This new blog is the latest IRV con job!

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

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

IRV Factcheck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latest IRV con in NC!

As I worked the polling places on May 4, I wondered how many races were going to require a runoff. I also wondered how long it would take before some folks would be pushing Instant Runoff Voting again.

Sure enough, one of my precinct voters told me that he heard DemocracyNC's Bob Hall talking about IRV on WUNC radio. I will find the link soon.

But sure enough, the first of what I assume will be many letters to the editor pushing IRV in very simplistic terms came out today - from Adam Sotak of DemocracyNC:

As your May 6 article noted, a high-cost, low-turnout statewide runoff is on the horizon. I remember one of these runoffs a few years back at which I was only the fifth person in my precinct to vote - and that was at 6:30 p.m.! There's got to be a better way. In fact, there is.

Instant runoff voting provides a cost-effective and simple solution. Voters go to the polls and rank their choices for an office: 1, 2, 3. (Nobody has to rank more candidates than he wants to.) In the first round of counting, only the first choices are tallied. A candidate who gets the prescribed threshold of first-choice votes (in this case 40 percent) is declared the winner.

If a virtual runoff is needed, all candidates except the top two vote-getters are eliminated, just as in the current system. If your first choice is in the runoff, your vote stays with that candidate. If your first choice was cut, your vote goes to the runoff candidate you ranked best. The candidate with the most votes wins.

Some cities in North Carolina have already successfully used IRV. It's time to expand this idea for statewide races.

Mr. Sotak is wrong when he states that IRV provides a cost-effective and simple solution to runoff elections. And now there is a new phrase to describe IRV - "Virtual runoff". That's a good idea, because you aren't having a real runoff. Nor does IRV give you a real majority.

IRV advocates would have you believe that having one election is always cheaper than having a traditional election and a runoff. That's not quite true. If you wanted to do IRV in NC, you would need entirely new voting systems because our current machines won't handle IRV without some serious jury rigging that makes our elections less transparent and verifiable. And our own State Board of Elections stated that IRV was too risky to use in the 2008 primary elections because they couldn't be made to comply with state and federal election regulations. So what's changed now, other than wanting to take short-cuts?

Voter would need voter education for the complex and sometimes confusing IRV method each and every year. That's not cheap. Other states have done fiscal studies of IRV and they have found that IRV would be a more costly voting method than having runoff elections. The Maryland legislature studied IRV twice and both times found it to be more expensive. If you took their cost and applied them to NC, it would cost us $18 million to implement and $4 million each and every year for voter education. All that just to save $3 million this year - and you'd never end up saving money with IRV!.

With more than 3 candidates in an IRV race, there's a chance that a voter wouldn't vote for a candidate who made it to the final count. So that voter's votes wouldn't help any of their candidates. And in an IRV race, the top finisher in the first round has a greater than 90% chance to win any subsequent round. So all IRV does is delay the inevitable. In a traditional runoff election, the second-place finisher in the first round goes on to beat the first-place winner 33% of the time. So Cal Cunningham would be more likely to lose with IRV than in a traditional runoff election, where voters would have a real chance to make another choice, based on any number of factors: endorsements from opponents in the primary, new information that comes out, more debates - all things that voters DON'T know about with IRV. IRV is hardly as democratic as a real runoff - even Roberts Rules of Order favors traditional runoff elections over IRV - or what they call "Preferential voting".

And it turns out that in over 90% of IRV elections that are settled beyond the first round, the "winner" doesn't even get as many votes as they would need to win the first round. That happened in Cary in 2007, where a winner was declared with only 1401 out of 3022 votes. Hardly the 1512 votes they would have needed in the first round. And there were many problems with IRV that one single time that we used it to count those 2nd and 3rd column votes!

Furthermore, IRV is only allowed in a limited number of cities per year as part of an election pilot. Only 2 cities used IRV in 2007 - Cary and Hendersonville. Cary Town leaders didn't like the confusion caused by the problems counting the 3022 IRV ballots, and didn't want to be lab rats in 2009. Hendersonville voters ranked their choices on IRV ballots in 2007 and 2009, but voters lucked out - winners were determined in the first round, sparing voters, candidates and election officials the fun of counting ranked votes from DRE touchscreen voting machines and then transferring them over to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for the final tally - a method that is not only not very transparent, but most likely untested for accuracy and is definitely uncertified.

