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.

Op-ed from Asheville: IRV "is no solution, says election official who was there"

Finally - here is an op-ed piece from former Wake BOE member Debra Goldberg - who was on the BOE when Cary piloted IRV last year.

Thanks to the publishers and editors of the Asheville Citizen-Times for publishing something from an elections administrator with a verified voting point of view, and not the usual IRV "love letters".

The only way to really make sure that IRV is done right is not to cut the corners that were cut from the get-go with IRV. That is why the General Assembly decided to pass an IRV pilot extension without giving supporters the blank-check they have always wanted. Legislators required two things to extend the pilot: one - to require communities to approve participating in the pilot, and to require development of a voter and candidate education plan; and two - to require the development of goals, standards and criteria for implementation and evaluation of IRV that are consistent with NC election laws. It remains to be seen if IRV can be piloted according to the law, and should it be used even if it can be piloted according to the law.

A full debate on election reforms should take place before we make any changes to our election systems. We had such a full debate after the Carteret County fiasco, and the result was some new elections laws held up as a model across the nation and that got NC a number one rating on ensuring accurate vote counting by the non-profit Brennan Center. We need one of those debates and full oversight on our elections - they are too important to "wing it" with risky voting methods like IRV.

Chris Telesca

Instant Runoff Voting is no solution, says election official who was there

Debra Goldberg • published August 27, 2008 12:15 am

I was a Board of Elections official in Wake County during the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) pilot in Cary in October 2007. As one of only three officials in North Carolina to have administered an IRV runoff, I can tell you that John R. Hudson Jr.’s guest commentary, “Don’t be misled; N.C. has one of the best election systems in the country,” (AC-T, Aug. 14), contained incorrect claims about instant runoff voting in North Carolina and improperly discredited statements made by voting integrity activist Joyce McCloy.

Hudson states that the voting machines handled IRV well “in the two elections in which it was used.” Untrue — no machines have been used for counting instant runoff votes in North Carolina and cannot be used because no certified software exists that can count IRV votes. Furthermore, the Hendersonville election did not trigger an instant runoff. In Cary, in which one race triggered an instant runoff, the IRV votes were counted by hand. N.C. Board of Elections Voting Systems Manager Keith Long verified in writing that, “The EAC has not approved any software. There is no software available for the ES&S equipment to count IRV voting!” ES&S is the only voting machine manufacturer certified in North Carolina.

Many problems

The Cary election was only about 3,000 votes, yet the process was labor-intensive, difficult to monitor and observe and resulted in incorrect vote counts. The discrepancies were reconciled using hand recounting, done by staff members after the official count. These errors were not, as Hudson states, “easily spotted and quickly corrected.” I can’t imagine the onerous amount of time, resources, space and personnel that might be needed were we to hold an IRV election of any significant size, nor the numerous and potentially irreconcilable discrepancies a large IRV runoff would likely cause.

Hudson states, “North Carolina is known nationwide as one of the foremost election systems in the country” and attributes this to “being innovative, using cutting-edge equipment and thoroughly training our election staff and boards…”. I agree that N.C. is exemplary in many ways as it pertains to voting. I disagree as to the reasons. Cutting-edge equipment does not make for the best elections and creates opportunities for compromising voting integrity. This concern led Joyce McCloy and many other citizen activists to lobby the legislature to pass our voter integrity laws. As a result, N.C. now requires that every vote have a paper trail, in clear recognition of the fallibility and vulnerability of “cutting- edge equipment” used in voting.

Strong evidence refutes claims such as Hudson’s that “Voters in the two counties who had IRV in their city elections were overwhelmingly happy with it and had no trouble understanding it.” In the Cary IRV pilot, I can tell you that many voters left their backup choices blank, and that many other voters wrote in backup candidates with names such as “Mickey Mouse” and “Donald Duck.” This is direct evidence that many voters did not understand or accept IRV. Candidates involved in the IRV pilot in Cary have voiced doubts about the process.

Integrity of the process

Although many people, including some election officials, seem eager to embrace IRV, and some have been zealously vocal in their support of IRV, it is important to recognize that these same people often ignore and misconstrue the facts which are most important to those of us who are concerned, above all, with the integrity of each and every vote and with the confidence of all voters that their votes are counted fairly and accurately. It is important, when assessing the IRV issue to recognize these key points:

1. We cannot reasonably count IRV until we have certified software. Hand counting, as we must do now, consumes many man-hours and resources, and is error-prone.

2. The push to computerize IRV will surely result in pressure to weaken our exemplary certification requirements and standards.

3. There is no proof that IRV saves money. The costs for necessary machinery and software, increased voter assistance and voter education and other associated costs would, likely, negate cost savings from elimination of runoffs.

4. IRV violates a basic principle when dealing with masses of people — KISS — Keep It Simple …

We should resist IRV until straightforward, verifiable, reliable, auditable, certified systems are available to count IRV votes. Only then should we perform pilots while making sure that they are well documented and carefully evaluated. To responsibly address the issue of costly runoffs, let’s use our North Carolina “innovation” to come up with safe, trustworthy alternatives to IRV. North Carolina voters deserve the most accurate and reliable voting system available, without compromise, for any reason.

Debra D. Goldberg is a former member of the Wake County Board of Elections. She lives in Raleigh--

NC Voters - please sign this new petition!

