3. Dopp: Encourages the use of complex voting
systems and
[FairVote promotes] electronic-balloting
Most government IRV elections are in fact
conducted with hand-count paper ballots,
including national elections in Australia,
Ireland and Papua New Guinea. FairVote is a
leading advocacy organization for IRV, but it is
joined in supporting IRV by numerous other
organizations and individuals, including the
founders of TrueVote Maryland, and election
integrity leaders David Cobb and Anthony Lorenzo.
As to FairVote, it advocates the replacement of
all paperless voting machines with paper-ballot
systems, such as optical scanners. All three of
the major voting machine vendors have created
optical scan options for ranked-choice ballots.
Not all of these are ideal (some, for example,
cannot handle more than three rankings), but
FairVote expects IRV elections to be
overwhelming run on paper ballot systems in the
future. FairVote advocates that all such
machines store a redundant electronic record of
each ballot, as well as a paper ballot to allow
for better fraud detection, and to simplify
ranked ballot tabulations. Rather than making
such elections more complicated, this would
simplify the process, while improving transparency and integrity.
This is a repeat of the last issue to some
extent. Voting security experts are generally
concerned with the increasing reliance of the
voting systems on computers. *Computers are
extraordinarily complex, they are the most
complex machines and systems ever made.* There
are some who go so far as to advocate entirely
manual systems of counting votes. While IRV can
certainly be hand-counted. it's difficult to sell
it in the U.S. for hand counting, and there are a
number of jurisdictions which have approved IRV
"pending implementation." And until the money
arrives with the political will is there for
spending it, there is no IRV. Those places have
voting equipment that could handle other, simpler
voting reforms, such as Approval, Bucklin Voting
(now called Fallback Voting by Steven J. Brams),
Borda Count, or Range Voting, and the general
agreement among voting systems experts -- as
distinct from "political scientists" -- is that
these other methods are superior to IRV. Because
the other methods simply involve counting the
marks on the ballot, in each position, they are
all easier to count and to audit.
Consider an IRV audit. It's not enough to look at
the totals for each rank. One has to look at each
round, the ballots transferred in that round,
which means that the ballots contain pairs of
marks, many different pairs. Suppose A is
eliminated. On some ballots A might be in first
position, on some in second position, on some in
third position, and so forth. Then each of those
ballots, where A is eliminated, there is the
candidate in next position. The exact sequence of
eliminations that took place in the original
election must be followed. Compare this with just
counting the marks in each position and adding
them up. And FairVote activists can deny the
complexity issue with a straight face? It's
complex. The questions, properly, should be, "Is
it worth it?" "Are there other possible reforms
that might accomplish similar goals that are less
complex or less expensive? "If we are going to
change, shouldn't we decide on the best reform by
careful comparison of all the options?" FairVote
only wants us to think about IRV vs. Plurality,
on the one hand, or IRV vs. Top-two runoff, on
the other. And the arguments they give for the
two situations are quite different. Against
Plurality, they point out the spoiler effect, and
the desirability of a majority. Since top-two
runoff does fix the spoiler effect -- as well as
IRV -- they talk expense, for the most part. But
they also talk "majority," and manipulate the
meaning of the word to make it appear that IRV
finds majorities, when the fact is that it does not and top-two runoff does.
But we start to go too far afield. IRV is complex
to count, far more complex than other systems.
4. Dopp: Confuses voters
All the evidence shows that voters are not
confused by IRV. The rate of spoiled ballots did
not increase in any of the U.S. cities when they
switched to IRV. For example, Burlington (VT)
used IRV for the first time in a hotly contested
race for mayor in 2006, and among those casting
votes in the IRV race fully 99.9% of ballots
were valid, with the very highest valid ballot
rate in the ward in town with the highest number
of low-income voters. San Franciscos rate of
valid ballots in the most closely contested race
in its first citywide election with IRV was
99.6%. Furthermore, exit polls have been
conducted in every city having an IRV election
for the first time in the modern era. Each
survey shows that voters overwhelmingly prefer
IRV to their old method of elections.
5. Dopp: Confusing, complex and time-consuming to implement and to count
IRV certainly is simpler for election officials
and voters than conducting a whole separate
runoff election to find a majority winner. It is
more complicated to administer than a single
vote-for-one election, but election officials
have adjusted well to their new
responsibilities. Note that the winning
threshold for an IRV election, as with any
election, must be specified in the law.
