State. My aunt lives in NE Philly not too far from Trenton, and I got plenty of places to stay near Hoboken - from a futon in Tribeca to a very nice couch in Belleville.

NJ residents are practical and pragmatic. If they can joke about being able to see the air they breathe, they will want to see an actual majority they are being promised. There is a good chance they won't buy into the hype once they find out how bad the Instant Runoff Virus really is!

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!

"Street Football" or how they crossed the threshold by pulling votes out of their "Asspen"!

Joyce McCloy, Kathy Dopp, and the folks at RangeVoting have posted a link to an open letter to Fair(yTale)Vote's Rob Richie in response to Rob's puff piece at the Huffington Post entitled "Good Things Come to Those Who Rank: Campaign Finance, Political Dialogue, and Instant Runoff Voting" (does that make it a "huff piece"?) from Marilyn Marks - one of the candidates in the recent Aspen Co IRV race.

Her letter to Richie is devastating to say the least. You have GOT to read it! There are links in the letter to a site which reported there was some sort of arts related issue on the ballot, and many people simply FORGOT to vote on it (I am guessing) due to the more complex IRV races. Her letter also contained a link to a report by her nephew, who goes to NCSU right here in Raleigh.

And while many people realize that all three winners in the races finished with the exact same totals - 1273 votes - few folks seem to understand how this happened.

Richie rightly claims that the process needed more explanation (and a headache remedy or several stiff drinks) in order to be understood. But even when he has explained it, the numbers still don't add up.

There was more than one race where:

1) only two candidates left standing AND

2) all the other ballots were exhausted AND

3) the threshold had not yet been crossed.

And yet they still declared a winner! Know how they did it? Instead of holding a traditional runoff election because they had no clear winner, it appears as though they took a look at the subsequent rankings for the ballots belonging to the second place finisher at that point, and saw if there were any votes for the first place finisher - then added just enough votes to cross the threshold.

They stopped counting as soon as they got 1273 - which is why the winners in three different races have exactly the same number of winning votes. IRV advocate Terry Boricious claims that is Cambridge IRV rules, but it seems more like "street football" (comedy routine by Bill Cosby, where he who brings the football makes the rules). I say this is pulling votes out of your "Asspen" (funny "South Park" episode which you can watch here). If you have seen the episode - do you recognize any link between the timeshare organization that seems to control everything and the folks and organizations pushing IRV? ;-)

How can this possibly be a smooth election where IRV proved anything other than how complicated it is in the first place?

Why don't they ask people if they would prefer IRV when it costs more than traditional elections and runoffs?

I am getting so sick of people claiming everyone prefers IRV to traditional elections and runoffs, citing surveys as proof IRV is the greatest thing since sliced white bread!

I just attended a meeting of the Cary Town Council and there were some pretty awful assumptions made about IRV - that it's always cheaper than holding traditional majority elections with runoffs if needed.

From the http://www.townofcary.org/depts/pio/biennialsurvey/html/2008BiennialSurveyReport.htm

The respondents were next asked their support for using the Instant Runoff Voting Method using a 9-point scale from not supportive at all (1) to very supportive (9). The respondents were also informed the use of the method would save Cary taxpayers approximately $28,000 by not having to hold a physical runoff election.

While supporters are claiming that Cary taxpayers saved $28,000 in the 2007 election by using IRV, they cannot honestly make that claim because they didn't keep track of all expenses. IRV was done under the table and off the books. Labor and services were donated by non-profit groups (including pro-bono services from so far un-named PR firm and free websites provided by the main group pimping IRV) and none of it was kept track of.

But even public information officers seem to buy into the very simplistic argument that one election is cheaper than two. Check out the fiscal impact statement at http://www.townofcary.org/agenda/tc09004.htm

Fiscal Impact:

(1) Below are the FY 2010 budget estimates based on each type of election, with and without IRV (all costs include one-stop early, contract costs, etc.). These estimates include the IRV estimates that the Town of Cary would absorb to cover voter education. These estimates assume the maximum number of elections possible with each method of election. Also, these figures include the cost of Cary contracting with Wake and Chatham Counties to conduct its municipal elections, since Cary is in both counties. These numbers reflect the highest possible amount of charges we would incur; actual expenses would more than likely be less as the county pays a portion of the cost of elections when other county issues are on the ballot.

Partisan Primary and Election without IRV (potential of three elections):	$291,920
Partisan Primary and Election with IRV (two elections and IRV education costs):	$208,290
Non-Partisan Plurality without IRV (one election):	$97,306
Non-Partisan Plurality with IRV (one election plus IRV education costs):	$112,409
Non-Partisan Election and Runoff without IRV (two elections):	$193,187
Non-Partisan Election and Runoff with IRV (one election plus IRV education costs):	$112,409
Non-Partisan Primary and Election without IRV (two elections):	$193,187
Non-Partisan Primary and Election with IRV (one election plus IRV education costs):	$112,409

(2) Fiscal impacts for future budget years might potentially be less if the Town were to continue using IRV, especially once IRV is well established and no longer requires public education.

That last statement is incredible, because there is ample evidence from the San Francisco Board of Elections that shows they have been spending $1.87 per registered voter on IRV elections since 2004, and in 2008 a civil grand jury informed them that they aren't doing a good job educating voters. Even after 4 years, voters not only require continuing education but they haven't been getting enough even after spending $1.87 per registered voter! See http://noirvnc.blogspot.com/2008/07/all-is-not-well-with-irv-elections-in.html for more information.

What about the people who continue to move into Cary - will they not need IRV education? What about people who become citizens or turn 18 - will they not need voter education? It's overly simplistic to

It has not been proven that IRV will save any jurisdiction any money. In fact, financial impact studies by other governing bodies such as in VT and MD and even Washington state have shown that IRV could easily cost more money and be much more complex to administer and be less transparent and open.

There are also no real goals here – one of which is whether or not IRV is easier or harder for voters to understand how to cast their votes? Is another goal of the IRV pilot program to compare how easy or difficult it is to count or otherwise administer IRV elections vs. traditional elections and runoffs?

Several jurisdictions have performed studies to see how much it will cost to implement IRV. The Vermont Secretary of State performed a study. VT is a small homogenous state with highly educated and active voters and no central elections commission or state-wide standards like we have in North Carolina. Even though VT claimed they could do IRV on the cheap with voter education costs around 25 cents per registered voter, their study did find that IRV would be more expensive.

