Natl Elections Expert: Instant Runoff Voting marred with flaws

http://fairvote.org/?page=748

"jump in where you can and hang on"
Briscoe Darling to Sheriff Andy

Verla Insko seemed to think that a resolution against IRV invalidated the wonderful law that she and Ellie Kinnaird shepherded thru the legislature a year or so ago.

I don't understand why.

It seems to me that if IRV uses paper ballots - it can, can't it? - then the votes can be verified and fraud reduced.

I will study your post because I'll have another chance to vote on this issue at the state Democratic convention in two weeks.

Meanwhile, if you have a simpler explanation of the problems involved, please post it.

Thanks,
ge

Besta é tu se você não viver nesse mundo
http://george.entenman.name

Just so everyone knows, I am on the board of Fairvote-NC and Democracy NC.

From: Terry Bouricius

De-Bunking Kathy Dopp's "15 Flaws" of Instant Runoff Voting

1. Dopp: "Does not solve the "spoiler" problem except in special cases…."

Dopp has her “special cases” reversed. In fact, IRV solves the spoiler problem in virtually all likely U.S. partisan elections. Whenever a third party or independent candidate is unlikely to be one of the top vote-getters (true in over 99% of U.S. elections), IRV eliminates the spoiler problem completely. If a third party grows to the point that its candidates out-poll major party candidates, another issue that is related to the spoiler problem, can occasionally arise. This is where supporters of a third party candidate may worry that by supporting their favorite candidate, they risk causing their less-preferred compromise choice to be eliminated from the final runoff, leading to the election of their least-preferred choice. In other words, the issue of whether to vote for your favorite choice, or to rank your compromise choice first can resurface in this unique circumstance. But this is extremely rare and no different than a candidate in a party’s political primary arguing “Vote for me because I am more electable in the general election.”

2. Dopp: “Requires centralized vote counting procedures at the state-level…"

IRV creates no need to centralize the counting or the ballots themselves, although that is one possible counting procedure -- and indeed a central count is often sensible for smaller jurisdictions. But all that is required to implement IRV is central coordination of the tally. If ballot images are recorded on optical scan equipment, the data from those images can be collected centrally for an IRV ballot. If a hand-count is conducted, vote totals need to be reported to a central tallying office in order to determine what step to take next in the count. In Ireland, for example, there are 43 counting centers in the presidential race. Election administrators count ballots and report their totals to a national office that in turn instructs the administrators at each counting center on what to do next. The entire process takes less than a day even though more than a million ballots are cast.

3. Dopp: “Encourages the use of complex voting systems and …[FairVote promotes] electronic-balloting…”

Most government IRV elections are in fact conducted with hand-count paper ballots, including national elections in Australia, Ireland and Papua New Guinea. FairVote is a leading advocacy organization for IRV, but it is joined by numerous other organizations and individuals, including the founders of TrueVote Maryland and election integrity leader David Cobb and Anthony Lorenzo.

As to FairVote, it advocates the replacement of all paperless voting machines with paper-ballot systems, such as optical scanners. All three of the major voting machine vendors have created optical scan options for ranked-choice ballots. Not all of these are ideal (some, for example, cannot handle more than three rankings), but FairVote expects IRV elections to be overwhelming run on paper ballot systems in the future. FairVote advocates that all such machines store a redundant electronic record of each ballot, as well as a paper ballot to allow for better fraud detection, and simplify ranked ballot tabulations. Rather than making such elections more complicated, this would simplify the process, while improving transparency and integrity.

4. Dopp: “Confuses voters…”

All the evidence shows that voters are not confused by IRV. The rate of spoiled ballots did not increase in any of the U.S. cities when they switched to IRV. Burlington, Vermont used IRV for the first time in a hotly contested race for mayor in 2006, for example, among those casting votes in the IRV race fully 99.9% of ballots were valid, with the very highest valid ballot rate in the ward in town with the highest number of low-income voters. San Francisco’s rate of valid ballots in the most closely contested race in its first citywide election with IRV was 99.6%. Furthermore, exit polls have been conducted in every city having an IRV election for the first time in the modern era. Each survey shows that voters overwhelmingly prefer IRV to their old method of elections.

5. Dopp: “Confusing, complex and time-consuming to implement and to count…”

IRV certainly is simpler for election officials and voters than conducting a whole separate runoff election to find a majority winner. It is more complicated to administer than a single vote-for-one election, but election officials have adjusted well to their new responsibilities. Note that the winning threshold for an IRV election, as with any election, must be specified in the law.