There would be no way to count these votes in a statewide election without hauling all the ballots to Raleigh to have them counted. And even if there was, in a big primary election like we had in 2008, it would have taken so long to count the ranked votes that the results wouldn't have been tallied until AFTER the results of the traditional runoff election was known, So much for IRV being instant.

And many other places that got talked into using IRV are dumping it, some after only one try:

• Aspen, CO (where there is now a criminal investigation as to whether some election laws were broken in order to do IRV in Aspen, including the illegal certification of the election by a private company that didn't have the power to certify an election);
• Burlington, VT where more people voted to dump IRV than voted to pass it a few years before;
• Pierce County, WA - where 63% of voters didn't like IRV and the costs for IRV were HALF of the county election budget.

I talked to other poll greeters for Republican candidates about the possibility of runoffs in their races, and told them to watch out for people pushing IRV. When I described how IRV works, and told them about my experiences observing the 2007 Cary IRV election and vote counting, they shook their heads in wonder - and heard more than one person say that this sounded like a con game. IRV doesn't work and it has many more problems than our current methods.

Brad Friedman - the well-respected blogger and election expert - wrote that IRV stands for "Instant Runoff Virus" I call it "Instant Runoff Voodoo"!

It's ENRON vote counting, and we don't need it here in NC.

IRV on the ballot AGAIN - and on the RUN - in Aspen!

Months after FairVote's Rob Ritchie and other IRV advocates crowed about how well IRV worked in various elections, IRV is on the run in Aspen. Let this be a lesson to all those other communities that are thinking about IRV/RCV - it's not easy for voters to understand, cheap, simple to administer.

Quite simply - it doesn't increase the public confidence in the election process.

Aspen voters to vote on how they vote — again

Carolyn SackariasonThe Aspen Times

Aspen, CO Colorado

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

ASPEN — Aspen voters will be asked this November if they liked the way they voted this past May for mayor and City Council members, which involved Instant Runoff Voting — or if there should be a different kind of election all together.

The Aspen City Council on Tuesday agreed to put an advisory question to voters on the fall ballot on whether the IRV election method — a system never tried before in Aspen until this past May — should be scrapped or kept in place.

If the majority of voters want to do away with IRV, the council will have to explore alternatives, which could include going back to the previous method of the mayor getting 50 percent plus one of the vote, and council members getting 45 percent plus one of the vote. If candidates don't reach that threshold, a runoff election would be held in June as it's been done in the past. Another option could be winner take all, with no majority needed, which was done many years ago in Aspen municipal elections.

Some council members said they didn't have enough confidence in, or an understanding of, the IRV process. As a result, it has opened the city up for liability and voter confusion.

While listening to the nuances of the complex IRV system and the problems associated with tabulating votes, Councilman Steve Skadron questioned whether he understood the process well enough to make an informed decision on choosing the best tabulation method. And if he didn't understand, did the voters? he asked rhetorically.

“This is a level of detail here that I am not connecting,” Skadron said, adding that because different IRV tabulation methods can produce different outcomes, there is a level of subjectivity in analyzing the results. “I'm not confident in this system.”

That's despite City Clerk Kathryn Koch and the city's special counsel, Jim True, telling the council that the IRV method used this past May worked exactly as it was designed to, and closely mimicked the runoff system that voters had been accustomed to. Koch and True, who spent hundreds of hours researching and devising Aspen's system, recommended IRV be used in the 2011 municipal election.

However, True said public education could be improved upon because many voters didn't know how to rank their candidates, or didn't rank all of them, thus reducing their chances to participate in an instant runoff.

“A lot of lessons were learned on those types of issues,” True told the council. “They will only be improved upon.”

Other council members said they think a runoff election with fewer candidates in June after the May vote gives voters a chance to learn more about their choices and the issues confronting the city.

“I've been anti-IRV for a long time,” said Councilman Torre. “The extra month of campaigning gives the voter a chance to figure out the make-up and representation on the board.”

Councilman Dwayne Romero agreed, saying the day after the May 5 election, he had an empty feeling because the results were final and there wasn't enough discourse among candidates to fully understand them or their positions. Another month of campaigning would have satisfied that, he added.

“A lot of people have come up to me and said they also missed out on that discourse,” Romero said.

The majority of Aspen residents in November 2007 voted to adopt the IRV election method in an effort to save time, money and energy that comes with a second election a month after the municipal vote was counted.

