[Sosfbay-discuss] SF Examiner "Group sues to stop instant runoff elections in SF"

Sat Feb 6 16:15:56 PST 2010

This is not an inherent flaw in IRV. In San Francisco, they implemented a modified form of IRV (if you can even call it that) where voters are only allowed to rank three candidates. In pure IRV, a voter can rank as many candidates as there are on the ballot. The problem with SF is that if you vote for three candidates who have little chances of reaching the majority threshold, you are denied the right to vote essentially, because once your candidates are eliminated, your ballot does not count for anything even though you may have other candidates you prefer in the running. However, the danger with the lawsuit is it has brought together a pair of unlikely bedfellows. Those who are against IRV altogether are using this flawed implementation as reason to scrap the whole idea while supporters of IRV are saying that the current implementation is not real IRV and still leads to involuntary ballot wasting.
The real threat to IRV is the repeal effort in Burlington, VT. The Republican candidate, who lost, has successfully proven that the Achilles' Heel of IRV occurred in the most recent mayoral election, which saw the re-election of Progressive Party candidate Bob Kiss. No voting system is perfect, and that is a fact. However, the repeal-IRV folks in VT have taken the one flaw of IRV and are using it to repeal IRV altogether. The Republican candidate would have won with a plurality of the vote had Burlington not had IRV, although the majority of the voters preferred the Democrat who ran (therein lies the flaw of IRV, which happens very rarely). For more information about this flaw in IRV, Google "Concorcet criterion." What the repeal-IRV folks do no mention is that plurality voting has a much more likely chance of violating the Concorcet criterion.
-edward

Please note that I have transferred to Google Mail. Please take a moment to help me raise awareness about Google's violation of freedom of speech.

--- On Sat, 2/6/10, sosfbay-discuss-request at cagreens.org <sosfbay-discuss-request at cagreens.org> wrote:
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 08:28:28 -0800
From: eden <edenw at gal3.com>
Subject: [Sosfbay-discuss] SF Examiner "Group sues to stop instant
    runoff    elections in SF"
To: Greens <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Message-ID:
    <e73890a31002060828t77d2135cqb8f25cbe68d39f24 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

   I was dismayed to see this, thinking "they even have enough
money/energy to fight on this front?" But, the last comment explains
it better. Nevertheless, does anyone know if this means that SF
implemented the system incorrectly, or is this something fundamental
to all IR systems?

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Group-sues-to-stop-instant-runoff-elections-in-SF-83607307.html#ixzz0efedhVDK

Group sues to stop instant runoff elections in SF

Bay City News
February 5, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO ? Six San Francisco residents sued the city in federal
court Thursdayto challenge its instant runoff voting system.

The lawsuit claims that the way the city implements the system is
unconstitutional because some voters are denied the ability to have
their
vote counted in later rounds of balloting.

The instant runoff system, also known as ranked-choice voting, was
approved by a voter initiative in 2002 and put into effect beginning
in 2004 for the offices of mayor, Board of Supervisors, district
attorney, city attorney, sheriff, public defender, treasurer and
assessor-recorder.

The system is intended to avoid the cost and the risk of low voter
turnout in having a separate runoff election at a later date when no
candidate in a race wins a majority.

Under the system, voters can rank three choices in each race. If no
candidate in a race wins a majority, the candidate with the lowest
number of votes is eliminated and his or her votes are transferred to
the second choices of each citizen who voted for that candidate.

The process continues until one candidate achieves a majority.

Some races, such as supervisor contests, sometimes have a dozen or
more candidates.

The lawsuit claims the system violates the constitutional right to
vote because voters whose candidates are eliminated in early rounds
have no voice in the final rounds of ballot counting in the instant
runoff.

The suit seeks a preliminary injunction that would require the city
either to return to having a separate runoff election or to allow
voters
to rank all candidates in a race.

A hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction is tentatively
scheduled for March 12 before U.S. District Judge Susan Illston
in San Francisco.

Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said
lawyers for the city had not yet seen the lawsuit, but said, "It's the
city
attorney's job to vigorously defend the laws voters enact, and that
includes ranked-choice voting."

Reader Comments
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box is limited to 250 words.

Dixon

Feb 4, 2010

Never liked the system. I'd like to be able to chose between who is
the final two standing, but you never know when there are so many
candidates.

Let's have a real run-off, where two candidates can debate each other.
But have the run-off a couple months later, say March, not during the
holidays. That's why turn-out was so low.

SF-415

Feb 5, 2010

The old system was much better when you could only vote for one
candidate and then have a runoff election between the two highest vote
getters. Ranked choice voting is very confusing.

John E. Palmer

Feb 5, 2010

Instant runoff voting is a great step forward for eliminating the
spoiler problem of most elections. It also saves costs and avoids the
turnout problems that often result with multiple elections.

Bob Richard

Feb 5, 2010

On ranked choice voting itself, what John Palmer said. It's
interesting that the reporter choose not to name the plaintiffs. So we
have to do a little digging to find out that the lead plaintiff is
losing candidate Ron Dudum. In spite of the previous comments, the
suit has nothing to do with ranked choice voting per se, but rather
questions the use of voting machines that limit the voter to fewer
rankings than there are candidates.

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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:51:14 -0800
From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] Constitutional amendment to outlaw
    corporate personhood
To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
Cc: Gerry Gras <gerrygras at earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4B6D9E02.7030204 at charter.net>
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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:22:19 -0800
From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
Subject: [Sosfbay-discuss] Murray Hill is running for Congress.
To: Green Discuss <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Message-ID: <4B6DA54B.1060800 at charter.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Enjoy the results of Corporate Personhood.

http://www.murrayhillweb.com/new_day/index.html

-- 
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better
 and you don't,
 then you are wasting your time on this Earth" Roberto Clemente

Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court, Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com/ -- Tel: 408.778.3024

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