6. Dopp: “Makes post election data and exit poll analysis much more difficult to perform…”

To date, IRV election can make it easier to do post-election and exit poll analysis. Because optical scan counts with IRV require capturing of ballot images, San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT) were able to release the data files showing every single ballot's set of rankings – thereby allowing any voter to do a recount and full analysis on their own.

Exit polls can be done just as well under IRV rules as vote-for-one rules. California requires a manual audit in its elections, which has been done without difficulty in San Francisco’s IRV elections. Manual audits should be required for all elections, regardless of whether IRV is used or not.

7. Dopp: “Difficult and time-consuming to manually count…”

Manual counts can take slightly longer than vote-for-one elections, but aren't difficult, unless many different races on a ballot need to go to a runoff count. As cited earlier, Irish election administrators can count more than a million ballots by hand in hotly contested presidential elections in one standard workday.

8. Dopp: “Difficult and inefficient to manually audit. …”

IRV can be manually audited just as well as vote-for-one elections, although it does take more effort (since voters must be allowed to express more information on their ballot). A manual audit can either be done using a random sample of ballots from all jurisdictions, or a random sample of ballots from a random sample of voting machines, or by a complete re-tally from a random sample of voting machines. A complete re-tally of all ballots (a recount) is, of course, possible but unnecessary unless a court recount is ordered.

9. Dopp: “Could necessitate counting all presidential votes in Washington, D.C.. …”

If the Electoral College were abolished and IRV were then adopted for future national popular vote elections for president, there would need to be national coordination of the tally in order to know which candidates got the fewest votes nationwide and needed to be eliminated – just as in Ireland. But the actual counting of ballots does not need to be federalized any more than if IRV was not used, and could be conducted by counties, states or whatever level is easiest and most secure for that jurisdiction. Note that voters certainly would be pleased to have a majority winner in elections for our highest office.

10. Dopp: “IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system …”

IRV neither "entrenches" nor "overthrows" the two-party system. It simply ensures no candidate wins over majority opposition. If a minor party has the support to earn a majority of vote, it can win in an IRV election. If not, it will not win.

IRV is a winner-take-all method, like plurality voting and two-round runoffs. However, IRV allows independents and candidates with minor parties to run without being labeled as spoilers. This may reveal a higher level of support for these parties, and if these parties are attractive to voters, their support may grow.

Relating to multi-party representation, any winner-take-all, single seat election method tends towards two dominant parties, at least in any given geographic area. To allow for multiple parties to regularly win office, jurisdictions should adopt a form of proportional representation in which candidates will be able to win office with less than 50% of the vote.

Note that Australia’s IRV elections are often cited as an example of two-party domination. But while the two major parties (one of which is divided into two parties, with one party running in one particular region of the country) dominant representation, the minor parties contest elections very vigorously, with an average of seven candidates contesting house elections in 2007. That year the Green Party did not win any seats in house elections, but it ran candidates in every district and earned 8% of the national vote. It naturally would prefer a proportional representation system, but supports IRV over alternate winner-take-all systems and uses it to elect its internal leaders.

11. Dopp: "Could deliver unreasonable outcomes…."

Unreasonable outcomes are less likely with IRV than with any other single-seat voting method in use today. Every single voting method ever proposed can deliver "unreasonable outcomes" in some scenarios, but real-world experience has shown IRV to be better than most. The overwhelming number of election method experts agree that IRV is fairer and more democratic than plurality voting even if some might prefer other voting methods. The American Political Science Association (the national association of political science professors) has incorporated IRV into their own constitution for electing their own national president. Robert’s Rules of Order recommends IRV over plurality voting.

12. Dopp: “Not all ballots are treated equally…”

This charge reveals a lack of understanding of how IRV works. All ballots are treated equally. Every one has one and only one vote in each round of counting. Just as in a traditional runoff, your ballot counts first for your favorite candidate and continues to count for that candidate as long as he or she has a chance to win.

Your rankings should be considered as backup choices. Your ballot will only count for one of your lesser preferences if your favorite candidate has been eliminate. Every ballot counts as one vote for your highest ranked candidate who is still in the running in every round of counting.

Note that courts have upheld IRV for this very reason and Robert’s Rules of Order recommends it over plurality voting. For quotations from a court decision upholding IRV's equal treatment of ballots, please see <1> below.