Maryland is a state with a central elections board and of a similar size (slightly smaller) and makeup. The MD Legislature performed three fiscal studies on IRV – in 2001, 2006 and 2008 – and estimated as best they could the costs per registered voter for initial implementation ($3.54) and ongoing voter education ($0.48) on top of the current costs per registered voter for election administration. These costs were not complete because there is certified software or equipment that can tabulate IRV at this time. None of the IRV bills passed out of committee, presumably because it appeared that IRV would cost more than the cost of rarely-needed runoff elections..
What would the combination of the Maryland costs per registered voter for implementation and for voter education be if they were used here in NC?

Initial cost of $3.08 per registered voter multiplied times 6,283,277 registered voters. 48 cents per registered voter in ongoing costs every year thereafter.

Initial cost of $3.08 per registered voter multiplied times 6,283,277 registered voters. 48 cents per registered voter in ongoing voter education costs every even year thereafter, and 24 cents per registered voter in odd-year elections.

http://mlis.state.md.us/2008rs/fnotes/bil_0002/hb1502.pdf
http://mlis.state.md.us/2006rs/fnotes/bil_0002/sb0292.pdf

The Maryland cost estimates factor in elections every two years, whereas in North Carolina we have local elections in odd years, and elections for county officers in both odd and even years. Therefore IRV voter education would need to be done each and every year. With 5.8 million voters over the summer and 6 million voters as of 11/04/08, annual voter education costs alone would equal the cost of the rarely needed state-wide runoff elections. Add to that nearly $20 million in implementation costs (not including certified software and hardware that does not exist) and IRV would never be cheaper than holding second elections even at the state level. So unless you blindly believe that one election (no matter how complicated) is cheaper than two, the push to IRV can’t really be about costs unless you chose to ignore this evidence.

So why is it that no one is asking questions about supporting IRV over traditional elections and runoffs even if IRV costs more than those elections?

2nd IRV election in Burlington VT does not result in a majority winner!

Got a posting on another news group from Anthony Lorenzo, Florida IRV advocate who appears to post damn near everything issued by FairVote.

FairVote is the nation's leading pusher for IRV propaganda. Here is a link to the FairVote release in the Huffington Post:

Burlington’s Has Second Highly Successful Instant Runoff Voting Election

This year, with so many viable choices, no candidate won an outright majority of more than 50% of first choices – indeed, plurality winner Kurt Wright won only a third of the initial vote. The election went to an instant runoff tally. In the instant runoff, the candidates with the fewest votes were dropped, including independent Dan Smith and Democrat Andy Montroll, and the field was narrowed to two finalists. In the final instant runoff round, every ballot counted as a single vote for whichever of the two finalists, Progressive mayor Bob Kiss or Republican Kurt Wright, was ranked higher on each ballot. By 8:25 p.m. the IRV tally was completed and Kiss had been re-elected, defeating Wright in the final round by 51.5% to 48.5%.

Notice that the comments for that posting are closed - apparently Rob Richie doesn't want to have people post opposing viewpoints about IRV - or that his claims are false.

The press release claims that the second IRV election in Burlington VT was a success and that incumbent mayor Bob Kiss had a majority win over Republican Kurt Wright 51.5% to 48.5%.

Is that true? Notice that the total number of votes is not listed anywhere in the article. I had to go to the Burlington Free Press to get the numbers for the first round and the final round:

From http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=9941176&nav=menu183_2

Initial Round:

* Kurt Wright (R) 2952 - 32%
* Bob Kiss (P) 2585 - 28%
* Andy Montroll (D) 2065 - 23%
* Dan Smith (I) 1307 - 14%

So that is a total of 8909 votes

But in Burlington you need a majority to win and after two rounds of IRV, it was Kiss on top with 51.5 percent to Wright's 48.5.

Final Vote:

* Bob Kiss (P) 4313 - 51.5%
* Kurt Wright (R) 4061 - 48.5%

Wrong!

Bob Kiss had 4313 - or 48.41% of the original 8909, not 51.5%.
Kurt Wright had 4061 - or 45.58% of the original 8909, not 48.5%.

That is because the total number of votes for these two candidates in this round is 8374 - or 535 less than the original 8909 cast in the first round. That is why an IRV win is not a true majority win in all but one or two cases because you never really get a true majority of the first round votes cast.

Here is what happened - according to the Free Press:

According to an unofficial tally, Wright led after the first round of vote counting by 252 votes. After the second-choice votes of the fourth and fifth place finishers — independent Dan Smith and James Simpson of the Green Party — were redistributed, Wright still led by 213.

Wright lost when the 2,554 second-choice votes of third-place finisher Democrat Andy Montroll’s went to Kiss by a 2-1 margin.

How does Andy Montroll get 2,554 second-choice votes when he only got 2065 in the first round?

“I’ve heard so many people say this instant runoff system is flawed,” said John Pijanowski, a Wright supporter, after consoling Wright with a hug. “I hope he challenges this all the way to the highest court.”

Yes - I agree - it seems very flawed. And it does appear to advantage the incumbents because in rounds beyond the first, you might not know anything about the other challengers, so you might vote for the incumbent for no reason other than they already got the job. That is an advantage of incumbency.

On the other hand, had there been a separate runoff election and some campaigning between the top-two candidates, who knows who would have come out on top? While people who preferred Montrol as their first pick chose Kiss 2 to 1 over Wright in their 2nd or 3rd choices, we don't know the actual number of votes, or if they would have really picked Kiss over Wright if the race was only between them. That is precisely why RRO prefers traditional runoff elections OVER preferential balloting like RCV or IRV.

Even some colleges that vote on computers that don't count any of their votes the way we do in the real world admit that you have to take the total number of votes cast in the first round of an IRV race and use that as the threshold - you can't do what Burlington, Cary and so many others have done and have a gradually reducing threshold for your "preferential majority". Even the students at NCSU recognize that you might not have a true majority after all the ballots are exhausted - so you would need to have a second or runoff election. As we should have done in Cary and they should have done in Burlington.

Calling something a majority win when it is not a true majority is called many things - false advertising and fraud are two things that come to mind.

Traditional runoff elections are more democratic even at UNC-CH!

