Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

IRV Bill needs co-sponsors. Call your Reps – deadline Feb 4th.

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HD 02026 is being introduced by Representative Alice Wolf of Cambridge to allow cities and towns to adopt a “ranked choice” or “instant runoff” form of voting.

Please ask your state representative and state senator to co-sponsor (deadline Feb. 4) and/or support this bill.

There is not much time.  Please call or email tomorrow.  With a little help from IRV, we could give our nation back to it’s people.

For more information, see Citizens for Voter Choice on Facebook

I know 99% of you know what IRV is. For the other 1%, here is a tutorial:

Please share widely!
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Comments

    • …how it would work or why you would want it im multi-seat elections.  IRV is desirable if the objective is to have someone win a majority in a single race in which there are more than two candidates.  Multi-seat races should just be decided by top x number of vote-getters, unless there is some modified way to do this to account for a tie for the last spot.

      • But this is proposing the option for local towns and municipalities so I am not sure how it would work in multi candidate races. I intensely dislike PR and the way it has worked in Cambridge, though that has as much to do, if not more, with the fact that its at large and overly complicated. For a single seat with multi candidates it makes sense, and combined with fusion parties, could really make races competitive across the Commonwealth and the country. I am sure Jill Stein would have gotten a lot more votes this past election had IRV been in place.  

        • I’m pretty sure they are different things, with PR involving percentages of party representation, which in MA wouldn’t apply to non-partisan city races anyway.

    • Instead of having A and B run for 1 seat, consider candidates A, A’, B, and B’ running for two seats.  A and A’ are very similar, and B and B’ are very similar (though the two pairs are quite different).

      <

      p>Whichever pair is more popular, say the B and B’ pair, wins.  It might be
      A 7
      A’ 7
      B 8
      B’ 8

      <

      p>Now candidate C and C’ get in the race.  Just as in the video, the new results are

      <

      p>A 6
      A’ 6
      B 5
      B’ 5
      C 4
      C’ 4

      <

      p>The same spoiler effect exists with multiple seat races, and IRV works just as well.

      <

      p>

      <

      p>The Cambridge system isn’t IRV.  For one thing, they don’t count all the votes; frankly, I’m not even sure why what they do is legal.  They take a statistical sample for redistribution, which is enough to make the head spin.  It’s perfectly reasonable to not like the Cambridge style but still support IRV.

  2. although I don’t like the part in the middle with the conjecture that the election devolves to name calling.

  3. I just called and spoke with my rep’s assistant.  I get the impression that they are busy and that this bill is not a priority.  Please help them make it a priority.

  4. Absent strong public demand, why would any legislator, especially one from the majority party, support this?  As to public demand, I doubt that 10% of the public could define IRV.

    • We’re trying to rally strong public demand.   We could certainly be absent, but what would that accomplish.
      True, a good portion of the general electorate probably has little idea what IRV is, which means we have a lot of work to do.  Just because they are unaware today does not mean they won’t be thrilled to rank their votes in the future.

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