Save Our Vote! Call and Email These Lawmakers Monday July 7

According to a Grand Jury report released on July 3, 2008,

2. San Francisco currently does not have a certified voting system to count IRV and needs a back up plan. They may have to hand count over 400,000 IRV ballots in November.

Excerpts of the report and a link, lower down.

Background on San Francisco:

Note: San Francisco is the largest jurisdiction in the US to have IRV, and they have had it for the longest, adopted in 2003, implemented in 2004. We know they spent $1.87 per voter and 700 public outreach events the first year, for a city with around 418,000 reg voters.
(Wake County has at least 460,000 +).

The Grand Jury report says that some voters and poll workers do not understand IRV, and
that they need a back up plan in case the new Sequoia voting system is not certified.

Excerpts

The 2007-2008 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury review of five elections for the city/county of San Francisco

Ranked-Choice Voting and Absentee (Vote By Mail) Ballots

RCV ballots were used in the November 2007 election for the offices of Mayor, District Attorney, and Sheriff. Some pollworkers and voters told the Jury that they did not understand how to vote for candidates where RCV ballots were used. In the November 2008 election, RCV ballots will be used for some local offices. Aditional education and outreach need to be provided to the voters to clarify the RCV process so that the ballots accurately reflect the intentions of the voters.

Findings:

11. Some pollworkers and voters do not understand the procedures for voting for candidates where Ranked-Choice ballots are used.
Findings

14. While the DOE does meet these legal requirements, additional outreach efforts are needed on voter registration requirements and deadlines, the Ranked-Choice Voting process and the requirements for submitting a valid Absentee Ballot.

V Recommendations

3. The DOE should publicly establish a date certain by which Sequoia must receive the Secretary of State's certification regarding the counting of RCV ballots. This date should be no later than September 15, 2008.

Response required: Department of Elections;

Elections Commission

4. TO prepare for the possibility that Sequoia fails to obtain the required certification, DOE must develop a contingency plan for counting RCV ballots, which should be in final form by October 6, 2008.

Response required: Department of Elections; Elections Commission

8. The DOE's outreach program needs to improve voter instructions on the Ranked-Choice Voting process and the use of Absentee Ballots.

Response required: Department of Elections; Elections Commission

9. In addition to established communication approaches, the DOE should explore enhance techniques to communicate information on the less understood aspects of voting such as partisan primary elections, Ranked-Choice Voting and Absentee Ballots. Final Report and Certification of Election Results and Canvass Procedures - The Secretary of State's certification of the Edge II machines requires the DOE to manually count all voter Verified Paper Audit Trails and compare those results to the machines electronic records.

Full grand jury report here

Hendersonville NC was one of the IRV pilots, and has 100% touchscreen voting. They were given an illegal software work around to use that would "automate" the tabulation of IRV votes.

Cary has optical scan, and there is no way to automate the counting without the vendor developing new software and computer chips, neither of which exist for our 2 year old machines right now. There is no "work around", just plain old hand counting.

Since IRV is not additive, the ballots have to be hauled away from where they were cast - in order to be counted at one central location.

So, in North Carolina, as long as you go by the way the pilots were done in Cary and Hendersonville, IRV is "easier" on touchscreens, as long as you violate our own laws. Since Hendersonville didn't actually need to hold an "instant" runoff, the illegal work around was not used.

Fair Vote wanted San Francisco to use central count scanners (haul votes away from where they were cast and then count them somwhere else) or touchscreens, instead of adapting their precinct optical scanners:

See
All for Instant runoff: How San Francisco almost got all touch screen voting

Or go to the Fair Vote web-page (before it gets scrubbed, but I do have a screen shot)where they attack the San Francisco Elections Dept for how they implemented IRV:

Before going through the detailed chronology, here are two particularly poor decisions that directly threatened the success of IRV implementation:

October 7

Elections Director John Arntz goes against advice from his vendor, members of the Elections Commission, and staff from the Center for Voting and Democracy, and makes a decision to have ES&S upgrade the Optech Eagles (precinct-based scanner) for counting IRV ballots, rather than using the Optech IV-C (centralized scanner) or touch screens. Arntz rejects central scan solution because it requires transporting and handling ballots, rejects touch screen because he claims there is a lack of time and money.

So Fair Vote attacks San Francisco's election director for Not hauling ballots away from the polling place to be counted, and for NOT adopting touchscreen voting machines.

If I have posted anything incorrect on my website blog or anywhere, please provide the points and the documentation.

If you go to www.instantrunoffvoting.us you will see that I provide documentation to everything on that site, links referring back to the San Francisco elections website, their election results, their budtget, mainstream media news reports.

Fair Vote has an extensive website, but does not provide documentation for what it says.

I would be happy to update my website if you provide new information.

I felt the need for a separate website that is all about instant runoff voting because there is no such site for that one purpose.

The Center for Range Voting has alot of material about IRV, but their site adresses other methods as well.

I have a blog because I want to educate and inform the public.

In addition to the documentation I provide, I have interviewed officials, consultants for Greens and Dems and also Gavin Newsome's former campaign manager Jim Ross, David Lee with the Chinese Voter Education Committee in San Francisco, and political writers and analysts from the San Francisco area.

sorry - duplicate posting due to being logged off by system

Not now anyway.

Progressive Democrats of North Carolina