At 07:10 PM 1/11/2010, Dave Ketchum wrote:
The possible excitement tangles with the secrecy laws - reporting in a manner that identifies how ANY ONE voter voted needs preventing (needed protection of voters).
There is a problem with ranked ballots and true write-in votes: a voter may identify the ballot specifically and clearly. The voter writes in their own name. In last rank, that has practically no effect. With plurality, the write-in shows, but it then makes the ballot moot, generally. (If it's unique, it's moot!) Vote-coercers don't want the person to vote for themselves! And a mark in any other place than the write-in place invalidates the ballot, and any writing in the write-in -- any at all -- generally invalidates a vote for any other candidate.
Because Asset Voting shares this problem in a different way, my solution was to consider that true write-ins are not allowed. Rather, there is a candidate pamphlet that is printed with the name of all registered candidates. The registration fee is nominal, just enough to pay for a listing in the pamphlet with a unique name and a code to be used to vote for the candidate. There are no names on the ballot. The voter has to find the name (unless the voter is assisted, which is allowed often for people with physical difficulties). The ballot only has a number on it, marked in a way that would be difficult to specifically identify. With computer ballots, it's even easier. And there could be a look-up for the number so that the actual name of the candidate was displayed.
But it's still possible to identify ballots with very high probability. Perfect secrecy in voting is not possible to guarantee, for, usually, the risk comes from those with special access to ballots. I.e., incumbents. They can set up means to identify voters, easily, with that control. I'll note that in some democracies, each ballot is serialized on the back and this serial number is recorded with the original voting record. You can't tell who voted just by looking at the ballot, you'd have to also have list to the registry of votes made at the voting place. And when ballots are counted, this side is normally kept down.
So the protection that is practical and perhaps necessary is that it is kept *difficult* to identify a vote from a voter who does not want to be identified.
With fully-ranked ballots with enough candidates, it is also possible for a voter to vote, say, for a candidate in first preference and then use the remaining preferences to create a unique code, even if write-ins are not allowed. In San Francisco, one supervisor race had, what, 23 candidates on the ballot? Overvoting in lower ranks is moot in first rank and doesn't affect the first preference vote at all with IRV. So that's a code with 22 possibilities, even neglecting write-ins, for each of the ranking slots, and blanks can be used as well as part of the code. So there would be 23^22 possible codes. It would definitely be suspicious if many voters used more than a few double-votes. Still, what could they do about it? As it is, write-ins *must* be allowed in every election by the California constitution, and the exception for some runoff elections was a result of an argument that the runoff wasn't a separate election, it was merely part of the first one.
But that argument was totally stupid! Remember, the argument was that the winner *must* get a majority. A majority of votes! A majority of *what* votes? If the whole process is one election, it would have to be a majority of all the votes cast in the primary and runoff. But obviously, that's not it. Rather, it's a majority of votes in the runoff. It's a separate election, the only one that counts, if the first one didn't find a majority. All the votes cast in the first election are moot except for determining who is on the ballot. And thus the allowance for write-ins should have remained, and, if the method remained plurality, a plurality winner would have been allowed in the runoff. Simple. Don't run in a plurality runoff election unless as a write-in unless you are willing to risk a spoiler effect. You already know, probably, how you stand with the voters. And if I were a voter seeing a write-in candidacy, I'd want to know that not only do I prefer this write-in candidate, by a substantial margin, but also a plurality of voters prefer this candidate. I'd want to know, clearly, that there was a center squeeze effect in the primary.
Runoff voting is quite cool for minor parties, it allows them to express that first preference with reasonable sincerity, usually.
Give voters a better method in the primary, and there will be fewer runoffs and better results with sincere voting.
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