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VOTER CHOICE MASSACHUSETTS – PETITION DRIVE
“More Voices, Real Choices”
Sept 11th – Nov 18th
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ENDORSEMENTS
+ The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts
+ Common Cause Massachusetts
+ MassVOTE
+ Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities
+ and many more community organizations!
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
www.voterchoiceMA.org
ABOUT THE PROPOSAL
Voter Choice is a grassroots ballot campaign to put power back in voters’ hands through a system of ranked choice voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting, IRV). It allows voters to rank their choices rather than choosing just one candidate – and it automatically reassigns your vote to your 2nd choice if your 1st choice doesn’t win.* This ensures that no one is “throwing away their vote” by voting for the candidate they really believe in – regardless of the polls. It eliminates the problem of “spoilers” taking votes from other candidates, and gives voters the freedom to vote their values. Voter Choice would establish ranked choice voting (IRV) as the voting method for Massachusetts elections for state offices (e.g. Governor), legislative offices, and Congressional offices. The end result would be more voices and real choices in elections, and that would bring missing solutions back into the debate and onto the political agenda.
CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS
Join the groundswell to gather 100,000 signatures in the next two months (by Nov. 18!) to get Voter Choice on the ballot for the Nov 2010 election. Please consider getting out NOW with petitions, starting a team, and activating your organizations and networks for this timely reform to revitalize democracy. Only nine weeks left!
GET INVOLVED
Fast-forward to change we can not only believe in – but actually accomplish – for a democratic future and everything that depends on it! GET INVOLVED + Pledge Signatures:
+ Pledge Signatures: www.voterchoiceMA.org/pledge/
+ Attend an Event: www.voterchoiceMA.org/events/
+ Donate: www.voterchoiceMA.org/donate/
*This is the end result of a series of “instant” runoff elections (IRV) that automatically transfer the votes of the last-place finishers in each round of counting to their second- or third- choice candidate.
http://bolson.org/voting/irv/
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p>Instant Runoff Voting is better than nothing, but severely suboptimal. We can easily do better. IRV is the individual mandate when we need universal single payer health care. Let’s do it right. Any proposed new law should allow for Condorcet’s method Virtual-Round-Robin elections which are better than IRV in every way.
I find the point that you cannot partially count the ballots using the IRV method especially compelling. Imagine the nightmare of challenges and recounts under such a system. I don’t think I can support IRV.
Condorcet is (a) mathematically sweet, (b) neither intuitive nor transparent, (c) a superior system in many ways, (d) not heading to the ballot.
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p>It is actually all of the above, with an emphasis on (d).
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p>Meanwhile IRV, so called, is markedly superior to the current system of winner takes all, even if that winner is a tiny plurality.
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p>So if you want to make the system better, sign the petition. If you’d prefer the system we have, by all means talk up Condorcet, which no one is actually working to get.
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p>The perfect is the enemy of the good more times than not.
I’m going to stick with the health care debate analogy.
We know what the right answer is, universal single payer health care. We know that individual mandates are seriously flawed despite achieving the goal of ‘universal health care’.
In election methods we have IRV which is widely known to be flawed, and Condorcet’s method (which I like to call “Virtual Round Robin” Election).
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p>If I can sign for IRV or vote for IRV I will, but I get damn frustrated when people who are supposed to be on my side do things so spectacularly stupid. It’s like the perpetual pattern of premature surrender in Demcratic politics, but this time there isn’t even another side arguing, and it’s not talking down a continuum from more military spending to less or anything like that, it’s two independent choices. Picking the wrong answer straight away is just dumb.
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p>IRV adoption is growing and IRV is getting the wrong answer, in practice, not just in mathematicians theories. It may be a hard slog to get IRV in, and then a hard slog to get something better in, if people don’t chuck the whole notion of better elections and go backwards to the old status quo.
Your preferred method, method X, is horrible because it violates criterion Y. My method, Z, is superior because it meets criterion Y (but let’s not mention criteria A, B, and C, which Z fails horribly).
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p>I like the intent of IRV, but the idea of implementation on a state-wide level makes me shudder, a little.
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p>I know approval voting theoretically fails the Condorcet criterion, but it’s simple to understand, simple to conduct, and makes third parties a little more viable. Election of a non-Condorcet winner does not keep me up at night.
I’ve never liked how some people seem to define good election results circularly in terms of the Condorcet system and then surprise! find it to be a good system.