General Election at UNC-CH:
8736 votes cast
Thomas Edwards had 41%
Jasmin Jones has 21%
presumably there were other candidates who had the other 38% of the vote

Runoff election
9513 votes cast - more than in the general election
Jasmin Jones had a real majority win - 51.3% to 48.7 for Edwards.

So let me see if I get this straight - at UNC, the runoff election not only had more turnout than the general election a week before, but the second place finisher in the general election beat out the first place finisher from the general election.

How would IRV have made this more democratic - except to give the students more time to "study"? In IRV, the first place finisher goes on to win the "instant" part of the runoff in about 99% of the elections. In traditional runoff elections, the second place finisher in the general election goes onto win 33% of the time.

Perhaps this was a good lesson in democracy for these students as they go forward in life?

Here are several things we can be certain of:

1) had there been an IRV election, more voters wouldn't have taken part in the election as they did in the runoff. 9513 votes in the runoff is more than 8736 in the general election.

2) with 4 other candidates in the election besides Edwards and Jones, it's possible that many other students would have voted for two of the other three candidates who weren't in the top two, and there votes wouldn't have been counted in a top two IRV election. At least all those people who showed up for the runoff cast really "meaningful" votes on their ballots.

3) there was a real majority winner that is simple and clear for all students to understand. The same cannot be said for the Cary IRV election - where even Don Frantz (who won the election) knows he didn't win by a 50% plus one vote majority as Cary voters were told would happen. Hell - even the NCSU students who voted to go with RCV for their student elections have a requirement for a threshold for the election and recognize that a majority might not be reached after all the ballots are exhausted - which might require a traditional runoff election to come up with a majority winner.

You cannot make the assumption that voters would have gone for Ms. Jones as #2 because the 4 other candidates supported her in the runoff precisely because those 4 other candidates didn't support Ms. Jones until AFTER the general election. Just like Vicki Maxwell garnered the majority of the support of the voters who cast 2nd and 3rd choice votes in Cary, she never got enough votes to overcome the margin Don Frantz had after the 1st round. That is exactly the problem that occurs in damn near every IRV race - the 1st column winner goes onto win because no one can overcome their initial lead.

Traditional runoff elections where the 2nd place finisher in the general election beats the 1st place general election leader 33% of the time is more democratic. That is a conclusion based on FACTS!

That is typically something that can't be done before the election - since you really only can make your 2nd and 3rd choices based on circumstances that might be different after the election DEPENDING ON THE FINISHING ORDER - something we hope we don't know before the election.

If you need to cast a second vote, you can decide who to vote for based on what is said after the 1st election. You never get that with IRV/RCV.

If Jasmine Jones had not decided to accept their platforms, they might have voted for the other guy - or they might have stayed home. But I think this is a good sign. With the Internet and text messaging and many other advances in communication, there is no excuse to claim that voter turnout is always lower in the traditional runoff. That is like saying that women won't vote because they couldn't vote 100 years ago. Times are changing, and many minority candidates embrace runoff elections instead of fearing them when they were a tool to lock them out of an election. Minority candidates like Jasmine Jones - an African American female.

The same thing happened in NC in two other 2007 municipal elections - one in Rocky Mount and another in Wilmington. In each one, an African-American candidate came from second place in the general election to beat the more favored white male candidate in a traditional runoff election that had greater turnout than the general election. This is also something that couldn't happen with IRV!

Chris Telesca

http://www.dailytarheel.com/news/university/it_s_jones_by_a_hair-1.1483295

It’s Jones by a hair

249 votes decide president runoff election with unprecedented turnout

Blake Frieman and Elisabeth Gilbert, Staff Writers

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Published: Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Updated: Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Jasmin Jones knew it was close. The Board of Elections had just announced that only 249 votes separated the winner and loser in the student body president race.

So when she found out she had come back from a huge deficit in last week’s election to win the presidency in a runoff, Jones and her campaign staff jumped up in an explosion of cheers.

Jones received 51.3 percent of the record 9,513 votes cast — an unprecedented turnout.

Her opponent Thomas Edwards earned 48.7 percent.

Ryan Morgan, chairman of the Board of Elections, expressed the significance of such a large voter turnout for the next president’s upcoming work.

“Whoever wins will have an incredible mandate to get done what the students want,” Morgan said before the results were announced.

Jones’ victory comes a week after she received only about half as many votes as Edwards in the general election. He received 41 percent of the 8,736 total votes cast. Jones received 21 percent.

Jones now must assemble her cabinet, which includes the vice president, treasurer and committee chairmen. They will take office April 7.

Acknowledging last week that she would have to put in another long week of work, Jones also admitted that she was just happy to be in the runoff.

“I think we were out there more, longer and later,” Jones said Tuesday when asked about her additional campaigning efforts throughout the last week.

She said she felt it was her staff’s attitude that was a major factor in her victory.

“We stayed positive,” she said. “We just encouraged students to get out there and vote. It didn’t matter for who — just vote.”

Over the past week, she was a staple in the Pit. She and her staff wore their trademark neon visors and spawned many an impromptu dance battle.

While she said her campaign team put in a lot of work, they certainly were not alone in their efforts.

Jones garnered the unified support of all four of last week’s defeated candidates — Ron Bilbao, Michael Betts, Ashley Klein and Matt Wohlford — after they held a joint strategy meeting Saturday.

“I feel like their support was a large portion of our success,” Jones said. “I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

In multiple e-mails sent out to all students who voted in last week’s election, the quartet encouraged their original followers to vote for Jones the second time around.

They cited her openness to accept their platform points as an example of her ability to collaborate well with others, a trait they all agreed would be important for the next student body president to have.

“Honest to God, I can’t believe that actually worked. I can’t believe we actually pulled it off,” Bilbao said.

“She took down the machine. She took down the Terminator. It’s the David versus Goliath.”

Edwards was visibly shaken by the results but received a standing ovation from his campaign workers.

“Go finish my physics lab for tomorrow,” Edwards answered after the announcement, when asked what he intended to do next.

He said the results did not change his feelings about his campaign.

“I really think that we went into this thinking that we did everything that we could,” Edwards said.


Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.

Georgetown University ditches Instant Runoff Voting - cites problems

So tell me again that everyone likes IRV and has no problems with it? Even at colleges that don't conduct their elections with the same degree of scrutiny and verification as regular elections in the real world have problems with it.