Aspen resident Don Davidson said he doesn't think IRV worked as it was intended to, nor did he have a chance to fully grasp candidates' positions.

“A lot of people, including myself, didn't understand the intricacies of IRV when we were voting for it,” he said. “And I wasn't able to get enough information on the candidates ... I viewed the [May election] as a primary and [another month] to have the issues discussed more in-depth.”

After a specific IRV method — the first of its kind in the United States because it incorporated multiple candidates for multiple seats — was chosen by an election committee made up of city staff and citizens, the council adopted it.

But IRV critics and City Hall observers decried the process in which IRV was administered and the lack of a full-blown audit of the results.

Election commissioner Elizabeth Milias said the election commission that oversaw the IRV process, which included local attorney Chris Bryan, didn't certify the May 5 results because they didn't have confidence in the security and stewardship of the ballots, as well as the auditing and testing of the tabulation system.

“It was squirrely at best,” Milias said.

Their questions and criticisms have raised enough doubt among some council members that they want voters to decide whether IRV should continue as the official election method in Aspen.

“I think the voters should have a crack at voting on this again,” said Mayor Mick Ireland.

True and Koch will craft draft ballot language and bring it back to the council for consideration. The deadline to place a measure on the November ballot is Aug. 24.

If the majority of Aspen residents decide to do away with IRV, the council will have to choose an alternate election system and present that to voters, which would require a change to the city charter. That could occur in the November 2010 election.

Torre and Ireland voiced support for moving the municipal election to June, when more residents are back in town from their offseason excursions. That also would require a public vote. Ireland noted that the mayor's seat should be a four-year term instead of two, which also could be put to voters in the future.

csack@aspentimes.com

Why not change the charter to have municipal elections occur during June with runoffs in July? It seems that more people are in Aspen during that time of the year? Or take place in November with December runoffs?

It seems like the cure to low voter turnout is to hold elections when more people want to vote or usually vote.

IRV advocates are a bunch of bitchy little girls!

I guess if Rob Richie can compare IRV to American Idol, I can compare IRV advocates to "Burn Notice".

"Burn Notice", airing on the USA Network, stars Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, and Bruce Campbell. Bruce Campbell has been one of my favorite actors since playing Ashley J. "Ash" Williams in the cult classic "Army of Darkness". On "Burn Notice", Campbell portrays Sam Axe, a former Navy SEAL now working as an unlicensed private investigator and sometime mercenary with his old friend Michael Westen, the show's main character.

You can see what a charming character Sam is in the opening intro to the show on USA (can't find a clip on youtube or USA for it). Sam is drinking a beer and complaining about spies: "You know spies. Bunch of bitchy little girls" Which could also describe how some IRV advocates have been acting lately, based on their latest posts.

When Brad Freidman wrote last month that Instant Runoff Voting was a virus attacking Los Angeles, I blogged that this was probably, in the words of Churchill, the "end of the beginning" for IRV. And rightly so. Already IRV is under assault in the very places that FairVote has been citing as shining examples of where IRV is in use and works - even if they haven't fully used IRV to both cast AND count votes.

Cary NC is not going to use IRV in their 2009 election. Fayetteville NC is also not going to use IRV this year. And there is a good chance that Hendersonville NC voters won't even need to rank choices this year - so no IRV there either. They would be like Takoma Park - where there either aren't enough choices on the ballot to rank, or they get a majority winner in the first round and don't need to use the complicated and confusing counting method.

There is movement in the communities of Aspen CO, Burlington VT and Pierce County WA to get rid of IRV. And now word is coming that San Francisco is thinking about getting rid of IRV. A different version of IRV called Single Transferable Voting was soundly rejected by voters in a British Columbia referendum.

IRV advocates are not happy about this. From what I am seeing, resources are being re-routed all around the country to do two things:

• to fight to keep IRV in places where it has been used and failed; and
• to add more places that will use IRV by pointing to alleged successes where it has been used in the past.
  

I have it on good authority that FairVoteNC has no more paid staff - it's an all volunteer outfit now!

This presents big problems for IRV advocates like Rob Richie of FairVote. They are trying to sell IRV in Los Angeles - which would be the biggest jurisdiction to use IRV. But IRV presents big problems in a place like Los Angeles with a million voters or more. They use inkavote machines that have many problems with them, so LA would most likely have to buy new voting machines. Problem is, there is no federally certified voting systems that do IRV.