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p>In utilitarian terms of making the most people the happiest, myself and several others have run simulations that find IRV to be weak and Condorcet and others to be better.
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p>What I hate most about IRV is it’s wild chaotic results. With limited adoption in the US, IRV is getting the wrong answer in real elections
You know of what you speak. I guess election of a non-Condorcet winner should keep me up at night (but that was IRV, not approval).
Instead of just counting votes you need to transfer the ballots contents to a central location. Hand recounts under IRV would be much more complex than existing recounts. Recounts would be more likely because the order in which minor candidates are eliminated could effect the results.
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p>If you want a simple better system, then just use “Approval Voting” where voters can vote for as many candidates as they like and the votes are counted as usual.
Wait—how can we “easily” do better than IRV, bolson? What other deep-dive election reform has been in the works for so many years, has seen such success in cities like Aspen, CO; Minneapolis, MN; Cambridge, MA; countries like Ireland, Britain, Australia?
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What is this “better” reform of which you speak, which will satisfy a weary public aching for systemic change? Condorcet? Range Voting? Since these interesting but equally “weak” voting systems have never been used in any real political election, feel free to discuss all of their fascinating theoretical wonders in the laboratory. Meanwhile, we’ll be putting foot to pavement to actually make your government work better for everyone. I encourage folks to join us in doing the actual work of structural, non-partisan democratic reform.
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You said:
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I don’t follow your leap of logic here. If anything, IRV will bring more candidates who will call for progressive solutions like universal single payer health care, at a time when we are witnessing this plan royally tank at the federal level. IRV encourages innovative ideas because no candidate can ever be labeled a “spoiler” and on those grounds de-legitimized and swept aside.
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With IRV, “spoiler” and “vote splitter” candidates are a thing of the past. It means more ideas are on the table, it means voters can vote their values, and it means we will have achieved something that none of our elected leaders will do for us — create an electoral landscape in which our desires are more accurately reflected and where good ideas are empowered instead of lost in the sensation-obsessed news media.
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Re: Condorcet,
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Why quibble over the fine points of election computer simulations and engage in circular theoretical jousting about systems that have a squirrel’s toe of traction when the awful facts on the ground mock us every day:
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– Our state is essentially governed by one party
– Our third House Speaker in a row has resigned under a cloud of corruption
– Our general elections for state-wide offices are laughably non-competitive.
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Our democracy is in decay. It needs urgent revitalization. It needs competitive elections that foster accountability. It needs Instant Runoff Voting.
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From a recent Globe editorial:
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These deep-dive election reform campaigns don’t come around very often, so when they do, it is important to understand their historical potency, and to jump in with all you’ve got to ensure their success.
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I know that many of us on BMG contribute to these discussions because we know, fundamentally, that there is a better way. As one of the three BMG admins just validated by promoting my original post, IRV is one of those burning solutions that would change the electoral game of our state and set a powerful precedent for our nation.
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Please get in touch with us if you want to make IRV a reality. There are many ways to get involved!
First, as we know, no voting system is perfect and both IRV and Condorcet are no exception to that. Bolson, there are only three voting systems used for public elections in the word: Plurality, Two-Round Runoff, and IRV. Of those 3, I think you would agree, IRV is clearly superior. After all, it elects Condorcet candidates more often — your stated goal.
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p>Condorcet has nice properties in theory, though we have almost no idea of how well it would work in practice, given that no jurisdiction in the world currently uses it for public elections. Your analogy with universal, single-payer health care is therefore a false one. Because universal, single-payer health care exists in much of the world, and has a proven track record of success in practice. Condorcet, in contrast, has only theoretical benefits, and has not been even moderately vetted in competitive, political elections like IRV has.
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p>Lastly, it’s incorrect to say that Condorcet is “superior to IRV in every way.” For starters, Condorcet is vulnerable to the most obvious of preferential voting strategies: burying, also known as “turkey raising.” Consider an election between a Democrat, a Republican, and Hitler, for example. The obvious strategy for the supporters of the Democrat are to dishonestly rank the Republican last (“bury” the Republican) even know that candidate is their second choice. And the obvious strategy for the Republican is to dishonestly rank the Democrat last. If both sides engage in burying, then Hitler wins. IRV, in contrast, is immune to burying and would instead eliminate Hitler first, forcing a runoff between the Democrat and Republican. (The irony here is that due to its immunity to obvious voting strategies, IRV could very well elect the Condorcet candidate more frequently than a Condorcet method itself!)