Jesus - at least these college students realize IRV is not perfect. How much do you wanna bet that the Hoya's would know that 1401 votes is not half of 3022 votes? If students at Georgetown don't understand IRV, what makes you think some highschool dropout with literacy problems will get IRV - or understand how the votes are counted?

Now I happen to think that a traditional top-two runoff election works better than IRV, because at least it gives people a chance to elect a candidate with a majority win. But plurality is better than IRV all around because IRV is so much more complicated than plurality elections, which in all but one case IRV delivers the win to the highest vote getter in the first round of the election. In reality, an IRV "majority" is nothing more than a "preferential majority" which is another way of saying "plurality"

http://www.thehoya.com/node/17665

New Voting System for GUSA

Presidential Election to Feature Plurality System

By

• Katie Kettle,
• Kathleen Nahill,
• Elizabeth Rowe

| Jan 29 2009 |

• GUSA

On Tuesday night the GUSA Senate voted to change the method of voting in the presidential election from instant runoff voting to a plurality system. This change comes in response to controversy over last year’s election, which resulted in the selection of Pat Dowd (SFS ’09) as Student Association president and James Kelly (COL ’09) as vice president.

Instant runoff voting was adopted by the Election Commission in 2006 after five years in which no GUSA ticket won the majority of student votes. IRV is a system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no ticket receives a majority of the first-place votes, the ticket receiving the lowest number of votes in that round is eliminated, and these votes are redistributed to the remaining tickets based on what the voter indicated as his or her second choice. This process continues, with votes for eliminated candidates being redistributed based on the voter’s next choice, until one ticket receives a majority.

Last year, the senate rejected the results of the presidential election, citing problems with the IRV system. A second election was held with only four of the seven original tickets on the ballot. D.W. Cartier (COL ’09) and Andrew Rugg (COL ’09), who won the first election with 51.2 percent of the vote, were defeated by Dowd and Kelly in the second election.

GUSA Vice Speaker Brian Wood (COL ’09) explained the need for the bylaw change.

“I got a lot of calls [about the last election],” he said. “I have gotten a lot of resistance to instant runoff voting.”
Senate Speaker Reggie Greer (COL ’09) said he supports the plurality system, where the ticket that receives the most votes wins the election, regardless of whether or not that ticket receives the majority of the votes.

“I like it,” he said. “It’ll make it easier for people to understand the election.”

“I understand the founding fathers of the senate had a different vision, and I agreed with them at the time,” Greer said. “But this way we have one vote, one person.”

Other changes included an increase in campaign spending limits, raising the limit from $200 to $300, which includes all donations and expenses incurred over the course of the campaign by anyone campaigning on behalf of a candidate. The role of the campaign staff has been written out of the bylaws, and the funding rule now applies to anyone contributing on behalf of a candidate.

Frederick Moore (COL ‘09) and Will Dreher (SFS ‘09) were also approved as the new election commissioners. They will work with the Election Commission to oversee election standards this spring.

2 out of 3 Pierce County RCV "winners" don't have a true majority

Peirce County WA claims to have winners in their RCV races - but were they real majority wins?

It doesn't appear so in more than one race. Here's what happened in the County Executive race:

	Round 1
	votes	%	transfer
Mike Lonergan	45330	15.15%	-45330
Pat McCarthy	79235	26.49%	12973
Calvin Goings	69052	23.08%	8375
Shawn Bunney	105057	35.12%	13633
Write-In	458	0.15%	-458
Total	299132
Exhausted by Over Votes	532	0.17%
Under Votes	13107	4.19%
total under and over	13639	4.36%
TOTAL BALLOTS	312771

Out of a total of 312,771 ballots cast, there were 299,132 votes that were counted. No one got over 50% of the votes. So they dropped out the Mike Lonergan and the Write-In votes, and they counted the 2nd column votes for the remaining three candidates. 10,807 fewer votes were cast in the 2nd column than in the first.

	Round 2
	votes	%	% Round 1
Mike Lonergan	0
Pat McCarthy	92208	31.98%	30.83%
Calvin Goings	77427	26.85%	25.88%
Shawn Bunney	118690	41.17%	39.68%
Write-In	0
Total	288325

N9w in the first % column for round 2, they are only calculating percentages for the total runoff 288,325 votes being counted only in this round - not of the 299,132 votes counted in the first round. Using either method, no one still has over 50% of the vote. So they proceed to round 3, where 30,494 were cast than in the 1st column.

	Round 3
	votes	%	% Round 1
Mike Lonergan
Pat McCarthy	136346	50.75%	45.58%
Calvin Goings	0
Shawn Bunney	132292	49.25%	44.23%
Write-In
Total	268638

They are obviously only counting the votes of the top remaining candidates, but they are using the votes of the people who voted for these two candidates from the 1st and 2nd columns. Using the totals for these two remaining candidates, one obviously has a majority of the remaining votes - 50.75% - but this candidate only has 45.58% votes of the original 299,132 cast. Not enough votes to have been declared a winner in the 1st column.

This is the big problem with people claiming IRV ensures a majority win in one election instead of two. if you don't have enough vote to get a majority win in the 1st column, all you are ever going to have is a larger plurality win.

Is a larger plurality win really worth the extra money and confusion? 63% of voters who answered a survey said "no".

But interestingly enough, the top-vote getter in the beginning lost in the end in an IRV election. That is like the 2nd time this has happened in a little over 20 IRV/RCV races. This happens about 33% of the time in traditional runoff elections.

Which do you think is more democratic?

And it happened again in County Assessor-Treasurer race. With the same 312K ballots cast, there were 262,447 votes for 6 candidates plus some write-ins. That is almost 40 thousand voters fewer voters than those who votes in the County Executive race. And I thought IRV/RCV increased voter turnout?

In order to get a true majority, the winner would have needed 131,224 votes. The person who led the race in all 4 rounds "won" the RCV race in the 4th round with 98,366 - 32,858 short of a true majority.

But the County Council, District #2 race was interesting. There were only three candidates, plus a few write-ins. That race only went two rounds - with presumably only the second column votes counted. Out of 43,661 ballots, there were exactly 40,000 votes cast. This makes calculating the majority win threshold very easy - exactly 20,000 votes. After dropping out the write-in and the lowest candidate on the ballot, in the second round the top vote getter Joyce McDonald got 19,967 votes - or 49.92% of the vote. 33 votes short of the majority.

