It comes as no surprise that IRV advocates and Progressive Party hacks have turned to criticizing opponents of IRV as "stupid" and worse. They also have a tendency to hide behind 'anonymous' when posting on blogs so they can spew their hate and judge those of us fighting to restore democracy by repealing IRV.
They can call me a stupid, right-wing voter all they want but it doesn't change the facts.
IRV doesn't work.
I also happen to be very intelligent and the last I knew, I was on the far left.
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21 comments:
"so they can spew their hate and judge those of us fighting to restore democracy by repealing IRV."
You are doing no such thing Mr. Mulligan. You are in the midst of yet another hissy fit (just like with the Moran Plant before)...allied now once again with your GOP buddies (who aren't really your buddies after all) over the fact that your preferred way of "thinking" is not what the majority in Burlington thinks. When you lose again (just like always), you'll go back into whining mode.
"They can call me a stupid"
That you surely are...as has been successfully shown both here & in many other venues by myself & others.
"right-wing voter"
No one ever called you that...not that I can see anyways. You're just a pie-in-the-sky greenie fridge person...just like you'll always be apparently...firmly out of the mainstream & completely irrelevant.
"IRV doesn't work"
...in your own, warped mind that is. Keep repeating the same nonsense over & over again...it'll never be true, but who cares about facts eh??
Thanks for proving my point. :)
Anytime. ;)
listen Owen, you can't pin that on me.
well being that "Anonymous" is, well, anonymous, there is also the possibility that he/she is really working for the anti-IRV side as a "straw man". planted to make the IRV advocates look bad.
besides being sorta nasty, his/her arguments were so weak. weaker than they could be if he/she was a real and knowledgeable advocate for IRV. if "Anonymous" is truly on the side of IRV, he/she is a lousy advocate for it.
well, Owen, you know where i stand. and i sign my posts, so you know who i am.
IRV screwed up in 2009 Burlington. but Plurality would have done far worse, and the old 40% rule would have done no better than IRV and may have done worse.
Republicans have to understand and accept that their candidate was not the preference of Burlington voters in 2009, a fact obscured by the old Plurality rules and one illuminated by the Ranked-Order ballot. if you think that Kurt Wright was robbed in that election, you're just wrong. if Wright had squeezed out a "victory" in a runoff when we know he had 66% against him initially (and 52% against him finally), that would have been a travesty for democracy. the Dem/Prog majority of voters would have to reconsider in 2012 whether to vote for the candidate they support or vote for the candidate they think the rest of the Dem/Prog majority is supporting (forcing them into strategic voting). preventing undemocratic results that thwart majority rule and set up the need to consider strategy in voting, is precisely why we adopted IRV in the first place.
I'm as leftist as they come and I don't like IRV. Long convoluted comments on Blurt posts won't convince me (the place to post long articles in comments is your own blog)... I don't like being told how to vote by geeky Progs who will also tell you they know better. I didn't like that I had to rank 'em in the last election. I voted for one candidate I thought was the best of the lot and that vote was thrown out, so IMO it didn't even count. I might as well have just stayed home.
All blogs with comments have to deal with trolls. I'd suggest this blog moderate comments. Indeed challenging ideas will get a conversation going; attacking individuals anonymously & personally will get a comment deleted on my blog (I don't mess with anonymous comments...)
JayV, if you think i'm a Prog, that's news to me. you'll see my name on this: http://burlingtondemocrats.org/montrollformayor/supporters-list/index.php but, i am more primarily a supporter of Condorcet than i am of Montroll. the problem with either IRV or the old 40%+ Plurality rules is not that neither would elect Andy Montroll. the problem is that they would elect Candidate C or Candidate B whereas Candidate A is preferred to either. that's why both sides are wrong.
but IRV is less wrong. IRV relieves the burden of strategic voting from the majority and places that on the minority, currently the GOP Prog-hater faction. so the majority didn't have to make a painful decision between Bob Kiss and Andy Montroll and the 2009 IRV imposed upon this GOP Prog-hater group a penalty for sincerely supporting their preferred candidate.
