City of Sarasota (FL) to Place Instant Runoff Voting on the Ballot

[MH1]

Just read this from an IRV group that I belong to and thought folks here might be interested:

(posted Jan 3, 2007 )

The Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Florida (CIRV) has turned in <>3225 valid signatures to the Sarasota Supervisor of Elections' office as of today. Sarasota's antiquated and expensive runoff election system will be revolutionized at the next special election in November. Voters will decide if they want to keep the $37,000 runoff, or try out a new and innovative Instant Runoff Voting system that is reputed to increase voter turnout, reduce negative campaigning, and eliminate the spoiler effect of candidates with minority support.

After three long years, and two attempts to convince the Sarasota City Commission to adopt the charter ammendment via referendum, one previously failed initiative attempt that gathered 1440 valid signatures, a citation from police officers of a petitioner, three trespass warrants, and a pending lawsuit from Publix, the CIRV has emerged victorious. This initiative places Sarasota in a league with other cities that have already voted to improve their antiquated election systems as well, such as San
Francisco, Burlington (VT), Oakland (CA), Ferndale (MI), Pierce (WA), Minneapolis, Takoma Park (MD), and Cambridge (MA). Sarasota will be the first Florida city to try this method when the voters approve it in November.

Tonight, at 6 P.M., CIRV officially present the initiative to the city commission. They then have 30 days to develop ballot language, and then after 90 days they are required to place the initiative language on the ballot.

If you don't know what Instant Runoff Voting is, visit this link and get educated <http://www.cirv.org <http://www.cirv.org>>! ( www.cirv.org ) {ed. note: Warning: audio begins when you access the site.}

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this project. For all press and media inquiries, please contact me below. A lot of people contributed a little bit in this campaign. Fairvote contributed a lot, as did Arenza Thigpen.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Viva La Revolucion!


Anthony Lorenzo
xxx-xxx-xxxx
Chair, Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in FL
www.cirv.org

More info on IRV can be found here: http://www.fairvote.org/?page=19

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. IRV Not Meeting Expectations

IRV - I call it Instant Republican Victory, but
San Francisco has renamed it Ranked Choice Voting since it is
not so instant.

Instant Runoff Voting Not Meeting Expectations
by John Dunbar‚ Nov. 17‚ 2005

It's noteworthy that the Green Party which has long supported ranked choice voting so that there could be oxygen in the American electoral system for their politics failed to make a single endorsement, much less three for Treasurer, Assessor and City Attorney. Non was the operative ranking principle....

So far under IRV we have incumbents getting well below 50 percent and even into the low 30 percent range on the first pass being re-elected under IRV. A frontrunner in a supervisor contest was successful with under 30 percent support in the first pass....

IRV is simply a voting system. It gives the electorate a new set of tools, but it asks an enormous amount of voters, news organizations and endorsement groups. The jury on this San Francisco experiment is still out, but IRV to date falls short of its backers expectations.

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=1468

[MH1]

7. 2006 article rebuts your 2005 article.

Well, not a line by line rebuttal. But I consider it a rebuttal because it doesn't seem likely that the system would be spreading in California if it was considered such a "failure".

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voting25dec25,1,404720.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

But the cities of Davis, Calif.; Oakland and Minneapolis, as well as Pierce County, Wash.; have passed ballot measures that will lead to "instant runoff" or "proportional representation" voting in city and county elections. There was no organized opposition to the measures.

For people who are interested in ending the "lesser of two evils" system most of us have now, please read the entire article, there is a lot of good stuff in there.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. Alameda County set to spend $15 Million on voting machines

Alameda County is planning to buy "Vapor Ware" from Sequoia -
in other words, voting machines with software that doesn't yet exist,
so they can have IRV:

November 8, 2006 SF Weekly:

Alameda County has a new "instant-runoff" law, and has a contract with Sequoia to provide systems to run a ranked-choice election — but not until 2008, the year after San Francisco hopes to have such a system in place. There's nothing to guarantee that the company will produce such a system, then get it tested and officially certified by the state, in time for next year's mayoral vote...

Instead of the existence of an actual product, or even formal guarantees, Arntz is depending on Sequoia's "reputation, and what they've proven. They've proven that when they get a contract they execute on it," the elections director said in an interview. ..

The fact is, however, that Sequoia has received its share of complaints about meeting performance standards in places such as Illinois and New Mexico..
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2006-11-08/news/smith_full.html

To see the long scary list of trainwrecks in Illinois
in 2006 with their new Sequoia machines:


http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=date&selectstate=IL&selectvendor=&selectproblemtype=ALL

That is what Sequoia has proven they are capable of.

So much for accurate and transparent elections.

[MH1]

5. I agree that IRV should not be used as an excuse

for an unverifiable voting process.

Sequoia machines are not necessary to implement IRV. An unverifiable process is no more necessary to implement IRV than any other voting method.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. IRV greatly increases costs for elections

The voter education required for IRV cost
San Francisco nearly $2.00 per registered voter.