13. Dopp: “Costly. …”

The two main expenses associated with the transition to IRV are voting equipment upgrades and voter education. Both of these are one-time costs that will be quickly balanced out by the savings coming from eliminating a runoff election in each election cycle. In San Francisco, for example, the city and county saved approximately $3 million by not holding a separate runoff election in 2005, easily covering the mostly one-time costs spent in 2003-2004 to implement the system.

In North Carolina, counties spent $3.5 million for the Superintendent of Public Instruction runoff in 2004, at election with statewide turnout of only 3%. In 2007, IRV elections in Cary (NC) avoided the need for a runoff in one of the city council districts that would have cost taxpayers $28,000.

An effective voter education program can also be done for relatively little money by learning from what types of education worked well in other jurisdictions and what types did not – with the biggest factors being a good ballot design, clear voter instructions and effective pollworker training in that order. In a report to the Vermont General Assembly, the Vermont Secretary of State estimated that, based on how well IRV was implemented in Vermont’s largest city of Burlington in 2006, voter education for statewide IRV in Vermont would cost less than $0.25 per registered voter. In a city of more than 100,000 people, Cary spent less than $10,000 on voter education – with highly favorable reactions from voters.

14. Dopp: “Increases the potential for undetectable vote fraud and erroneous vote counts…"

Actually, just the opposite is true, so long as paper ballots (such as optical scan) are used. The reason that any attempts at fraud are easier to detect with IRV is that there is a redundant electronic record (called a ballot image) of each ballot that can be matched one-to-one with the corresponding paper ballot. Cities such as San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT) release these ballot files so that any voter can do their own count. Without such redundant ballot records (which are not typical with vote-for-one elections) there is no way to know for certain if the paper ballots have been altered prior to a recount.

15. Dopp: “Violates some election fairness principles…."

This charge reveals either a general lack of understanding, or intentional miss-representation. Every single voting method ever devised must violate some "fairness principles" as some of these criteria are mutually exclusive. Dopp's example in appendix B of "Arrow's fairness condition" (the Pareto Improvement Criterion) completely misunderstands the criterion, and gives an example that has no relevance to it (and contrary to her implication, IRV complies with this criterion). IRV works essentially the same as a traditional runoff election to find a majority winner. When the field narrows to the two finalists in the final instant runoff count, the candidate with more support (ranked more favorably on more ballots) will always win. Some theoretical voting methods may satisfy some "fairness' criteria, such as monotonicity, but then violate other more important criteria such as the majority criterion, or the later-no-harm criterion.

Endnotes

<1> The rank order ballot used in instant runoff voting (and other voting systems) is known by political scientists as the "single transferable vote" or STV. This balloting procedure has been consistently upheld in United States courts as constitutional and upholding the "one person, one vote" principle. As an example, here is what the Michigan Court ruled in upholding the use of instant runoff voting in an Ann Arbor, Michigan Mayoral race in a 1975 challenge:

"Under the "M.P.V. System" [IRV], however, no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter, although to understand this does require a conceptual understanding of how the effect of a "M.P.V. System" is like that of a run-off election. The form of majority preferential voting employed in the City of Ann Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it deprive anyone of equal protection rights under the Michigan or United States Constitutions."

page 11, Stephenson v Ann Arbor Board of City Canvassers File No. 75-10166 AW
Michigan Circuit Court for the County of Jackson

The Judge also observed on page 7,

"Each voter has the same right at the time he casts his or her ballot. Each voter has his or her ballot counted once in any count that determines whether one candidate has a majority of the votes. . . . Far better to have the People's will expressed more adequately in this fashion, than to wonder what would have been the results of a run-off election not provided for."
"jump in where you can and hang on"
Briscoe Darling to Sheriff Andy

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting urges you to vote “NO” on the resolution for the NC Democratic Convention in support of Instant Runoff Voting and vote “YES” for the resolution opposing Instant Runoff Voting

Instant Runoff Voting – Good or Bad for North Carolina

* What is Instant Runoff Voting? It is a voting method where voters casting a ballot in races with more than two candidates mark a first and (if desired) second and third choice for each office. It is a tally and elimination scheme, retallying without revoting (reallocating), and repeating until a majority of votes are reshuffled into one pile.

* IRV would threaten the standards in the Public Confidence in Elections Act. Instant runoff voting's implementation would require weakening North Carolina's highly praised and hard-won verified voting law. No instant-runoff capable equipment meets North Carolina's standards -- so will we gut those standards? Our standards for voting systems, software and vendors are key to protecting North Carolina voters from harm caused by uncertified software or unscrupulous vendors.