The second-place vote Al Rose getter got12,317 votes. The third candidate Carolyn Merrival and the runoff candidates got the remaining 7716 votes. And even if all of these 7716 voters votes for Al Rose, there is no way Rose could ever beat the top vote getter McDonald - so why did they even bother to count the race - unless they really hoped McDonald would cross the real 50% threshold. Well, that is what happened. McDonald ended up with 21,078 votes - for an honest 52.70% win - not the 55.26% "preferential majority" win from only the votes of the top two vote getters.

Just like here in NC, the second-place actually got more votes in the 2nd column of the ballot than those received by the top vote-getter. But in this race, it was 4747 to 1111. And do the numbers 40,000, 4747, and 1111 bother anyone?

So in two of the three Pierce County RCV races, the first column top vote getter ended up winning. And in the last race, there was no way the second-place finisher could have overtaken the leader, so why bother with RCV? Even though Rose got 4 2nd column votes to every one received by McDonald, Rose couldn't overcome the 1st column lead McDonald had going into the second column. Do the math - there was no way that Rose could have overtaken McDonald with an RCV race.

But had there been an traditional runoff election among McDonald and Rose, there is a good chance that the people who voted for the third-place and write-in candidates would have overwhelmingly voted for Rose.

This is one way that you could avoid a traditional runoff election by re-writing the statutes to allow someone ahead by a large enough margin to not need a runoff election. even if they didn't have a majority win. Because so far, IRV didn't give a true majority win in 2 out of 3 Pierce County RCV races. If you are just going to declare a plurality win a majority win by ENRON-style accounting, why not just lower the threshold?

Chris Telesca

Raleigh, NC overwhelmingly endorses Approval voting!

Met up with some friends last night at the Flying Saucer. It was "glass night" and you could vote for a presidential candidate (Obama or McCain) by buying their glasses. You could buy more than one, so I guess this was "approval voting" night at the Saucer - no IRV for these people.

The voting commenced at 7PM, and Obama had the lead until we left, varying between 58% to 60%. A crew of Obama volunteers came in. A McCain team came in, consisting of a rather constipated-looking young man and two Cindy McCain clones. We were surrounded by McCain supporters - some of whom couldn't believe that two small business owners (Jesse and myself) could possibly be Obama supporters.

Some Libertarians came in and were pissed there were no LIB glasses, or write-ins. You could recognize them because one looked like he lived in a cabin in the woods for years, and the other wore a "Munger for Gov" t-shirt.

When we left at 8:50, it was 223 Obama to 142 McCain. At closing time last night (verified by me by phone), and the result was 251 Obama to 187 McCain - Obama lead through the night and defeated McCain by 57%-43%

I am taking that as a good sign - and an endorsement of approval voting that produced an actual majority winner with no one arguing about it! No one needed a calculator to figure out who won, there was no complicated sorting of glasses, where some of them might break (so they wouldn't get counted), and no calculator error. No one came in and faked an accent or asked leading questions to get you to buy a glass or two or more.

This was a ringing endorsement of Approval Voting over traditional first past the post and IRV since no one objected to being able to cast as many votes as they wanted to. Money was not a factor in the Obama victory - no deep-pocket Republican came in and bought enough glasses for themselves or for other voters to keep up with Obama - there was just not enough interest in McCain to justify that sort of election trickery.

And even though there were only two glasses, there was plenty of choice to go around - you bought the glass, but could put any one of 200+ beers in the glass. So there were no crybabies bitching about not having choice or how people couldn't vote their hopes and dreams. Everybody supported the candidate and drank the beer of their choice!

Interesting pro-IRV site that talks about problems with centrallized processing of IRV ballots

Did more searching of google using "IRV sucks" as my search criteria, and this popped up - http://www.braindoll.net/vote/ for general site, and this particular link for hand counting IRV: http://www.braindoll.net/vote/#Technicalities%20(or:%20I%27m%20a%20geek).5

5.5. How could you do a hand count for IRV?
If you have all the ballots in one place, it's easy. Separate the ballots into counted piles according to the first choice marked. If no one pile is 50%, take the smallest pile, cross out the first choice on those ballots, and redistribute. If any have no choices left, put them in an "exhausted" pile. Continue the process until one candidate's pile is over 50% of the ballots NOT in the "exhausted" pile.

The problem is that you have to have all the ballots in one place. You can transmit them physically or electronically, but you need every individual ballot. However you transmit them, it's an opportunity for fraud or incompetence.


If you don't have the ballots in one place, you can do the first count, transmit the results to a central location, wait until everyone else finishes and the results are all in, recieve the word of who to eliminate, recount those ballots, retransmit the results, wait again... It's a lot of chatter back and forth, and a lot of waiting for the slowest counter, not just once, but several times.

This is one of the biggest problems that I see with IRV in North Carolina or anywhere else - the fact that vote counting will now rely on central processing, not just central reporting. This seems to make sense for paper ballots, but here's where it gets much more difficult if not IMPPOSSIBLE....how do you do the manual counts, recounts and audits of IRV elections?

5.11. So using the same mathematical language in Arrow's theorem, what are the flaws in IRV? In VOTE-123?

Both of them have problems with independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIAC). This means that they can be manipulated by controlling the pool of candidates. It also means that the voters can change the results by strategically ignoring (down-ranking) certain candidates who have no chance.

5.12. Wait a minute. Up above you say that under VOTE-123 "You can always vote honestly, period." But here you seem to be contradicting that by saying that no voting system can be perfect that way.

OK, you caught me. There's a theorem related to Arrow's theorem (the 'Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem') that shows that there is no voting system without some strategy - that is, some situation where an omniscient voter could vote dishonestly and thus increase their satisfaction. But just as you can mathematically prove that there's always a situation like that, you can mathematically prove that (especially given the right tiebreaker) under VOTE-123 it is always too risky to try it. Specifically:

Strategic voting only works under VOTE-123 if, either before or after the strategic changing of votes, there is a "Condorcet tie" - what I've been calling a three-way tie. This situation is very rare - as I said, it involves nearly-balanced voting blocs which not only disagree about which candidate is better, but also about which candidates are similar to each other. Most especially, it is very, very hard to predict accurately using polls. Most people will never make the effort to reliably tell pollsters who their second choice will be, and in such a closely-balanced situation the tiniest polling error could throw off the poll's results. And if you switch around your vote based on a poll that's wrong, you're more likely to end up hurting than helping yourself - especially since your plans will probably leak out and people can plan a counterstrategy.

