Warren (and all), The amount of commitment you have to finding fault with IRV (and with me) is impressive. I think my Blog refutations of your analysis of the Burlington IRV election are correct. Readers can find them here http://www.fairvote.org/blog/2009/03/response-to-faulty-analysis-of-burlington-irv-election/ and here http://www.fairvote.org/blog/2009/03/more-on-warren-smiths-and-anthony-gierzynskis-flawed-analysis/
You have now offered a lengthy rebuttal to my rebuttals of your original analysis. Unfortunately I simply can't justify spending the amount of time it would take to repeatedly refute all of your repeated claims. I will just respond to a few of the opening claims as they are personal attacks that specifically impugn my integrity and competence. Although your errors in these sections are typical of errors you make throughout your entire essay, I have more important work to do, than to correct all of your erroneous statements. 1. You have several factual errors regarding the rate of valid ballots in the Burlington IRV election (which was in fact better than the recent presidential election in Burlington). Setting aside your rude tone, let me simply correct you on the following...firstly, there were not eight invalid ballots. The four ballots in the "exhausted ballot" category were not four additional problem ballots. They were the exact same four invalid ballots the machine tally showed and were described as "invalid." That is an understandable error on your part, as the software and others did not use consistent terminology (e.g. "over-vote," "exhausted" or "invalid") to describe these four ballots that the scanner determined had two candidates marked as first choices. But there were not in fact even four invalid ballots (first round exhausted ballots). You were apparently unaware that the recount performed by the Burlington Board of Civil Authority found that three of these invalid over-votes (all in Ward One) in the Burlington IRV election, were in fact valid votes, with stray marks in the write-in oval-- such that human counters unanimously agreed that voter intent was clear (two were for Wright and one for Kiss). That left one invalid ballot, which unfortunately was in a ward that was not recounted (Kurt Wright, who had called for the recount called it off half-way through saying he was satisfied the election was counted properly on election night), so the actual number of invalid ballots may well have been zero, but I did my calculation with one presumed invalid ballot, which works out to a valid ballot rate of 99.99% (compared to 99.96% in the non-IRV Presidential election you reference.) You also point out that a few voters marked their ballot with only a first and fifth choice, and I would agree that these handful of voters may have intended to indicate W>anyone>K. FairVote, and I, recommended to the city in 2005 to use an algorithm that exhausts a ballot if more than a single ranking is skipped, but the city council adopted a regulation that ignores all skips. However, in nearly every case these odd ballots ended up counting for the voters' first choice in the final runoff tally, so these skips did not invalidate any votes. The point I was making was that claims by the defenders of plurality elections that ranked ballots are "too complicated" for voters and would result in vast numbers of spoiled ballots are not supported by the evidence. I stand by that. 2. You make a big point of questioning my integrity, (Even if you doubt my research skills, such that you wouldn't use the term "IRV expert" or "election method analyst" I suspect your choosing to call me a "propagandist" is calculated). You state that I did not "disclose" my political history, or my founding of the company that wrote the software that counted the votes. You are incorrect on all counts. While it is true that I do not begin every essay I write by listing my prior political history, it is certainly no secret. There is a bias among many mainstream politicians against members of third parties, so I don't stress my third party history in my work with Democratic and Republican elected officials around the country (but neither do I deny it). However, people in Burlington are well aware of my partisan history (indeed, I used to be president of the city council), my bio on the FairVote web site lists these offices, and my March 17 Blog refuting your analysis, which you object to, for example states: "I am used to personal attacks having served a decade on the city council and another decade as a state legislator as a member of the Progressive Party. I have also worked as an election administrator for non-profit organizations when not working as an analyst for FairVote." Also, I never served with Bob Kiss in the legislature (he was elected after I left the legislature). Also I did not found and have no connections to the company that wrote the IRV tallying software as you repeatedly assert (as if that were a conflict of interest). Again, this is an understandable error on your part (I just wish you weren't so nasty about expressing it). Your mistake stems from the fact that the software was developed by a company called Voting Solutions, and I had a completely different consulting business with a similar name (but no overlap of personnel) called Election Solutions. I should also note that I have no connection to Premier Election Solutions (the new name of the former Diebold), so that you don't start spreading that false rumor across the Internet. Once your kind of erroneous statements get into cyberspace they seem to live on forever, and it gets tiring refuting old errors over and over again as new people read and repeat them. Again, I have more important work to do, than refute all of your claims, but I assure readers that nearly all of them are simply false, or debatable at best. We have different notions about how to make meaningful progress improving American elections, of the usefulness of Bayesian Regret as a standard, as well as different interpretations of facts, but I will attempt to be civil. We could all use a little more of that, I suspect Terry Bouricius ----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Smith" <[email protected]> To: "election-methods" <[email protected]> Cc: "kathy.dopp" <[email protected]>; "wdh3" <[email protected]>; "Jack Nagel" <[email protected]>; "Anthony Gierzynski" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 3:02 PM Subject: [EM] Burlington 2009 -- analysis + responses to attacks by IRVpropagandists The analysis of the IRV pathologies in the Burlington VT 2009 Mayor race: http://RangeVoting.org/Burlington.html Subsequent attacks on that analysis by IRV-propagandists, and our responses to those attacks: http://RangeVoting.org/BurlResponses.html -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
