newsobserver.com projects - instant runoff voting - Comments

Re: Hall: Instant runoffs could have saved N.C.

telephotonc — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:59:44 -0400

Something isn't more democratic just because you repeatedly say it is. Why would IRV be more democratic than a traditional runoff election? Bob Hall knows if you don't that the SBOE didn't want to use IRV in the May primary election for county elections because it posed a risk. So there is no way it could have been used in the May 2008 primary for any statewide elections.

We have no software to tabulate IRV, so we'd have to tabulate it by hand like they did in Cary in October 2007. If you go by the ballot tabulation rate set the first time the Wake BOE counted the IRV votes, it would take you 7.5 weeks to process 150,000 Wake County Democratic ballots - until the middle of July. And then you would have to go back and tabulate them again to check your work before declaring a winner. And God Forbid we would have had more than one statewide runoff race - we might not know who the runoff winners were until after the November election!

Before considering this risky and expensive voting method, our state legislators should hold public meetings not only about IRV in general but how the State Board of Elections conducted the 2007 pilot program. Non-profit groups like DemocracyNC and FairVote had way too much influence in the planning of the pilot and implementation of the voter education and exit survey effort. There is evidence that the volunteers who did the voter education and exit surveys had some pro-IRV bias. Other interested groups like the political parties and verified voting groups were shut out of the process.

And even if IRV supporters have conned people here into thinking that IRV is cheap, there is ample evidence that IRV is much more costly than traditional elections and rarely needed runoffs. Using costs per registered voter from the Maryland State Legislature and multiplying that times the 5.8 million registered NC voters, it would cost $18 million or more to implement IRV in the first year, and $2.8 million each election year after that for voter education. Over 33 years, it would cost NC voters $40 million or more to implement IRV over having traditional elections and rarely needed runoff elections.

Re: Hall: Instant runoffs could have saved N.C.

telephotonc — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:42:51 -0400

This is simply not true - and Bob Hall knows it. Bob knows there is no certified software to tabulate the IRV votes, so they would had to have been tabulated by hand. At the rate the Wake BOE went in October 2007, we'd still be sorting/stacking and counting Wake County's 150K Democratic ballots from the May primary until the middle of July.

That is assuming that IRV didn't cause an election meltdown. Hall's name was on an agenda from a March 6, 2007 State Board of Elections meeting stating they would "...not use IRV in May 2008 because it poses too much of a risk." Something that poses a risk is not safe or solid.

The millions of voters who use it without problems use it overseas in parliamentary elections where they elect the party - not the candidates in our more democratic American-style elections.

IRV did not do well when it was used in Cary. When 25% of votes who show up to vote don't know they are expected to rank their choices - those voters were disenfranchised. And it is certainly not easy to count - the Wake BOE messed up tabulating a little over 3000 IRV ballots. And while IRV advocates claim that IRV ensures a 50% plus one vote majority winner, the winner of the Cary election 1401 votes - less than the 1512 votes that made up 50% plus one vote of the 3022 first-column votes.

IRV is not being used in many other states in statewide elections. IRV does not save money - because the implementation and voter education costs will cost more than what we spend on runoff elections we rarely need. Using costs per registered voter calculated by the Maryland State Legislature when they considered and rejected IRV three times, IRV could cost NC taxpayers $18 million to implement and $2.4 million each subsequent election years for voter education. Over 33 years - IRV could end up costing North Carolina taxpayers $40 million more than paying for runoff elections only when they are needed.

If you want to get other information about IRV from people who are not getting paid to push it - check this out:

Center for Range Voting rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html
Libertarian Reform Caucus reformthelp.org/issues/voting/runoff.php
North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting www.ncvoter.net/irv.html
The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting minguo.info/election_methods/irv

And check out this research paper on IRV: http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Please sign the Petition to Restore Election Integrity in NC by opposing IRV
http://gopetition.com/petitions/oppose-instant-runoff-voting.html

Re: Runoff cost $50 per person, Hall says

WhalerCane — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:40:27 -0400

Mr. Hall's estimate is incorrect. Cost per voter should include those who chose not to vote. If that is done, than the cost was about $1 per voter.