So, you can still say it categorically: under VOTE-123, there is never a good reason to vote strategically.

And from the same source - http://www.braindoll.net/vote/#The%20politics%20of%20PV%20(or:%20Get%20Involved).5.2 they claim that FairVoteSF coughed up $87,000 to push the pro-IRV Proposition A in 2002.

2.5.2. San Francisco, 2002: IRV vs. Lobbyists
For a more modern case, I plan to do an analysis of the San Francisco vote on Prop A (to use IRV in city elections) which passed in 2001. There were two committees against Prop A: one small committee of honest skeptics, and one that was run by Jim Sutton, the guy who's the lawyer for all the big-money campaigns in San Francisco. He used his whole bag of shady tricks to run a last-minute lying smear campaign without having to disclose anything about his funding until long after the election is over. (Once his funding disclosures come out in August 2002 and I have time to analyze them, I'll give you the details.)

Preliminary numbers from the Department of Ethics Forms 460: "No on A", a small committee formed by some people honestly suspicious of that the SF department of elections couldn't handle IRV, had a total budget of about $500.

It's easy to understand why some people felt that San Francisco Dept. of Elections couldn't handle IRV. One posting on here from the FairVote site shows they had doubts that SF could handle IRV in 2004! And it really hasn't gotten any better - between the reports that San Francisco still doesn't have a certified method to tabulate IRV votes, the civil grand jury that states there are still voter education problems after 4 IRV elections, as well as the month's-long IRV tabulation - they still have much to work out after 4 IRV elections.

Do we really want to buy into all that hassle? We must investigate cheaper and less complicated alternatives to IRV to deal with the occasional need for runoff elections. San Francisco has proved IRV isn't the way for NC to do it.

"San Franciscans for Voter Rights", an anti-IRV PAC formed by a big-time downtown lobbyist, declared in the last 16 days before the election to try to get around reporting requirements, sent out lying hit pieces using about $77,000. This originally came entirely from downtown businesses, most of it came funnelled through big PACs (such as $61,000 from the "committee on JOBS") which have a long term reputation for backing corporate-written bills (for instance, insurance industry bills, etc.).

If you add up the other contributions of those same large PACs to various "voter guide" organizations (the "so-and-so Democratic club", etc.) which all conveniently had a "No on A" stance, there are over $100,000 EXTRA (in addition to the amounts above). There were obviously other issues on the ballot, but given the way many of these "voter guides" highlighted their measure A "NO" with bold face, I think that it's fair to count at least 10% of this as anti-A money; so count this as another $10,000

Add in 1/2 of the $32,000 staff expenses, January-March, for "San Francisco Chamber of Commerce 21st Century Fund", which although it is supposed to be a "general" lobbying organization took up no other issues in this race: another $16,000

Total anti-A money: over $100,000

For balance, the pro-a money:

"Fair Vote SF", a pro-A group, got $87,000 from small contributions from individuals, most (about $55,000) of it funneled through national or state PACs that see voting reform as important (primarily Center for Voting and Democracy).

Using the same analysis as above (what else did the pro-A PACs do with their money?) there is no extra money to report. Obviously there were pro-A "voter guides", but these voter guides did not get money from clearly pro-A PAC's. Not surprising: generally, the forces of good have simpler accounting practices than the forces of evil. (For full disclosure - the CVD did give $2,713 to "Matt Gonzalez for Supervisor")

Total pro-A money: $87,000

Pro IRV sources in FL claim that FairVote contributed thousands if not tens of thousands in money and staff time to push IRV in Sarasota. I wonder how much they spent to push IRV in general and in Cary and Hendersonville in particular that never got included in the cost of implementing IRV?

They knew in Vertmont back in 2006 that IRV wasn't all it was cracked up to be!

After all the depressing stuff on Gustav today, I decided to have some fun. I googled "IRV sucks" and came up with some fascinating stuff. One of them was this entry in the Vermont Daily Briefing from May 2, 2006 - http://vermontdailybriefing.com/?p=270

Here is an excerpt:

During Burlington’s last mayoral election — the city’s first use of Instant Runoff Voting — Political Science professor Tony Gierzynski mobilized an army of exit-pollers and gathered massive amounts of data.

This data he then crunched. Crunched it real good.

It took a great deal of time and foresight, but the results were utterly unique: no one had done such a study anywhere in America.

This is true - they sure as hell haven't done anything like that in NC. And I don't see anything in the study where they tolerate a paid IRV advocate doing the survey work, both deviating from their instructions and faking a southern accent.

So I went to the survey - located at http://www.uvm.edu/~vlrs/IRV.pdf and, as usual, I went to the end where the juicy stuff is. Here is some of it:

The relationship between education levels and awareness and understanding of the IRV ballot in our exit poll is similar to the findings of the exit poll conducted during San Francisco’s recent experience with IRV (see discussion above) and is one of the main concerns with this method of voting. As the experience of Florida in the 2000 presidential election demonstrated, certain voters are likely to have enough difficulty with complex ballots so that their votes do not end up counting. The percentages of people who were unaware of IRV or found the ballot confusing in the Burlington election were low even for the lowest levels of education (undoubtedly due to the City of Burlington’s effort to educate voters on IRV). The number of confused voters represented by those percentages, however, would be much greater in elections in larger cities or in statewide contests. Additionally, the higher level of voter turnout in statewide elections means that a larger proportion of the electorate would be composed of groups that, according to both our results and those of the San Francisco exit poll, had more difficulty with IRV, namely, those with lower levels of education. To illustrate, the percent of eligible voters casting ballots for governor in Vermont in 2004 was 65.1%25 compared to the 30.3% turnout in the 2006 mayoral election in Burlington. Only 12% of voters in Burlington’s mayoral election had a high school degree or less, while 26% of voters in the 2004 presidential election had a high school degree or less.26 Because they represent the group that had the most difficulty with IRV, a higher percentage of voters with a high school degree or less would undoubtedly inflate the percentage, as well as the number of those uninformed about IRV and/or confused by it. In other words, there is a good possibility that the difference among voters based on education levels would be intensified in an election with a higher voter turnout.

