At 04:39 AM 6/6/2005, Markus Schulze wrote:
the final report on the voting systems study of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota has been published [...]
Here is what is in the newsletter referenced by Mr. Schulze, interspersed with my comments:
... Last month, after looking at feedback from local Leagues around the state, the LWVMN Board adopted the following positions:
That's the core of it. We have The League of Women Voters, and it has a Board (I've been unable to find out quickly how the Board is selected), and that Board takes positions on issues without developing, I'd guess, an informed consensus among the members, and publishes them as the position of the organization, thus burying in the noise any dissent among the members. This is absolutely classic. And quite frustrating, if one happens to be on the short end of the stick.
� LWVMN supports the option to use Instant Runoff Voting to elect State or Local Officials in single seat elections. LWVMN also supports the continued use of the plurality voting system in our elections.
In other words, continue a system which *could* produce totally disastrous results. Some would argue that it already has, but that would be, possibly, a partisan statement if applied only to the U.S. But in other areas of the world, plurality victories can be found with, for example, the election of Adolf Hitler.
Yes, if IRV were introduced, this particular danger would be reduced. But that is not exactly how they phrased it.
� The LWVMN Board reserves the right to decide the appropriateness of legislation proposing to replace the plurality voting system with the Instant Runoff System at the state level.
Reserves the right against what? I find this statement mysterious; it would make sense only if their position statement created some kind of final judgement.... but, then again, Boards don't always use perfect language. Come to think of it, neither do I.
� LWVMN strongly supports the right of local governments and municipalities to choose Instant Runoff Voting for their own local elections.
I'm glad that they support the right of governments to choose. But, it would seem, they do not support the right of governments to choose other methods. I find this, indeed, strange for an organization devoted to promoting democracy.
� Voters need to understand how votes in an election are tabulated and how a candidate actually wins an election. If a change in elections systems occurs, LWVMN strongly supports adequate voter education.
For sure.
� LWVMN does not support Approval, Borda Count, or Condorcet as alternative voting systems.
Now, here is what is really weird. I've read the materials from the LWVMN. They don't explain why this choice was made. Once again, a small board makes decisions for a large number of people. Sure, the individuals remain free, but they are faced, if they don't support the decision, with a Hobson's choice when it comes to supporting the League.
Something that I've never seen mentioned about Approval Voting is that it simply means that ballots with more than one candidate marked won't be spoiled. That alone would be a huge advance in equity. Yes, it appears to violate the "one person, one vote" principle, but what has happened here is that a slogan intended to sum up a principle has *become* the principle. The principle is that citizens should have equal voting rights. In the context in which "one person, one vote" was invented, I strongly suspect, Approval voting wasn't on the table.
The existing system spoils a ballot if a person accidentally votes for more than one. Yet there is clearly information remaining about the voter's preferences if this happens. The voter definitely prefers one of the two candidates over all others; at the very least, such a vote should help both candidates over all other candidates, though not over each other. Which is exactly what counting the vote would accomplish. Essentially, all that has to be done to implement Approval Voting is to stop trashing multiple votes.
(I'm only considering single-office elections here....)
To find out what these terms mean, go to www.lwvmn.org/ and click on the link to Facts and Issues Report on Alternative Voting Systems.
It seems to be a decent report. However, over the last day it keeps coming back to me, the question of why we consider ballots to be spoiled which have an extra candidate marked. I can't think of any reason why, other than a pig-headed adherence to "one person, one vote," completely forgetting the *purpose* of the rule, which is equality of voting rights. The fact is that in other places we allow a single person to have more than one vote. In multiple-seat elections, for example. If a double-marked ballot is "more than one vote per person", then why not multiple votes cast by a person in a multiple-seat election? (Yes, this is pretty silly. But the one person, one vote rule was actually given in a state supreme court decision in Minnesota, as quoted in the Facts and Issues Report referenced above. However, in the case involved, there were other aspects to the voting method being used in Duluth that made it more reasonable to call the situation one which allows some persons more votes than others.
Approval Voting amounts to nothing more than striking out the rule that spoils multiply-marked ballots. As has often been noted, it doesn't require any voting machine changes (except if machines automatically reject multiply-marked ballots, and since the machines have to be able to accomodate multiple-seat elections, they must be programmable not to do this).
What if we had IRV with Approval? What is that called? ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