the penalty they suffered was that their very action of voting for Kurt Wright (as #1 pick) actually *caused* Bob Kiss to be elected. if fewer of those folks had marked Wright above Montroll, then Andy would have gotten into the final round ring with Bob and Andy would have beaten Bob. we know this from the 8984 cast, which are in the public record.
so if IRV survives (and i hope that it does for just a year), then what do these folks think when they're at the polls in 2012? will they be thinking this:? "gee, in this town of liberals, i gotta choose between more liberal or less liberal. because if i vote for the guy i really like, more liberal gets elected."
in this, the smaller group have a legitimate gripe. but reverting to placing the burden of strategic voting onto the majority (in this town, the Dem and Prog libruls) is neither right nor even required. with the Ranked-Order Ballot and Condorcet rules (rather than IRV rules), the 3 pathologies of the 2009 election would not have happened.
1. the majority preference would not have been thwarted.
2. there would have been no spoiler.
3. the minority group (conservatives) would not cause the election of their most disliked candidate (and would not be faced with the need to consider voting strategy in the next election).
the ranked ballot tabulated using Condorcet rules can satisfy the legitimate concerns of both the IRV supporters and opponents. but, for the time being, IRV is better for most of us.
"IRV screwed up in 2009 Burlington."
No, it really didn't, but keep repeating the same ole, same ole over & over again like it did. If anything, YOU'RE the one helping out the anti-IRV crowd by repeating this nonsense that has been debunked almost a full year ago!
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"Long convoluted comments on Blurt posts won't convince me"
The facts be damned eh?? While I didn't contribute to that list of comments on that site (Mr. Mulligan did though, and he was thoroughly pwned by his own words there...lol...), that was actually a very good discussion that showed how feeble-minded the anti-IRV crowd really is. They don't care about the will of voters...they only care about their hurt "feelings"...well boo hoo...
"I don't like being told how to vote by geeky Progs"
This issue is NOT about Dems vs. Progs vs. GOPers...even that moron Decelles admitted that on that very same site!
"I didn't like that I had to rank 'em in the last election"
...which, of course, you didn't have to do in the first place! "Bullet voting" is an entirely valid way to vote during an IRV process...so your sour grapes are just that. Get over it...
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"the penalty they suffered was that their very action of voting for Kurt Wright (as #1 pick) actually *caused* Bob Kiss to be elected."
Once again, this is sheer & utter nonsense that has been debunked almost a full year ago. Theoretical, imaginary elections are NOT equivalent to real, live elections, period.
"the 3 pathologies of the 2009 election would not have happened."
Once again, there were exactly ZERO "pathologies" in the 2009 election, period end of story.
"1. the majority preference would not have been thwarted."
The majority of voters more strongly preferred Kiss in 2009.
"2. there would have been no spoiler."
There was no "spoiler" in the 2009 election. Wright came in second for heaven's sake!
"3. the minority group (conservatives) would not cause the election of their most disliked candidate"
...which, of course, never happened in the REAL five-way election that took place.
"the ranked ballot tabulated using Condorcet rules"
...will never be implemented anywhere because it's waaay too convoluted a way to count ballots as it involves a series of "imaginary" two-way contests when there are more than 2 candidates to begin with! Give it up...
Once again, there were exactly ZERO "pathologies" in the 2009 election, period end of story.
" '1. the majority preference would not have been thwarted.'
The majority of voters more strongly preferred Kiss in 2009."
in comparison to Wright or Smith or Simpson. but not with Montroll. even more strongly (more than twice the margin), the majority of voters preferred Montroll over Kiss.
that's a fact that remains true despite your denials.
" '2. there would have been no spoiler.'