LA could go with the same Sequoia machines they use in San Francisco, but that presents problems because those machines probably won't be around much longer under the new Holt paper ballot bill recently introduced in Congress. So buying Sequoia machines now would be a big waste of money that LA can't afford to waste just to do IRV.

Frisco has a couple of official languages they print up ballots for - LA has somewhere around 8 or 10, and lots of literacy issues. From talking with election officials in LA, they really don't want to spend the money on IRV all the time when they might not have a runoff in every office. LA City has their city primary in March, and their general election in May - when there are other county wide elections in November. They could save a lot of money and increase turnout merely by syncing their city elections with the rest of the county and do without IRV.

So IRV advocates like Rob Richie and others are out there doing damage control. But what they write and how they write it makes them sound - in the words of Sam Axe - like a bunch of bitchy little girls.

Rob Richie's latest "huff piece" in the Huffington Post claims that all IRV opponents are special interests that are opposed to electoral reform. This of course implies that all IRV advocates are shining knights on white chargers of electoral reform opposing the black knights of special interest, and that IRV opponents can only win by "cheating" (coming up with loads of special interest money for runoff elections if needed). Of course, Richie's "huff pieces" on IRV don't allow for anyone to comment one way or the other. Perhaps because he doesn't want anyone who reads his stuff to see there is another side to the issue?

Of course Rob has to take the relative high road by calling us "special interests" - he leaves the petty name-calling to others. We are not "special interest" - we are verified voting advocates who work hard to protect election integrity. At "the end of the beginning", all that hard work is starting to pay off by getting more and more people to see how IRV threatens election integrity. And it's starting to get to IRV supporters a little further down the totem pole from Rob Richie. They are calling us "haters", as if to imply that we hate IRV and all other election reforms.

That is not true. I am not a tool of the special interests and I don't "hate" IRV. I am verified voting advocate who "loves" election simple, transparent voting who works hard to protect election integrity.

One thing you can say about verified voting advocates is that we "trust, but verify". Which is what gives IRV advocates fits. We don't automatically assume that IRV is the election reform Rob and others claim that it is, or that it does all the things he claims it does. Hell - I don't automatically trust each and everything that other verified voting activists claim either. And we do the same for Rob Richie - we try to verify the claims Rob and others make. And if we can't verify the claims time and time again, it's hard to be able to trust the people or organizations making the claims.

But IRV advocate Anthony "Doe" Lorenzo really takes the cake. This is where the "bitchy little girl" part comes in. In the electionreform yahoo group, Anthony wrote that everyone who advocates for IRV is a third-party/independent voter who work passionately for electoral reform through IRV and/or proportional representation, and that all IRV opponents in verified voting are Democrats who align themselves with special interests. He also wrote that verified voting advocates who don't like IRV "hate" IRV advocates because they are better organized than verified voting advocates. You can almost imagine himself hyperventilating himself into a hissy fit as he wrote that part.

Then he wrote about why Rob supports IRV - apparently it was because his daddy worked on a campaign for proportional representation in OH back in the early 90s that failed. Anthony claims that in this campaign, Rob and his wife had to sleep on couches in other people's houses. Apparently, these and other negative experiences so scarred Rob Richie and turned him into the "one trick pony" advocate who works IRV into every single thing he writes - including obituaries for John Gideon. Rob's carrying on his daddy's work! While that might be a wonderful story for some people, I still remember that we are in Iraq because George W. Bush wanted to finish what his daddy started in the early 90s during the first Iraq War. Sounds like "daddy issues" to me. And I thought only the women I dated in my late 20's had those problems! ;-)

So it makes me wonder is Rob Richie's passion for IRV and the whole FairyTaleVote agenda is because he really feels it's an election reform, or is it because Rob has "daddy issues" and needs to avenge his father's failure to get proportional representation in Cincinatti in 1991 (apparently it failed in 2008 also). If something isn't a real election reform, having a second generation family member doing it doesn't make it any more worthwhile. I don't hate IRV supporters. But reading these written hissy fits and being called names on line makes me pity them all the more.

It can't be easy getting your asses kicked by an all volunteer group of IRV opponents - so call us "special interests" and even "haters" and have a good cry if it makes you feel better!