* Who to rank second or third, or should you rank at all? Voters should not need a calculator to figure out whether they are helping their cause or hurting it by ranking candidates or not. In our recent historic primary with record turnout, the long ballot with many races including judge contests would have been extremely confusing, and lead to greater fall off on down ballot races, harming those candidates.”

More at http://www.ncvoter.net/irv.html

Does IRV Improve Elections?

* DOES IRV SAVE MONEY? NO. IRV would require new voting machines, more expensive programming, additional voter education, and increased ballot printing expenditures. Candidates would need to spend time and money educating voters

* CAN NC’S VOTING MACHINES COUNT IRV? NO. According to the State Board of Elections Voting Systems Manager Keith Long, “There are no provisions on ES&S equipment to tabulate IRV.” Cary, NC had to manually tally the IRV election. One small error cascaded into a miscount that had to be corrected at another date.

* DOES IRV INCREASE TURNOUT? NO. San Francisco, the largest IRV jurisdiction in the US, saw turnout drop by 100,000 voters in the 2007 IRV mayoral election compared to the traditional mayoral runoff in 2003.

* DOES IRV PROVIDE A MAJORITY WINNER? NO. In Cary, the winner of an "instant runoff" in the District B Town Council contest took office with less than 40 % of the first-choice votes cast, and less than 50 % of the votes of people who showed up on Election Day. In the 20 IRV elections in San Francisco held since adopting IRV, any elections going into a “runoff” were won with less than a majority.

* DOES IRV CREATE CHAOS? YES.
Some voters in the Cary IRV experiment ranked the same candidate more than once. Some came to the polls facing an unfamiliar voting method. Some did not rank choices.

What do citizens and leaders in North Carolina say about IRV?

* Voters say: Janice Sears of Wake County said. “If the best board of elections in North Carolina had this much trouble counting 3,000 votes, this is too dangerous to try statewide.”
A Hendersonville voter said “It doesn't make any sense I call it instant confusion."

*Candidates say: Don Frantz, winner of Cary District B contest said he heard from many confused voters on the campaign trail .
"I found myself, when I was at some places, that's all I was doing … explaining the new voting system..."

Vickie Maxwell, a candidate in the Cary election said having to explain a novel voting process was a distraction from discussing the issues with voters. She also recalled “very uncomfortable” requests from both Frantz and Roseland to include in her campaign literature that she wanted voters to mark that candidate as second on their ballots.

*Community Leaders say: Rueben Blackwell, Rocky Mount City Council Member and co-chair for the NC Justice Center advised that: "To cast out an instant runoff speculative experiment in communities that have had historic voting rights violations issues is absolutely wrong…"

*Eugene Weeks, Chair of the Wake County Voter Education Coalition: “We feel that IRV will disenfranchise certain segments of voters-especially the challenged and impaired voters. The ballot that is being used now is already confusing to some voters, yet you want to antagonize and confuse the voters more by asking them to not only vote for one candidate, but indicate a second and third choice before leaving the voting booth. Where is the voter's rights in this process?”

Raleigh, N.C. City Council Members’ concerns about Instant Runoff Voting

Council member Dr. James P. West:

"I indicated that I have some concerns about this especially in disenfranchises certain segment of voters.. especially those of lower socio economic level , I think we have had some examples of that in Florida. There's a perception of trust, and I think we should make sure that the democratic process and try to make sure that everybody participates.

A vote-less people is a hopeless people, what we don't want in this great city

I have met with some elected officials, I also had an informal conversation with our WAC representatives, as well as a representative of the Wake County Voters Coalition, without going into a whole lot of detail, I could give you a litany of reasons on why this thing is wrong

But when we weigh on one side of the ledger. Other, especially some people's skepticism, sometimes they don't even look on the other side of the ballot,..

My sixth sense and what I can pick up from the people that I represent is that this is not the time, educate people well in advance, I just cannot support it at this time."

Council member Thomas Crowder:
"I expressed concerns at our last meeting, I still have those concerns...Just like blackjack in Las Vegas, we are going to see a lot of game-men's-ship trying figure out the odds on putting people into office, and similar concerns, that um Mr. Isley and Mr. West expressed as well.”

