At 01:00 AM 7/3/2013, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
http://www.fairvote.org/lessons-from-burlington#.UdOvX2LE0XY (March 4, 2010)
Let me cut to the chase. Despite winning in five of the city's
seven wards, the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) for mayor was
repealed this week by a margin of less than 4% in Vermont's largest
city of Burlington.
I was just looking at this post and was struck by the way in which
the facts were presented. Because wards can have different numbers of
voters, and because vote margins make a huge difference, winning in
the most wards means very little. But Richie is trying to present a
series of "Hey, we almost won" arguments. So I decide to look at the
election. The results from some of the earlier IRV elections are no
longer available, or, if they are, they are not easy to find. Turns
out that some of the places where vote counts were maintained were
web sites hosted by IRV supporters, and those have disappeared.
Richie, in that blog post, referred to a web site that was used for
that campaign. Gone.
History disappears, often.
http://www.burlingtonvt.gov/WorkArea/LinkIT.aspx?itemID=6116
Question 5. - Charter Change - Eliminate IRV
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 totals
Yes 264 185 292 1203 545 477 1006 3972
No 405 428 510 606 793 490 437 3669
Richie is right. 5 out of 7 wards did support IRV. However, if we
look more closely, it is more divided than that.
Percentages:
Yes 39.5% 30.2% 36.4% 66.5% 40.7% 49.3% 69.7% 52.0%
Notice that Ward 6 *almost* approved the initiative to eliminate IRV.
Wards 4 and 7 very strongly voted to eliminate it.
We have two wards very much opposed to IRV, and four who wanted to
keep it, and one on the fence, really.
Notice the wards where the number of votes were greatest. The wards
with the two highest vote totals also had the largest number of voters.
Under conditions in Burlingon, conditions caused IRV to effectively
damage the Republicans, or at least Republicans would see it that way.
Richie wrote:
In the repeal, the two wards where Wright ran most strongly voted
against IRV by a margin of two-to-one after supporting it when
first passed in 2005.
I haven't checked this, but it's likely. Actual experience with IRV
soured them. So?
The rest of the city voted 60% to keep IRV.
He's just manipulating statistics to create an impression. While the
overall vote was not a landslide, it was still a clear margin, 52%.
Notice that he states the 60% figure. Okay, I'll cherry-pick my own:
The two largest wards in the city, by turnout in this election, Wards
4 and 7 -- voted 67.0% to dump IRV.
IRV produces erratic results. It's a shame that Burlington, instead
of returning to top-two runoff with below 40% being the margin that
triggers a runoff, was not educated in voting systems. This is
precisely how FairVote's monomaniacal focus is harming voting system
reform. The runoff system they went back to *could* produce the same
results. There are simple systems that could avoid the problem, but
FairVote has campaigned against them and has conspired to prevent
their testing anywhere.
(If "conspired" seems strong, then let FairVote actually show that
they support real voting system reform, by opening up and truly
suppporting election science, instead of arguing against it and
creating mountains of misleading propaganda.)
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