Instant Runoff Virus hides campaign cash!

Well I have to admit that I was wrong about Minneapolis doing proper due-diligence on IRV before they pushed it. Here's a story where even IRV supporters say that they made a mistake. So if there is any effect of big money in this election - we won't know about it until late October - just before voters head to the polls.

http://www.startribune.com/local/47110062.html?elr=KArks:DCiUBcy7hUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

Run-off voting delays finance disclosure

Voters for Minneapolis City Council won't find out who's contributing what until November.

By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune

Last update: June 6, 2009 - 7:37 PM

Minneapolis elections are likely to unfold this year with less campaign finance disclosure than voters have seen in decades.

That's because the city's planned instant-runoff voting method doesn't use a primary election. That means candidates won't have to file the usual pre-primary report around Labor Day showing who has contributed to their campaigns.

So most election-year contributions won't be disclosed until late October, just before voters head to the polls.

"This is probably a big 'oops' for everybody who was pushing on instant-runoff voting because what you're going to lose is the information of knowing who the political contributors are," said David Schultz, who teaches government ethics and election law at Hamline University.

"That's valuable information because it tells you something about who's trying to influence the campaign, but more importantly contributors might tell you where candidates stand on the issues. You lose valuable clues or cues."

Candidates have been required to disclose their campaign contributors in Minneapolis since the early 1970s, according to Lyall Schwarzkopf, a retired city clerk. The law has required such reports be filed 10 days before the primary and general elections.

Former Council Member Tony Scallon said early reports can provide grist for campaign debates. He recalled a campaign in which he highlighted how much bar owners seeking to defeat Scallon were giving his opponent's campaign, and his opponent called attention to developer contributions to Scallon.

"I think it's important to have as early a read as possible on where the candidates are coming from, where their war chests are coming from," said Pat Scott, another former council member.

Council Member Cam Gordon, an instant-runoff supporter, called the reduced reporting "very unfortunate. It's something that I didn't anticipate." Gordon said that he already has been laying groundwork to propose more frequent reporting of campaign spending and that smaller contributions be reported.

"Having a report in September would be a great thing for voters so they can see who's donating," he said. But the council's Election Committee chair, Elizabeth Glidden, said so far she doesn't have a strong opinion about restoring a mid-election report.

Like other council members, she's expecting a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling soon on a constitutional challenge to instant-runoff voting, in which voters rank up to three candidates for a seat in the order they prefer them. The second and third choices come into play only if the leading candidate fails to reach a majority in a race for a single seat, or the required fraction of votes in multi-seat races.

Meanwhile, the city is developing backup plans to return to traditional elections in case the new method is struck down.

The opinion that without a primary no pre-primary reports are legally required came from the Hennepin County attorney's office because Minneapolis campaign reports are filed with the county. But County Attorney Mike Freeman said although that's the law, he personally thinks more disclosure would be better.

Now this is funny in a way. Because the IRV advocates tell us that IRV removes the effect of big money from campaigns. At least that is what they want us to believe. Here is yet another example of how IRV is supposed to do one thing that benefits the voters (makes big money less effective) and yet does something entirely different (hides campaign cash and makes campaign finance less transparent and more opaque).

So now there is even less information for voters to use to determine who they should vote for first, second and third - compounding the original problems with IRV.

When does IRV go from being a mere virus to become an election pandemic? Then it would be "Instant Runoff Pandemic" - nah, "Instant Runoff Virus" rolls off the tongue better.

Instant Runoff Virus errors found in Aspen vote totals

They incorrectly used Cambridge voting rules and software in Aspen. This is one of the main reasons why you can't successfully pull off voting on the cheap with IRV using uncertified software without making sure that all the rules are followed.

It took two weeks to detect these problems. But what about the fact that TrueBallot was allowed to use the wrong software for the job? How come no one in Aspen made sure the correct software was being used before hand?

They only had 2544 ballots to recount. If this happened in a larger county with over 60 times the number of ballots - like Wake County with over 150K ballots in the May 2008 primary election - it would have taken 60 times two weeks - or 120 weeks - or 2.5 years to do the same sort of audit.

But it is interesting that here in Wake County, they did the IRV "audit" which amounted to a non-public recounting of approximately 3000 ballots in one day.

That is why IRV is too complex to be practical for use in all but the smallest elections, where you can either spend two weeks trying to make things appear as though they worked out, or you can just do it in your locked office.