There was no "spoiler" in the 2009 election. Wright came in second for heaven's sake!"
it's still the case that his presence in the race changed who the winner is and he was not the winner. why should IRV deem Bob the preference of the Burlington electorate when Kurt is in the race, and deem someone else to be the preference with Kurt removed?
" '3. the minority group (conservatives) would not cause the election of their most disliked candidate'
...which, of course, never happened in the REAL five-way election that took place."
well, you're totally clueless as to the reason we adopted IRV in the first place. we adopted IRV to prevent this kind of thing happening, not just to shift the burden of strategic voting to a different group of people.
i can see why you're hiding behind "Anonymous". you're a chicken-shit. your arguments are so transparently weak. you just keep propping them up and anybody can just easily slap them back down. this is why i am suspicious that you are, in reality, an anti-IRV plant. if not, you're a piss-poor advocate for that side.
There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.
As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as IRV a very hard sell.
"in comparison to Wright or Smith or Simpson. but not with Montroll."
Once again my misguided friend, the race in question was a FIVE person race, not a series of imaginary two person races!
"it's still the case that his presence in the race changed who the winner is and he was not the winner. why should IRV deem Bob the preference of the Burlington electorate when Kurt is in the race, and deem someone else to be the preference with Kurt removed?"
Ugh...you'll never understand that imaginary, hypothetical, unrealistic contests are NOT as important as the contests that actually take place in real life. We've already thoroughly discussed why Wright was in the race, and your fantasy versions of him not being in the race are, in a word, irrelevant.
"well, you're totally clueless as to the reason we adopted IRV in the first place. we adopted IRV to prevent this kind of thing happening, not just to shift the burden of strategic voting to a different group of people."
IRV *reduces* the likelihood of so-called "strategic voting"...it certainly doesn't increase it! IRV was adopted because the people of Burlington finally chose to realize that they live in a multi-Party system & not in a two-Party system, period. There's no reason to adopt a system like IRV in a purely two-Party system where there will be consistently only two viable candidates in any race.
"your arguments are so transparently weak"
...in your wildest dreams that is...lol...
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"There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots."
Hey, never underestimate the power of voters to vote against their own best interests. Just look at how the nation as a whole voted in 2004 or how MA recently voted just this month!
The fact is that there are two basic camps in the anti-IRV crowd...the sore losers that think that repealing IRV will enable their preferred candidate to win in the future & those that are just too simple-minded to realize what in fact that are advocating for.
"As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing"
...in your dreams that is...watch & learn what happens...
JayV: "As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as IRV a very hard sell."
the mechanism of IRV is pretty simple. it's called the "Single Transferable Vote" (STV). the underlying concept is that your vote is a commodity that you can control, after the fact, by marking your ranked ballot. if you don't get your first choice, then your second choice is used. your vote, which is a commodity you own and can direct with your ballot (sorta like a will), automatically transfers to your second choice. if you don't get your second choice, your third choice (if you have one) is used. it's not complicated, but it can have (and did in 2009) some unpredictable behavior. behavior that may result in a voter acting against their own political interest. i would call such a behavior a "pathology".
the "traditional" ballot is also quite simple. mark the ballot for the candidate you like. but, even more so than IRV, such an election can have (and has in 1992 and 2000) unpredictable behavior that is similarly pathological, and for a larger group of people (for the majority).
do you wanna discuss this JayV? we can leave Anonymous out since he is either an anti-IRV plant who's just trying to make the IRV side look bad or a piss-poor advocate for IRV.
JayV: "There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots."
voters need things explained to them. whether they are idiots or not. if our politics are reduced to simple sound bytes that may or may not be of questionable truth, then we will be stuck forever with tea-baggers, swift-boaters, ditto-heads, and the like controlling a dialog that is racing for the bottom.
one reason i really supported Obama (or Dean 4 years prior) is because he didn't shrink from the reality that real issues are complicated. that's the reality, and if you think that simplifying it to sound bytes and slogans will get you to the facts and the truth, you're mistaken. you won't even be able to vote in your own best interest, let alone make a considered and courageous vote that may appear at first to not serve your interests, but serves the community interests (which is ultimately in your enlightened self-interest).