That said, there are better ways to deal with low turnout runoffs other than adding confusion and undermining the integrity of our elections.

1. Change threasholds so runoffs are rare and used only when obviously needed.
2. Mailing ballots on low interest runoffs would be cheaper than current runnofs or IRV. Currently our voting equipement is unable to handle IRV. IRV does not save money because you would have to invest in new equipement and software, and programming costs every election, not to mention the vast educational costs involved.
3. Eliminate Runoffs. 42 states do not have them.
4. Stop electing low interest offices. Even if we had IRV, how many could have intelligently ranked the four candidates viaing for the Democratic nomination for Labor Commissioner.

Re: Donnan: Not sure about instant runoffs

DemocracyFactchecker — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:53:34 -0400

Scotland's use of ranked choice ballots is widely seen as successful in Scotland -- all city elections there will continue to use the system when they next vote. The problems at the polls were in the NON-ranked voting elections, not the ranked voting results, and tied to a bad butterfly ballot-type ballot design for those elections. Note that Scotland used optical scan ballots.

Burlington, Vermont used instant runoff voting for the time first time in a hotly contested, five-candidate election for mayor in 2006. All votes fit on one ballot -- for mayor, city council and ballot questions. More people voted for mayor than any other office/question, and the rate of those voting for mayor was 99.9% -- only one in a thousand voters spoiled their ballot. Like every other city that has used instant runoff voting after voters passed it, it will continue to use the system.

Re: Hall: Instant runoffs could have saved N.C.

Coop — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:56:24 -0400

As reported in the N&O, the people of Cary felt IRV was a big success. It was recently endorsed by the league of Women Voters and it is already being used in many other states with very good results -- saving millions for municipalities and counties in the process. It's a solid, safe common sense solution and its easy to understand. Millions of voters already use it without confusion and I think North Carolinians are certainly smart enough to do the same. If you want to know more about instant run-off voting, you can find out more for yourself at the following links:

How Cary voters reacted to their IRV election:

Some good general IRV info:
http://fairvote.org/?page=19

How IRV works:
http://ncvotered.com/multimedia/vidcasts/index.html
http://fairvote.org/?page=2153

Exit Polls from the North Carolina IRV pilot programs:
http://news.ncsu.edu/news/2007/10/158-irv-voting-survey.php
http://news.ncsu.edu/news/2007/11/irv-hendersonville.php

Re: Hall: Instant runoffs could have saved N.C.

progressnerd — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:51:09 -0400

WhalerCane is completely wrong. For starters, IRV would be a immensely more democratic. A 2% voter turnout??? That is absurd and could have been remedied with IRV.

Second, it will save the state money. WhalerCane mentions some possible initial investment in voting machines, but that money will be quickly made back by avoiding future runoffs. IRV would be a very wise financial investment in the state's future.

The polls in both Cary and Hendersonville show voters vastly prefer IRV over two-round runoff. They find it cost-effective and easy to use. IRV just makes sense.

Re: Luebke will keep pushing instant runoffs

Coop — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:47:27 -0400

Funny, the people of Cary gave Instant Run-Off voting a bigs thumbs-up and felt it was easy to understand:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/wake/cary/story/738391.html

Plus Instant Run-Off Voting is being used all across the country with great results -- I think the good people of North Carolina are at least as intelligent as people in those states!

I also think it's a little silly to say IRV will "cost too much" when this primary runoff is costing the state as much as $5 million and attracted a less than 2% turn-out!

Re: Berry supports lowering threshold

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:24:33 -0400

Augh. And I knew that too.

Thanks for pointing that out.

— RTB

Re: Berry supports lowering threshold

lefaim — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:22:21 -0400

The threshold is 40% Ryan. Same mistake in the print version today. You also had some other factual errors, such as saying that Mary Fant Donnan worked for Berry in 2000 even though Berry didnt take office until 2001, having been elected in November of 2000.

Re: Luebke will keep pushing instant runoffs

citizen27106 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:22:32 -0400

Why does North Carolina have primary runoffs? Most states don't.
Kentucky repealed its provision to hold gubernatorial primary runoff elections in April 08.

North Carolina should repeal provisions to hold statewide runoffs. This would be simple and not require any additional funds or chaos at the polls.