Council member Russ Stephenson: "I actually ran into the chair of the Wake BOE and had a discussion, expressed my concerns, really echoing concerns that Mr. West had, so we sat down and scratched out a little test ballot, and said - just looking at my race, an at my race, a large race, the most complicated race, our conversation went on for some time, and based on the length of our discussion, it took us this long- and you’re the expert - to figure this out, then I'm not sure this is really the way to go. "

The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting is a grassroots non-partisan organization fighting for clean and verified elections. NCCVV has consistently fought for increasing access, participation and ensuring the voter franchise. For more information contact Joyce McCloy, Coordinator, N.C. Coalition for Verifiable Voting, via email at joyce@ncvoter.net website www.ncvoter.net

MN DFL Endorses Instant Runoff Voting

Better Ballot Campaign News - St. Paul
Fairvote news

June 10, 2008 – At its state convention, June 6-8, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party adopted instant runoff voting (IRV).

It was one of only 26 platform resolutions to pass with the requisite 60 percent support from the delegates and qualifies for the DFL Action Agenda. The endorsement effort was led by FairVote Minnesota, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advancing the statewide initiative for instant runoff voting. It is seeking support from all political parties.

DFL Chair Brian Melendez, who was disappointed IRV didn't pass in 2006, is a big supporter of IRV. In an interview with Inside Minnesota Politics, he explained that IRV ensures whoever wins has the support of a majority of voters and it allows voters to vote their true preference without strategically misrepresenting their vote.

His national counterpart, Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, has also been a long-time IRV supporter. In Minnesota, Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller head a long list of state legislators and elected officials who support IRV.

The Minnesota DFL is the third state Democratic party to adopt IRV, following the Democratic parties of Colorado and Maine. The Republican Party of Alaska supports IRV and the Utah Republican Party uses IRV for state convention elections. IRV is also a core platform of the Independence Party and Green Party in Minnesota and the Green Party of the United States.

This list is likely to grow with the support of several presidential hopefuls, including Democrat Barack Obama, Republican John McCain, Libertarian Bob Barr, independent Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney.

Instant runoff voting lets voters rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot. If a candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, that candidate wins. If not, the lowest vote-getter is dropped and his/her votes are redistributed to remaining candidates based on the second choice on those voters’ ballots. This process is repeated until one candidate reaches a majority. It's like a traditional runoff, but in a single election.

Sharon Endicott, chair of Kanabec County DFL, one of the delegates who supported the resolution, said, “I’m excited about IRV and we’ll be demonstrating how it works with a mock election at our upcoming DFL fundraiser.”

The Minnesota DFL joins a broad and rapidly growing coalition of organizations for IRV, including the League of Women Voters, the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, Star Tribune, TakeAction Minnesota, Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, Citizens for Election Integrity and The White House Project.

Nationally, a sampling of IRV supporters includes the Brookings Institute Unity 08 Project, New America Foundation and the National Latino Congress. See a full list of organizational and individual endorsements at www.fairvotemn.org and www.fairvote.org.

Voters like IRV because it empowers them with choice and enables them to vote their true preference without feeling like they'll waste their vote.

In St. Paul, Minn., more than 7,000 petition signatures have been submitted to put an IRV charter amendment on the ballot this November. If adopted, St. Paul will become one of nearly two dozen cities, including Minneapolis, to bring a better way of voting to their community. Click here to read story. Watch video featuring political stars former mayor George Latimer, former US Senator David Durenberger and many others.

FFI: Contact Jeanne Massey at jeanne.massey@fairvotemn.org or 763.807.2550.

FairVote Minnesota: www.fairvotemn.org
Saint Paul Better Ballot Campaign: http://stpaul.betterballotcampaign.org/ "jump in where you can and hang on"
Briscoe Darling to Sheriff Andy

..that the claims that all these people and organizations support IRV are not indications of the degree that they support IRV - or even know about all the issues with IRV.

Obama and Dean are hardly experts in the differences between IRV and traditional elections. How many IRV elections have they run in? If you want to ask people who actually went through IRV, ask Don Frantz and Vicki Maxwell. Don thinks it stinks. Vicky originally liked it, but changed her mind and doesn't like it - she feels it took too much time to explain IRV to voters when she should have been talking about the issues.

Some people who support IRV support it in theory but don't support it the way it was done in Cary.

So we really need some sort of hearing on IRV that will consider all the information from both sides - sort of like we had back in 2004-2005 for the Public Confidence in Elections Act. We can't let the SBOE plan and manage the pilot, because they will just let DemocracyNC and FairVote run the show like they did in 2007.