For many counties, that is about 1/3 their annual budget.

And you have to do it every election.

Report on IRV Costs by California Public Employees’ Retirement System trustees:

It has been mathematically demonstrated that the IRV method can result
in no winner being selected. It can also be demonstrated that in IRV
elections the voters who cast votes for the lowest candidate have the
opportunity to vote a second time, while those voting for a more popular
candidate vote only once. Thus, these “fringe” voters could decide the
winner....

Key to the positive process, however, was ensuring the voters
were aware they were going to be asked to rank their top three choices
and that they understood the process...

San Francisco spent almost $800,000 on voter education, or
roughly $2.00 for each registered voter in San Francisco.
It is also important to note that the primary sources of
information for the voters were newspapers, 57%, and television, 31%.
Neither of which are available to CalPERS. Only 38% of the voters polled
indicated they learned about RCV from literature distributed by the San
Francisco Department of Elections, which is the principal method
CalPERS would use to inform members.

While there are logistical and procedural issues with moving to an IRV
method, the main concern exists with the confusion any “ranked” system,
including IRV, would bring to the members. Any savings realized by
moving to IRV would be lost with the education program required to
acquaint members with the new system.
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/board-cal-agenda/agendas/bpac/200605/item11.pdf

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Chuck Herrin on IRV - like a "flying car"

Here is what Chuck Herrin had to say to our state lawmakers about IRV:

Instant Runoff Voting (By Hand, of Course. It CAN Be Done):
I think that IRV is a fabulous goal, long term.
It stands to greatly reduce runoff costs and other problems once we
have systems that can reliably handle it.
The problem right now is that our electronic voting systems
cannot reliably count straight races,
and even the DRE manufacturers have said that they are not ready for IRV.

Complicating things, IRV introduces a more confusing system in terms
of auditability and security, since the ballots are more complex and
normal indicators such as exit polls will not be able to easily
reflect IRV results.

Tracing back the will of the voter in the event of problems or
fraud would be more difficult with IRV until a reliable procedure
and design is in place, and any abuses are much less likely to
be detected since the whole point of the IRV system is avoiding recounts.

That's not to say that it can't be done, just that it is extremely
important to get it right the first time, with proper design and certification.

Instant Runoff Voting is a great goal for us to work toward,
but if we need to get a system in place for 2006 and 2008,
IRV is not logistically viable.
For IRV to work, we need systems that are trustworthy and reliable,
and that takes more time and money than we have available
before the next election.

An analogy I use for IRV is the flying car - definitely possible,
and a great idea, but right now we won't get there by strapping a
missile to a Yugo.
Would it fly? Sure - but I don't think it's what we want to rely
on for safe and reliable transportation.

I would be happy to work with you towards IRV as a long-term goal,
as I think it has merit as a long-term solution when
properly designed and tested.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/sinceyouasked.htm

If you pass IRV as a requirement in Sarasota, you tie your
voters to whatever system the crooks at the testing labs
certify to do IRV with.

Right now, NO voting system is currently certified to run
IRV.

Unless you are proposing hand counted paper ballots, then
you are going to tie Sarasota to the voting machine companies
will.

And if the only voting machine that has IRV software is
a paperless Diebold machine, then you have to buy it,
or you will get sued for not implementing IRV.

Unless your officials are willing to hand count the contest.

But there ain't gonna be any hand counting in Florida

[MH1]

6. Education costs will diminish as ranked choice voting becomes more commonly known.

Voting on the current system we have where I vote, and the system in place before that, took a little education, too. The difference is that anyone I see at a polling place already knows how to use these machines so it is easier for me to get a question answered. As ranked choice voting becomes more common, it will also become "common knowledge" and a person with a question about it will be able to have that question answered by just about anyone.

As for cost generally, I think that it is worth some increase in cost to have an election that effectively reflects the wishes of the voters. The current system does not do that. (See: 2000 Presidential election, for most egregious example.)

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

9. IRV Makes Vote Rigging Easier

Just as quick as we clean up elections,
someone comes along with a way to muck them up.

IRV Screws up elections royally.

It increases the costs of Recounts, and its the candidates
who have to pay for the recounts.

It ties you to what ever voting machine company
is willing to provide the software.

WHy should we screw up election integrity so
that Greens can peel off support for Democratic candidates?

IRV is just another way to rig the vote so
that no one can tell what happened.

Find a platform and run on it, instead of
tampering with our elections.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. IRV = Instant Republican Victory

IRV is supposed to make people feel less guilty
for supporting Dems, but it still bleeds off support
for DEMS, and helps the GOP.

Any DEM in their right mind is not going to
spend any time campaigning for the Green Party.

We can't afford to bleed off support to the Greens
and lose another election and another election.

Santorum supporters donated to the Green Party
Signature Drive, guess why ?

Because DEMS are stupid and bleed off support for
Greens, but GOP are NOT stupid and don't vote for Greens.

DEMS are the loser here.

[Bill Bored]

10. Maybe they should figure out how to COUNT THE VOTES first? nt