"behavior that may result in a voter acting against their own political interest. i would call such a behavior a 'pathology'"
...and you'd be dead wrong that huge assumption. Either you respect the will of the voters as expressed in their actual ballot choices or you don't. And this kind of "analysis" doesn't, period.
Keep repeating the same nonsense over & over again...no one is listening anymore...
With IRV, some voters do NOT have a say in the outcome of the election:
A group in San Francisco has filed 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.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Group-sues-to-stop-instant-runoff-elections-in-SF-83607307.html#ixzz0edR8t4WT
With Instant Runoff Voting, the definition of "majority" is re-defined and does not mean majority of voters. Instead, an IRV created majority consists of the votes left after others are eliminated.
IRV is the only "non-additive" election method AFAIK - There is no such thing as a "subtotal" in IRV. In IRV every single vote may have to be sent individually to the central agency.
For those familiar with election transparency, central counting means you don't count the votes where they were cast, ie at the polling places, but you instead drive them to a central location to be counted at a later time. This opens up elections to fraud and vote tampering.
IRV tends to express bizarre paradoxes when used in partisan elections, and when used in non partisan elections like in San Francisco - it usually produces plurality results and incumency protection.
IRV violates a core principle of democracy, KISS. A voter shouldn't need a calculator or a magic 8 ball in order to figure out how to cast his vote(s). But with IRV, thats exactly what you need.
Joyce, the "non-additivity" of IRV is not true. with 3 candidates, you can have 9 piles of ballots at each precinct or ward that are "precinct summable". with 4 candidates, the number of piles grows rapidly to 40. still doable for computers.
the thing with SF (not the lawsuit, i won't comment on that) is that they had a dozen or two dozen candidates on the ballot and only the top three rankings were allowed. any unranked candidate is tied with the other unranked candidates for last place on a particular ballot.
this means that, if Hitler were one of the candidates, there was no way to "bury" that candidate beneath all the other 2 dozen candidates. i know that there were complaints about that (not being able to rank candidates below the top three). what SF should do is require more signatures on a petition to get someone on the ballot.
"IRV violates a core principle of democracy, KISS. A voter shouldn't need a calculator or a magic 8 ball in order to figure out how to cast his vote(s). But with IRV, that's exactly what you need."
it took me a while, but i figgered out you meant "Keep It Simple, Stupid". there is another meaning to the term "Kiss" that is relevant to the debate, so i was confused at first.
actually, it's not the ranked ballot that makes it complicated, but it is the old "single bullet" ballot that makes it complicated. at least for the majority. so here in Burlington with IRV, the Dem/Prog majority did not have to make a painful choice between Montroll and Kiss, just to avoid electing their least favorite candidate (Wright). the majority was relieved of the need to consider strategic voting and choosing between the Dem and the Prog, one who is their favorite and the other is their fallback candidate.
with IRV, they (the liberal majority) could vote for their favorite and their fallback without worrying that their choice would result in electing their least favorite. but IRV did not get rid of the burden of strategic voting but only transferred that burden to another group in the minority (the GOP Prog-haters). these folks have found out that by supporting their favorite candidate (Wright) with their 1st-choice preference, they *actually* ended up electing their least favorite candidate (Kiss) because they kept their fallback candidate (Montroll) out of the IRV final round, and we know that Montroll would beat any other candidate in the final round (including Kiss) had he been in the final round. if a few hundred of these GOP Prog-haters had recognized in advance that their guy was gonna lose, they could have insincerely ranked Montroll above Wright (leaving Kiss at the bottom) on their ballot and that would have prevented Kiss from winning the IRV. that is a hard fact supported by the public record.
so, in 2012, these GOP Prog-haters might be thinking to themselves "gee, in this town full of liberals, I gotta choose between Liberal and More Liberal, because when I vote for the guy I really like, More Liberal gets elected." that is precisely encouraging strategic voting from this minority group and that is what we wanted to avoid in the first place by adopting IRV. but changing back to the old method only transfers that burden of strategic voting back to the Dem/Prog majority. that's why the old method is worse.