How much would IRV cost us? At least $2.44 Million on voter education per election year:

If done for the cost of a first class stamp (.42 cents)for each voter, with 5,810,420 registered voters in North Carolina, that would be $2.44 million at least. This will have to be repeated each time, and many may ignore the mailer. If done for the low ball unrealistic amount of 8.5 cents per registered voter, that amounts to approximately $500.000 or half a million dollars. Just for the most meager voter education for a very foreign way of voting. And there are other costs.

Add on to that the cost for new voting machines, extra ballot pages (last primary would have required multiple pages in order to handle IRV) extra voting booths and staff to handle the lengthier voting process.

Re: Luebke will keep pushing instant runoffs

DustinIngalls — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:57:43 -0400

IRV ought to be implemented for primaries and municipal races. You could argue that a two-candidate runoff narrows choices and brings into play different considerations than in the original vote, but so few people vote in the current runoffs that that benefit doesn't really come into play.

IRV is expensive and difficult to count accurately

citizen27106 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:46:56 -0400

How much would it cost to educate the voters on IRV? If done for the cost of a first class stamp, with 5,810,420 registered voters, that would be $2.44 million at least. This will have to be repeated each time, and many may ignore the mailer.

San Francisco spent $1.87 per registered voter for education, and the second year the number of voters prepared to rank choices was less than the first.

Our voters had a huge ballot to contend with this May.

There were 9 statewide races (in both parties) with 3 or more candidates. All of them would have had to be run using IRV, not just Labor, since there was no way to know which would need it.

Some of the ballot would have contests to rank, some would not.
When Scotland used STV (a form of ranking contests) for the first time in May 2007, they combined two different ballot types. The result - 100,000 spoiled ballots.

Our voters can't even get straight ticket voting right, and now we want to make voting more complicated? Our state has the highest undervote rate for president in the country, and not one dime is spent on educating voters about that.

Two places have been able to find voting systems that can count IRV, and that is because they are using software that has not been federally tested.
San Francisco used uncertified software for 3 years and it was revealed that there was a flaw in the IRV algorithm.

Re: Donnan: Not sure about instant runoffs

citizen27106 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:36:57 -0400

Ms. Donnan knows that in Australia they have very simple ballots and do not vote for long lists of contests like we do in the US.

Australia uses hand counted paper ballots that are very very simple.

IRV fits well when combined with simple ballots.

Scotland had hand counted paper ballots until May 2007 last year. Then they implimented STV (another form of ranked choice voting like IRV) and they also switched to computerized voting because they wanted "instant" results.

There were at least 100,000 spoiled ballot papers in that Scottish election, due to confusion (two different kinds of ballots, one regular, one with ranking required) and due to the voting machines malfunctioning.

With that many ballots spoiled, you can bet that the legitimacy of the election is in doubt for many voters.

Re: Hall: Instant runoffs could have saved state

WhalerCane — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:30:48 -0400

There was nothing succesful about Cary's IRV Pilot.

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/753961.html

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1118100.html

Nor will it save money. In San Fransisco, they have spent millions in one city alone trying to make IRV work, not to mention education costs.

IRV is a well intentioned idea that has unintended consequences. It might make sense if we had a parlimentary system where you vote just once for the party, not for each individual office.

As well as being confusing and violating the KISS principle for elections (keep it simple,) our voting equipement is unable to handle it and it would threaten the integrity of our elections.

Better ways of solving cost problem of low interest runoff include conducting them by mail, changing thresholds, eliminating runoffs, or appointing low interest offices.

Re: NAACP wants robo calls investigated

realitygirl2 — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:05:32 -0400

I am an African American female, 57 years of age. At this point in my life, I have become very very upset with a portion of the representatives of our state. We forget our history of differences against people of color within this state. I thought that if we could help enough of the citizens of this state to succeed through jobs and education then we would begin to think in a more "progressive" way. Instead, we want to bring up the old and still current feelings of animosity against people of color in spite of the successes of many. Also, the people of color have brought a great amount of economy to this state. However, we continue to allow the backwardness of out state to show to people of America. This backwardness continues to put a lease on our economy and the growth of this state. We want to have a state to be proud of and not a state to be ashame of because of this backwards mindset.