52% is barely a defeat and a huge turnout in wards against IRV could also reflect hard to prove fraud or a possibly an off-the-books well-funded GOTV campaign.
IOW, there is no smoking gun or clear indictment against IRV due to the politicking and slim margin. So I'd hope you'd be a more careful in how you treat Burlington... dlw dlw On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote: > At 01:00 AM 7/3/2013, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > >> http://www.fairvote.org/**lessons-from-burlington#.**UdOvX2LE0XY<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 wards, the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) for mayor was repealed this 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<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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