But even the smallest local races deserve just as much election integrity as larger races. Even more so, because our local races are the ones where we have the most potential to interact with our elected leaders. Yet these are precisely the elections most vulnerable to the "Instant Runoff Virus".
What about the Council races - including the one where they had two candidates left and no one crossed the threshold? Where did they pull the votes for the winning candidate from?

Chris Telesca

Last-minute note - Just got this from Marilyn Marks:

the “recount” was not an official recount, and it is uncertain as to whether it will be certified. Seems like a political stunt for the mayor.

But it was not a hand count. Done with the True Ballot digital data and software.

The data was not found (?) or disclosed until after the period for recount had expired.

So, more votes would not necessarily have made for a longer counting process.

Interesting that they went to the trouble to just sort through the data and software only after the period for the recount had expired. Had the race not been certified, someone could have challenged the results of the race and demanded a fill hand-to-eye recount of all the ballots.

That would have been fun - because unless you can set up a hand-sort that can do an accurate sort and the results can agree - you don't have a way to really audit the race.


http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20090529/NEWS/905299981/1077&ParentProfile=1058

Ireland wins Aspen mayoral race again

Error found in instant runoff tally, giving opponent Marks 16 fewer votes

Carolyn Sackariason
The Aspen Times
Aspen, CO Colorado,

ASPEN — Due to a computer software error, it turns out Mick Ireland won the Aspen mayoral seat on May 5 by a larger margin than originally reported.

City staff recently learned of the error in the tabulation of the final-round vote totals for mayor. However, the error had no effect on the outcome of the race, according to city officials.

Instead of Ireland defeating opponent Marilyn Marks by a vote of 1,273 to 1,140 (52.8 percent to 47.2 percent) as earlier reported, he actually won by a margin of 1,301 to 1,124 (53.6 percent to 46.4 percent).

In the mayor’s race, the threshold necessary to be sure of a victory was 1,273, which is 50 percent plus one of the 2,544 ballots cast. When Ireland reached 1,273 after LJ Erspamer was eliminated in the final round of counting, he was guaranteed to win.

The software stopped counting any additional votes for him. However, any ballots ranking Marks after Ireland were added to her final round totals.

Ireland ultimately received 28 votes beyond the threshold of 1,273. Sixteen of them had been counted for Marks, and 12 had been deemed “exhausted” because they did not rank Marks.

“City staff has been working to audit the instant runoff process, and the tabulation error was recently discovered by TrueBallot, the company hired by the city to perform the election,” said City Clerk Kathryn Koch. “The error arose because the voting software was originally written to support the ‘ranked choice’ form of elections used in Cambridge, Mass. Following Cambridge rules, the software prevented a candidate who had reached the winning threshold from receiving any more votes.”

Vote totals in all other rounds of the mayor’s instant runoff voting tally and in all rounds of the two council tallies were unchanged. The error did not occur in either of the council tallies.

“The fact that this error was detectable using election data we made available to the public validates our approach to election transparency and integrity,” Koch said.

Two days after the election, city officials and members of the public conducted an audit that involved randomly selecting 10 percent of the ballots and double-checking that the rankings corresponded to the electronic records.

The second step was to manually verify that every ranking was tallied correctly for mayor and council, which was conducted by TrueBallot.

Marks, who has been a critic of instant runoff voting well before it was implemented, said she thinks the testing of the system was inadequate leading up to the election.

“I am thrilled that there is some post-election auditing going on,” she said. “This demonstrated that it needed to be done.

“I hope that the results they’ve found will encourage them to do further work and tests.”

TrueBallot did the manual verification as part of their standard post-election services.

“We were able to audit and document this election more completely than any other public election that we have held,” Koch said, adding members of the public can view the data files that rank the candidates, as well as other election data public like TrueBallot’s 72-page spreadsheet that provides analysis of the results.

The election results are summarized on the city’s website at www.aspenpitkin.com/depts/38/.

The Aspen City Council has committed to reviewing instant runoff voting and its procedures at a public meeting to be scheduled sometime this summer.

Koch said she decided to make the error public by distributing a press release since the election data is available for public review. She added that to her knowledge, there are no other discrepancies with the instant runoff voting system or the election results.

“I’m confident we got the most correct answer,” she said.

csack@aspentimes.com