Make sure to check out and sign my Petition to Support Election Integrity by waiting until we have legal procedures to pilot IRV in NC! at http://www.gopetition.com/online/20902.html

Actual Petition Language:

We the undersigned oppose any attempts by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, County Boards of Election, and any IRV advocacy groups to promote IRV and/or select communities to pilot IRV until goals, standards and criteria consistent with general election law are developed for implementation and evaluation of the IRV pilot program.

Action Alert - protect election integrity in NC by opposing IRV!

Here is a very important action item for election integrity in NC from Joyce McCloy with NC Verified Voting:

This is a CRITICAL action alert. Please share this message with anyone who cares about verified voting and wants to keep our Public Confidence in Elections Law intact.

We have voters from every background (liberal, conservative, disabled groups, minority groups) who agree they don't want their votes experimented with, they don't want more confusing ballots, and they don't want the paper ballot law compromised.

Take action now or be sorry later!

Rep Luebke has asked to have the IRV Pilot Program "extended" by adding it as an amendment to an existing election bill, S 1263. The excuse is that we need IRV so we won't have to spend money on expensive low turnout runoffs. But IRV is expensive! They don't tell lawmakers that.

The House Election Law Committee will be discussing Luebke's amendment on Wednesday, July 2 at 1:00 PM.

Please send an email to the House Election Law Committee and also cc your own lawmakers - its their job to protect their constituents. My email to lawmakers is lower down:

Melanieg@ncleg.net;Joek@ncleg.net;paull@ncleg.net;Deborahr@ncleg.net;Angelab@ncleg.net;Waltc@ncleg.net;Billcu@ncleg.net;Susanf@ncleg.net;Priceyh@ncleg.net;Georgeho@ncleg.net;Carolynju@ncleg.net;Davidl@ncleg.net;Grierm@ncleg.net;Mickeym@ncleg.net;Pauls@ncleg.net;Edgars@ncleg.net

verlai@ncleg.net; elliek@ncleg.net;

Chairman Rep. Goodwin
Vice Chairman Rep. Kiser
Vice Chairman Rep. Luebke
Vice Chairman Rep. Ross
Members Rep. Bryant, Rep. Church, Rep. Current,
Rep. Fisher, Rep. Harrison, Rep. Holmes,
Rep. Justice, Rep. Lewis, Rep. Martin,
Rep. Michaux, Rep. Stam, Rep. Starnes

Subject: S 1263-say no to IRV pilot

Please say no to adding an IRV pilot to S 1263 or any other bill.

No more Instant Runoff Experiments. Our votes are too precious.

We are told that Rep Luebke will ask to amend SB 1263 to extend the Pilot Program for Instant Runoffs.
The title of the bill is "Election Law Amendments" and is here:
http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007++&BillID=sb+1263

If you recall, the previous pilot allowed for 10 cities in 2007 and 10 counties in 2008 to participate. Two cities, Cary and Hendersonville
participated, and no counties volunteered. The pilot expired. The people have spoken!

Cary was a disaster: besides the miscounting of the ballots, the provisional votes were not counted until after the "instant runoff"
was run. I don't know how you can "add back in" the provisional ballots after counting all three rounds of votes, do you?
In a inner office memo, the State Board of Elections admitted that IRV was too dangerous to try during the May 2008 primary.

In addition to the obvious problems with Instant Runoff (IRV) including that our machines can't handle it, many of our standards for voting systems
and vendors would be have to be lowered to allow this experimental voting system. Recounts and auditing elections are exponentially more complex
with IRV as well.

If the state is anxious to end statewide runoffs, then they could easily abolish them and join about 42 other states who do not have statewide runoffs.

The fact is that IRV is a well intentioned idea that produces unintended consequences, and fails to deliver as promised. It does not save money, is confusing and violates the KISS principle of elections (Keep it Simple). If we had a parlimentary system where you just voted for the party, and not mulitiple individuals for office, it might make sense.

Let some other state work out the many problems with IRV implimentation and voter education.

Why does North Carolina have primary runoffs? Most states don't
http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/runoffelections.html

Kentucky repealed its provision to hold gubernatorial primary runoff elections in April 2008.
http://migration.kentucky.gov/Newsroom/sos/article162.htm

IRV disenfranchises everyone. Remember the long time voter in Hendersonville:

Oct 19, 2007 Voter finds new system frustrating By Harrison Metzger Times-News.

Hendersonville: Bill Modlin wasn't happy with his first experience with the new "instant runoff" voting when he cast his

ballot for Hendersonville City Council on Thursday. ..."It doesn't make any sense to me, and I can guarantee you because

of the way they have it set up there are people in this town that are going to lose their vote," he said. ...

"I call it instant confusion," he said. (Cached) Blue Ridge Now Oct 19.

http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/IRV_Oct_19_Voter_finds_new_system_frustrating.pdf

North Carolina, Instant Runoff Voting and the Flying Car
http://irvbad4nc.blogspot.com/2008/06/north-carolina-and-instant-runoff.html

Instant Runoff was a disaster in Cary North Carolina
http://irvbad4nc.blogspot.com/2008/06/instant-runoff-was-disaster-in-cary.html

On May 6, 15,000 ballots in Wake County and 2,500 in Mecklenburg County were double counted,[1] and 4,000 were omitted in Onslow County.[2]

[1]May 8, 2008 Mecklenburg, Wake find vote flaws News 14 Carolina, NC

http://news14.com/content/top_stories/595595/mecklenburg--wake-find-vote-flaws/Default.aspx

[2] May 9, 2008 Thousands of votes missed in Tuesday tallies Jacksonville Daily News, NC

http://www.jdnews.com/news/votes_56535___article.html/board_onslow.html