Here is a place where IRV advocates point to success in IRV elections, yet a study done in their own version of the Institute of Government shows there is a good possibility that IRV could cause voters with less education to become confused by the IRV ballot.

So what did that report conclude?

The exit poll results do, however, raise a couple of concerns about IRV. There appear to be both education and partisan differences in the reaction to IRV. The relative lack of awareness and confusion voiced by those with lower levels of education suggests that IRV has the potential to engender some inequities in the electoral process based on class. The partisan divide found on IRV in Burlington — Progressives and Democrats liking the system, Republicans disliking it — poses a problem for the perceived fairness of elections and the legitimacy of those elected.

While a sound argument can be made that IRV functions in a manner to select candidates based on majority preferences, the minority party may see it as an unfair changing of the rules of the game that deprives them of a chance of winning when their opposition is in such disarray as to offer multiple candidates. Were any of the potential voting paradoxes discussed above to arise in an election (especially if a Republican candidate had the lead in the 1st round and lost after the second round) there would surely be attacks on the legitimacy of that election in the press. Then there will be a real test of the public's understanding of IRV.

Other questions remain to be answered regarding the effect of IRV elections. It is unknown how IRV affects campaigning. It may ensure more congenial elections since candidates would not want to alienate any potential 2nd place votes from supporters of their opponents. But, it could also make it so candidates play down their policy differences for the very same reason—not wanting to alienate any potential 2nd place votes—making it less clear to the voters what their choice really means in terms of governance. Nasty campaigning, it should also be noted, could simply go underground as it may have in the Burlington mayoral contest. It also remains to be seen how IRV affects voters’ decisions. Despite claims of its supporters to the contrary, IRV does allow for, and even encourages strategic voting (as opposed to pure preference-based choices). What voters’ strategy would be and how it might differ from their calculus in the typical single-vote system used in the US is unknown, as is the way that such differences might affect the outcome of elections.

In the end, elections are about building governing majorities. IRV offers an opportunity to have an electoral majority without doing the hard work and compromise necessary to build it. How that dynamic might affect the ability of elected officials to govern is a whole other matter to be seen.

Recent readings of mine suggest that IRV could exacerbate the problems we are having getting a census government - it could lead to a "balkanization" of American politics and make matters worse, not better. Why should we experiment with a voting method that might make matters worse, not better.

That is why this voting activist doesn't favor experimenting with votes using IRV to see if it can be made to work. The laudable goals of IRV could be achieved without all the risks that even the NC State Board of Elections knew were posed by IRV way back in March 2007 - even before the first communities were considering taking part in the first round of the pilot program.

MASS IRV koolaid drinker claims to know that IRV was a success here in NC!

Folks - there are so many people out there who claim to know that IRV worked really well in NC who were nowhere near Cary when they cast or counted votes. Here's a blog from a guy in Mass - http://www.somerville.org - who claims to know how well IRV worked from videos created by FairVote and the exit poll managed by Bob hall from DemocracyNC and done by people ranging from real volunteers to the former IRV America Director from FairVote who admitted faking a southern accent when she interviewed voters (I believe it's her voice and/or arm in the video).

So I responded to his first posting and he replied to that. I tried to respond, but was unable to do so. Check out http://www.somervilleirv.org/?p=3#comment-18 and see what he wrote in response to me and see my response he wouldn't let me post to his blog.

Greg - my statements are not misleading or false. There was no objective measure of IRV success in North Carolina that was established before the elections. That is one reason why the Raleigh City Council didn't want to pilot IRV - there was concern that we wouldn't know if it worked or not.

And actually my truthful and hard-hitting arguments against IRV have been very successful where both sides of the issue have been presented to decision makers before they took their vote. In Raleigh, where the pro-IRV presenters outnumbered me 4 to 1 (and greater odds if you counted the pounds), no one in the Raleigh City Council wanted to pilot IRV after I got done. When both sides were heard, IRV went down in flames.

So pro-IRV people started to sneak around and talk to elected officials behind closed doors for weeks and months before they took a vote. So of course they voted to use IRV - they only heard one set of facts. That is how they got Cary and Hendersonville to go along.

Greg, you seem like an intelligent fellow even though you have obviously drunk the IRV kool-aid. It two educated and intelligent fellows like us can't even agree on how to count IRV votes and if IRV was a success, how do you think that the less educated and less literate voters in my state or other states will be able understand IRV? They won't understand it and if they don't understand it they won't bother to rank candidates if they do show up, or they won't show up at all. IRV is already turning into a math literacy test for college educated voters - it will be even worse for the voters who will show up to the polling places and not know they were expected to rank their choices in the first place.

The program didn't replace the runoff - it was a one-time experiment. Cary will have a traditional elections in 2009 unless they vote to pilot IRV again in 2009. Since Julie Robison, who originally supported IRV, not longer supports IRV, I doubt they will be able to get the votes to pilot it again.

And I never mentioned that the program was extended due to its success. Please do not put words in my mouth. IRV supporters claimed it was a success. Legislators never had the chance to fully debate how IRV worked in 2007. But it should be mentioned that even before the Cary Town Council voted to participate in the pilot, the NC State Board of Election knew in March 2007 that IRV would not be used in the 2008 election because it posed risks. What those risks are, they never said. And unfortunately for NC voters, most of our legislators were too incurious to ask what those risks were. The amendment to extend the pilot was submitted at the last minute, with no time to fully study the 2007 pilot.

Now you are deliberately trying to confuse people. You can't say that IRV ensures a majority winner of the non-exhausted ballots because if there are ANY non-exhausted ballots you still have to count them. You can't declare a winner if you still have votes to count!

You are wrong with your assertion that absentee and no-shows are not counted when determining the majority. Either IRV determines a majority winner by a number that is determined by the first column votes (a number which doesn't change because it has to include all the votes cast for the top two in the first column) or you are manufacturing a majority out of a plurality win by not counting all the ballots cast.