"With IRV, some voters do NOT have a say in the outcome of the election"
This is completely & totally false. Also, your article is a bogus one for the previously mentioned reasons in this very blog:
"This lawsuit will be thrown out of court as the courts have already ruled on the issues that are in play here. IRV is totally Constitutional, period.
Also, as per the comments on that article:
'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.'
This is just another case of sour grapes."
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"With Instant Runoff Voting, the definition of 'majority' is re-defined and does not mean majority of voters."
This is sheer & utter nonsense!
"In IRV every single vote may have to be sent individually to the central agency"
...and there have NEVER been any instances of voter fraud in an IRV election, period. This issue is a Red Herring.
"A voter shouldn't need a calculator or a magic 8 ball in order to figure out how to cast his vote(s)"
...and that's NOT the way IRV works at all, but I wouldn't expect an obvious anti-IRV blogger shill like yourself to admit that!
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"these folks have found out that by supporting their favorite candidate (Wright) with their 1st-choice preference, they *actually* ended up electing their least favorite candidate (Kiss)"
Repeating the same LIES over & over again does NOT make them true!
"and we know that Montroll would beat any other candidate in the final round (including Kiss) had he been in the final round."
Of course, once again, we know NO such thing whatsoever!
"if a few hundred of these GOP Prog-haters had recognized in advance that their guy was gonna lose, they could have insincerely ranked Montroll above Wright (leaving Kiss at the bottom) on their ballot and that would have prevented Kiss from winning the IRV"
...but they didn't in the REAL election (not some imaginary one), so it doesn't matter, period.
With IRV, election transparency is decreased immediately in both the casting and counting of votes.
This is the result of making vote casting and counting more complex. A special algorithm determines whether your vote helps your cause or hurts it or if you have no say in final "runoff.
IRV is not additive, so no matter what voting system is used, the ballots, (electronic or optical scan) have to be hauled away from where they are cast to a central location to be counted. Even with computer counting systems,while the votes can be "recorded", they cannot be tallied until they are delivered to a central location.
An important protection is lost by the inability to tally votes where they are cast.
"With IRV, election transparency is decreased immediately in both the casting and counting of votes."
Sheer & utter nonsense. Show us the evidence of *real* election fraud since the advent of IRV.
"This is the result of making vote casting and counting more complex."
IRV isn't "complex". It merely involves people ranking a series of choices, which people do many, many times in their daily lives already!
Yes, I admit it, IRV is fr too complicated for me. It I had to describe it, the best I could do is call it a 'short-cut', to the inevitable conclusion that would have occurred had 'traditional' voting taken place.
And that would have deprived us all of the spirited, informative, debate the 'traditional' would have enabled.
So I guess I'm still a dummy, I am, I am, I am. IRV must go. Representation is here to stay.
Yes, I admit it, IRV is fr too complicated for me. It I had to describe it, the best I could do is call it a 'short-cut', to the inevitable conclusion that would have occurred had 'traditional' voting taken place.
And that would have deprived us all of the spirited, informative, debate the 'traditional' would have enabled.
So I guess I'm still a dummy, I am, I am, I am. IRV must go. Representation is here to stay.
"Yes, I admit it, IRV is fr too complicated for me."
If simply ranking a list candidates is "too complicated" for you, then I truly feel sorry for you!
"And that would have deprived us all of the spirited, informative, debate the 'traditional' would have enabled"
...while having only a small fraction of people show up to vote in a delayed runoff.
"So I guess I'm still a dummy, I am, I am, I am."
You said it...not me.
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