6. Dopp: Makes post election data and exit poll
analysis much more difficult to perform
To date, IRV election can make it easier to do
post-election and exit poll analysis. Because
optical scan counts with IRV require capturing
of ballot images, San Francisco (CA) and
Burlington (VT) were able to release the data
files showing every single ballot's set of
rankings thereby allowing any voter to do a
recount and full analysis on their own.
Exit polls can be done just as well under IRV
rules as vote-for-one rules. California requires
a manual audit in its elections, which has been
done without difficulty in San Franciscos IRV
elections. Manual audits should be required for
all elections, regardless of whether IRV is used or not.
7. Dopp: Difficult and time-consuming to manually count
Manual counts can take slightly longer than
vote-for-one elections, but aren't difficult,
unless many different races on a ballot need to
go to a runoff count. As cited earlier, Irish
election administrators can count more than a
million ballots by hand in hotly contested
presidential elections in one standard workday.
8. Dopp: Difficult and inefficient to manually audit
IRV can be manually audited just as well as
vote-for-one elections, although it does take
more effort (since voters must be allowed to
express more information on their ballot). A
manual audit can either be done using a random
sample of ballots from all jurisdictions, or a
random sample of ballots from a random sample
of voting machines, or by a complete re-tally
from a random sample of voting machines. A
complete re-tally of all ballots (a recount)
is, of course, possible but unnecessary unless a court recount is ordered.
9. Dopp: Could necessitate counting all
presidential votes in Washington, D.C.
If the Electoral College were abolished and IRV
were then adopted for future national popular
vote elections for president, there would need
to be national coordination of the tally in
order to know which candidates got the fewest
votes nationwide and needed to be eliminated
just as in Ireland. But the actual counting of
ballots does not need to be federalized any more
than if IRV was not used, and could be conducted
by counties, states or whatever level is easiest
and most secure for that jurisdiction. Note that
voters certainly would be pleased to have a
majority winner in elections for our highest office.
10. Dopp: IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system
IRV neither "entrenches" nor "overthrows" the
two-party system. It simply ensures no candidate
wins over majority opposition. If a minor party
has the support to earn a majority of vote, it
can win in an IRV election. If not, it will not win.
IRV is a winner-take-all method, like plurality
voting and two-round runoffs. However, IRV
allows independents and candidates with minor
parties to run without being labeled as
spoilers. This may reveal a higher level of
support for these parties, and if these parties
are attractive to voters, their support may grow.
Relating to multi-party representation, any
winner-take-all, single seat election method
tends towards two dominant parties, at least in
any given geographic area. To allow for multiple
parties to regularly win office, jurisdictions
should adopt a form of proportional
representation in which candidates will be able
to win office with less than 50% of the vote.
Note that Australias IRV elections are often
cited as an example of two-party domination. But
while the two major parties (one of which is
divided into two parties, with one party running
in one particular region of the country)
dominant representation, the minor parties
contest elections very vigorously, with an
average of seven candidates contesting house
elections in 2007. That year the Green Party did
not win any seats in house elections, but it ran
candidates in every district and earned 8% of
the national vote. It naturally would prefer a
proportional representation system, but supports
IRV over alternate winner-take-all systems and
uses it to elect its internal leaders.
11. Dopp: "Could deliver unreasonable outcomes
."
Unreasonable outcomes are less likely with IRV
than with any other single-seat voting method in
use today. Every single voting method ever
proposed can deliver "unreasonable outcomes" in
some scenarios, but real-world experience has
shown IRV to be one of the best methods. The
overwhelming number of election method experts
agree that IRV is fairer and more democratic
than plurality voting even if some might prefer
other theoretical voting methods. The American
Political Science Association (the national
association of political science professors) has
incorporated IRV into their own constitution for
electing their own national president. Roberts
Rules of Order recommends IRV over plurality voting.
12. Dopp: Not all ballots are treated equally
This charge reveals a lack of understanding of
how IRV works. All ballots are treated equally.
Every one has one and only one vote in each
round of counting. Just as in a traditional
runoff, your ballot counts first for your
favorite candidate and continues to count for
that candidate as long as he or she has a chance to win.
Your rankings should be considered as backup
choices. Your ballot will only count for one of
your lesser preferences if your favorite
candidate has been eliminated. Every ballot
counts as one vote for your highest ranked
candidate who is still in the running in every round of counting.