You can't compare people who don't cast second or third round choices to people who don't show up for a traditional runoff because in that race you don't carry forward the votes from the first election. And you are wrong in stating that claiming that ballots exhausted after the first or second columns aren't counted in the denominator when determining the majority - that is how it's done in San Francisco. You can not not use 3022 as a denominator in determining the majority because you are carrying the first column votes forward. If you kept the votes for the top two and changed the denominator, you really are advocating ENRON-style vote counting methods. What would you have the denominator be at the end of the second and third column tabulations?

The majority in the Cary race was based on the 3022 ballots cast in that race. A non-exhausted ballot is one that can still be counted. By the time Don Frantz got his 1401 votes, all the votes had been counted - there were no more that could be counted for him. But he still didn't have the 50% plus one vote (or 1512 votes) out of 3022 in order for him to win.

Going by your thought process, 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.

But one thing that I don't get about IRV supporters is that most won't admit that IRV does not always ensure a majority winner in all elections. Some do - and they did that in the legislation to use IRV for student elections at NCSU. Their IRV bill can be found at http://students.ncsu.edu/sgims/archive-87/bill/efficient-fair-elections-act-1064.html

§103. Requirements for Enactment of Preferential Balloting.
All statutes or other acts enacting preferential balloting for an elective contest shall indicate one of the following preferential balloting methodologies to be used:
(a) “IRV Majority” is §201 Instant Run-off Voting conducted with a §301 Full Preference Ballot. It is applicable to single winner races requiring majority election.

§301. Full Preference Ballot.
On any elective contest using a Full Preference Ballot, to cast a legal ballot the voter must rank all choices presented on the ballot. If a write-in allowed in the contest and used by the voter, the voter must rank it in addition to the choices presented on the ballot.

Comment
Only a full preference ballot ensures that in IRV/STV allocation, every ballot has a place to be allocated in every round. Otherwise, ballots may become exhausted and unallocated, potentially resulting in no majority or Quota in the final round.

They do require a full preference ballot - meaning that you have to rank every candidate in every race for any of your votes to be counted. In real adult elections in the USA, we don't force you to vote a full ballot in order for your votes to be counted. But at NCSU they take the total number of ballots submitted and that becomes the denominator from which a majority must be received in order to declare a winner using this method.

§201. Allocation Under Instant Run-off Voting.
Under Instant Run-off Voting, each vote shall be initially allocated to the highest preference on the voter’s legal ballot. If no candidate or option has votes equal to or greater than a majority of legal ballots, votes will be reallocated as further provided by this section. Reallocation shall proceed by determining the candidate or option with the least amount of votes as currently allocated, and then reallocating each of that candidate’s or option’s votes to the next remaining preference on each ballot that was a source of votes. Ties for least amount of votes shall be broken as provided by §211. Reallocation shall be repeated until a candidate or option has votes equal to at least a majority of legal ballots in the contest, and is thereby declared winner. No vote shall be allocated to a candidate or option previously eliminated.

But at NCSU they take the total number of ballots submitted and that becomes the denominator from which a majority must be received in order to declare a winner using this method. They don't keep changing the denominator as your statement would suggest is done in ballots where there are no second or third column votes to be tallied.

§221. Occurrence of Traditional Run-off Election under IRV.
For §201 Instant Run-off Voting in contests requiring a majority of votes to be elected, a traditional run-off election must be ordered when, due to exhaustion of preference ballots, no candidate receives a majority of votes in the final allocation round. Such run-off shall be conducted with the last two (2) candidates or options remaining in the allocation round, and shall use a non-preference ballot.

Comment
When IRV is used with a partial preference ballot, preference exhaustion may occur, necessitating an additional election to obtain a majority. This cannot occur with a full preference ballot except in the unusual case of write-in candidates reaching the final allocation round.

But where you don't require full preference balloting, you see it right there- preference exhaustion can occur. It did occur in Cary - 1401 votes is not the 50% plus one vote (or 1512 votes) of the 3022 votes cast and counted in the first round of the Cary District B race. At least at NCSU, the students admit that IRV won't always ensure a majority win by the time all the ballots are exhausted. it's a shame the adults who pushed IRV couldn't do that in Cary.

For those voters who show up at the polling places on election day and didn't know beforehand they were supposed to rank their choices, what is left for them to do? Going by the less than professionally conducted NC exit polls, 25% of Cary voters and 33% of Hendersonville voters had this problem. In San Francisco, about a third of the voters showed up not knowing they were expected to rank their choices in 2004 - it was almost HALF the votes the next year.

What would you have those voters do? Either donkey vote for candidates they know nothing about just to keep them from having to come back for the runoff when they might possibly have taken the time to learn about the remaining candidates, or just not count ANY of their votes? Either choice hardly seems democratic.

I have been curious about that - the Secretary who signed that letter wasn't even the secretary when IRV was used in Cary. She has no experience with IRV to know about the costs and transparency. The Chair has been pushing IRV for a long time, with some of his travels sponsored by FairVote (according to a statement he made at a legislative hearing in another state). He has made many less than accurate statements about the benefits of IRV, and has contradicted himself many times. It's just too bad that most members of the Fourth Estate haven't taken the time to check the facts before they coble up a story out of a press release.

Debra Goldberg, the secretary of the Wake BOE during the IRV pilot, totally backs up my claims. She was one of only 4 county election administrators in one county out of NC's 100 counties to have any direct experience tabulating IRV ballots. Her op-ed piece titled "Instant Runoff Voting is no solution, says election official who was there" can be found here: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880826043

There is nothing misleading about what I have posted. You weren’t even here to know what happened. There is no proof that the NC Legislature has any knowledge that IRV saved money, boosted turnout or was a success. There was no debate on those topics - they were asked at the very end of the legislative session to extend the pilot. And they only did so after first amending the extension by requiring that goals, standards and criteria for the implementation and evaluation of the pilot be developed consistent with NC election law - because there was A LOT of concern that the first pilot wasn't done accurately and/or lawfully. The new law states that if IRV can't be done consistent with our tough election laws - it won't be done.

And if there are some NC voters and editorial boards see IRV that way, it's not because they really know anything about what actually happened. They just happened to be hustled by the very well-funded IRV advocacy groups that spent tens of thousands of money and staff time into pushing IRV in NC with no verifiable way to determine if it worked or not. Taking a press release and turning it into a story or an op-ed piece, or publishing a ghost-written op-ed piece doesn't prove that IRV works.