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p>In conclusion, IRV is the best single-winner system currently in use for public elections in the world, with a track record of success, and a far better option than what we have now. Condorcet could be a good system in practice as well, but we have very little idea of how it would fair in practice, and far from perfect, it has theoretical flaws of its own that IRV does not suffer from.
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p>So please join us, bolson! This is a real chance to elect Condorcet candidates more often, and we need your help.
I agree the post requires a better explanation of how IRV operates.
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p>But if you do not understand it, how can you call it “decidedly suspect”?
…you may not be familiar with MCRD. He consistently comes across as a grumpy old man opposed to just about anything. Take whatever he says with a huge grain of salt.
http://www.voterchoicema.org/p…
The unstated assumption behind IRV and similar schemes is that the sole criterion for a good election system is how well its results mirror the preferences of the voters. But is it really that simple? It seems to me that the great advantage of our two-party, winner-take-all system over multiparty systems or systems of proportional representation is that it helps avoid what I think of as political solipsism. It forces us to engage in coalition-building and horse-trading within the big-tent parties, which are influenced both by grass-roots preferences and by political elites, with the ultimate goal being the formation of comprehensive party platforms that can command the support of a workable majority and that are relatively centrist. When one or the other party doesn’t do this well (think the GOP today), it loses power. I find this preferable to people voting for ideologically pure parties that mostly have the potential to muck things up rather than to really govern. Well, that’s a bit polemical, but anyway, I thought I’d make this informal case for something like the status quo.
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p>TedF
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p>N.B. I thought “political solipsism” was a pretty nifty coinage, but a google search shows that it’s not original. I’m not sure I’m using the term in the way others have used it.
Ted, you’re right to want to avoid “political solipsism,” but you’re wrong to think that our current voting system promotes it. Just the opposite.
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p>Currently, the major parties have no incentive to work with smaller parties in any way, either by giving concessions or by organized coalitions. In multi-party democracies, parties need to work together; otherwise, they cannot form a governing majority. It forces them to get along and compromise. It forces alternative views to be heard and reckoned with.
Well, flip that around. Why shouldn’t the smaller parties be working for change within the major national parties? Don’t the national parties have to work with their own constituent groups if they are to govern?
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p>But more importantly, what do you think of my point that the purpose of an electoral system is not just to translate voter preferences into policy, but to shape voter preferences? In a multi-party, IRV system, it’s true that there will be haggling about coalitions after the election. But what does that have to do with the voters? If I’m a member of the Green Party, say, then I can feel I’ve done my bit for the environment and let the politicians worry about the rest. Or if I’m a Communist, I can whistle the Internationale and take pride in my vote and let my party leaders decide whether to join in a coalition government with some party of the bourgeoisie while I and my comrades await the coming of the revolution. I don’t really have to think about the other parties’ priorities or how they are or are not compatible with mine. In our system, on the other hand, voters themselves have to weigh competing priorities and elect candidates who, on balance, they think are best, without regard to ideological purity. Sure, our parties may lack ideological coherence, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, and in any case, we have periodic partisan realignments (one may be underway now) that bring the parties back in line with electoral realities when they stray too far from the mainstream. Not a bad system, I think.
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p>TedF
I remember attending one of the “vote counting” parties in Cambridge a number of years ago. This ranking system may sound wonderful on paper, but it’s silly imho.
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p>The end result is that incumbents are nearly always re-elected, but it just costs more and takes more time to find out.
I remember attending one of the “vote counting” parties in Cambridge a number of years ago. This ranking system may sound wonderful on paper, but it’s silly imho.
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p>The end result is that incumbents are nearly always re-elected, but it just costs more and takes more time to find out.
now you’ll really find me annoying
but I think you are missing the point.
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p>Incumbency will always be an advantage, but curbing lesser-of-two-evils strategic voting might reasonably shift who those incumbents are.
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p>See, for example, U.S. Presidential Election 2000.
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p>By the way, although Cambridge does use a transferable ballot, like IRV, its main feature is that it is proportionately representative. Candidates win with less than a majority.
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p>IRV in single-seat elections is very different, and I don’t think Cambridge is a good or fair comparison. Not that I think the system there is a bad way to elect a legislative body such as a city council.