Note that courts have upheld IRV for this very
reason and Roberts Rules of Order recommends it
over plurality voting. For quotations from a
court decision upholding IRV's equal treatment
of ballots, please see <1> below.
13. Dopp: Costly.
The two main expenses associated with the
transition to IRV are voting equipment upgrades
and voter education. Both of these are one-time
costs that will be quickly balanced out by the
savings coming from eliminating a runoff
election in each election cycle. In San
Francisco, for example, the city and county
saved approximately $3 million by not holding a
separate runoff election in 2005, easily
covering the mostly one-time costs spent in 2003-2004 to implement the system.
In North Carolina, counties spent $3.5 million
for the Superintendent of Public Instruction
runoff in 2004, an election with a statewide
turnout of only 3%. In 2007, IRV elections in
Cary (NC) avoided the need for a runoff in one
of the city council districts that would have cost taxpayers $28,000.
An effective voter education program can also be
done for relatively little money by learning
from what types of education worked well in
other jurisdictions and what types did not
with the biggest factors being a good ballot
design, clear voter instructions and effective
pollworker training, in that order. In a report
to the Vermont General Assembly, the Vermont
Secretary of State estimated that, based on how
well IRV was implemented in Vermonts largest
city of Burlington in 2006, voter education for
statewide IRV in Vermont would cost less than
$0.25 per registered voter. In a city of more
than 100,000 people, Cary spent less than
$10,000 on voter education with highly favorable reactions from voters.
14. Dopp: Increases the potential for
undetectable vote fraud and erroneous vote counts
"
Actually, just the opposite is true, so long as
paper ballots (such as optical scan) are used.
The reason that any attempts at fraud are easier
to detect with IRV is that there is a redundant
electronic record (called a ballot image) of
each ballot that can be matched one-to-one with
the corresponding paper ballot. Cities such as
San Francisco (CA) and Burlington (VT) release
these ballot files so that any voter can do
their own count. Without such redundant ballot
records (which are not typical with vote-for-one
elections) there is no way to know for certain
if the paper ballots have been altered prior to a recount.
15. Dopp: Violates some election fairness principles
."
This charge reveals either a general lack of
understanding, or intentional
miss-representation. Every single voting method
ever devised must violate some "fairness
principles" as some of these criteria are
mutually exclusive. Dopp's example in appendix B
of "Arrow's fairness condition" (the Pareto
Improvement Criterion) completely misunderstands
the criterion, and gives an example that has no
relevance to it (and contrary to her
implication, IRV complies with this criterion).
IRV works essentially the same as a traditional
runoff election to find a majority winner. When
the field narrows to the two finalists in the
final instant runoff count, the candidate with
more support (ranked more favorably on more
ballots) will always win. Some theoretical
voting methods may satisfy some "fairness'
criteria, such as monotonicity, but then violate
other more important criteria such as the
majority criterion, or the later-no-harm criterion.
Endnotes
<1> The rank order ballot used in instant runoff
voting (and other voting systems) is known by
political scientists as the "single transferable
vote" or STV. This balloting procedure has been
consistently upheld in United States courts as
constitutional and upholding the "one person,
one vote" principle. As an example, here is what
the Michigan Court ruled in upholding the use of
instant runoff voting in an Ann Arbor, Michigan
Mayoral race in a 1975 challenge:
"Under the "M.P.V. System" [IRV], however, no
one person or voter has more than one effective
vote for one office. No voter's vote can be
counted more than once for the same candidate.
In the final analysis, no voter is given greater
weight in his or her vote over the vote of
another voter, although to understand this does
require a conceptual understanding of how the
effect of a "M.P.V. System" is like that of a
run-off election. The form of majority
preferential voting employed in the City of Ann
Arbor's election of its Mayor does not violate
the one-man, one-vote mandate nor does it
deprive anyone of equal protection rights under
the Michigan or United States Constitutions."
page 11, Stephenson v Ann Arbor Board of City Canvassers File No. 75-10166 AW
Michigan Circuit Court for the County of Jackson
The Judge also observed on page 7,
"Each voter has the same right at the time he
casts his or her ballot. Each voter has his or
her ballot counted once in any count that
determines whether one candidate has a majority
of the votes. . . . Far better to have the
People's will expressed more adequately in this
fashion, than to wonder what would have been the
results of a run-off election not provided for."
to be continued with "Dopp: 4. Confuses voters
"
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