Subject was: Re: [EM] Historical perspective about FairVote organization
At 12:32 PM 3/17/2013, Richard Fobes wrote:
I agree that using better ballots and better vote-counting methods
in real situation -- using real data -- is essential for making real progress.
A very unusual opportunity for voting system reform has recently presented.
The Arizona House of Representatives just passed HB2518, which
provides an approval voting method for use in municipalities which
choose to adopt it.
For background, all Arizona municipalities but one hold nonpartisan
elections. The exception is Tucson, which holds party primaries and
then partisan elections. (A "partisan election" has the candidate's
party affiliations on the ballot, and, also, provides for ballot
placement for parties, based on petitions and continued election perfomance.)
The measure allows voters in a "primary or first election" to vote
for more than one candidate and then the top two candidates go on to
the second election.
1 Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
2 Section 1. Title 16, chapter 4, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended
3 by adding article 8.2, to read:
4 ARTICLE 8.2. OPTIONAL CITY AND TOWN APPROVAL VOTING
5 16-559. City and town approval voting; requirements
6 A. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER STATUTE, A CITY OR TOWN IN THIS STATE MAY
7 BY ORDINANCE ESTABLISH AND USE A SYSTEM OF APPROVAL VOTING IN THAT CITY'S OR
8 TOWN'S PRIMARY OR FIRST ELECTION. AN APPROVAL VOTING SYSTEM SHALL PROVIDE
9 FOR THE FOLLOWING:
10 1. THE VOTER IN THE PRIMARY OR FIRST ELECTION SHALL BE PERMITTED TO
11 VOTE FOR AS MANY CANDIDATES FOR A SINGLE OFFICE AS THE VOTER CHOOSES TO
12 APPROVE.
13 2. THE TWO CANDIDATES WHO RECEIVE THE HIGHEST AND SECOND HIGHEST
14 NUMBER OF VOTES IN THE PRIMARY OR FIRST ELECTION SHALL ADVANCE TO
THE GENERAL
15 OR RUNOFF ELECTION FOR THAT CITY OR TOWN WITHOUT REGARD TO WHETHER ANY ONE
16 CANDIDATE HAS RECEIVED A MAJORITY OF THE VOTES CAST FOR THAT OFFICE.
17 3. THE BALLOT AND ALL OTHER VOTING MATERIALS SHALL CLEARLY INDICATE
18 THAT THE VOTER MAY VOTE FOR AS MANY CANDIDATES IN THAT ELECTION
AS THE VOTER
19 CHOOSES, AND THAT THE CANDIDATES WHO RECEIVE THE TWO HIGHEST
NUMBER OF VOTES
20 SHALL ADVANCE TO THE GENERAL OR RUNOFF ELECTION.
21 B. EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED IN THIS ARTICLE, CITY AND TOWN
22 APPROVAL VOTING ELECTIONS SHALL BE CONDUCTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE
23 PROVISIONS OF ARTICLE 8 OF THIS CHAPTER.
24 16-559.01. Approval voting; charter; ordinance
25 THIS ARTICLE DOES NOT REQUIRE A CITY OR TOWN TO ADOPT AN APPROVAL
26 VOTING SYSTEM, BUT A CITY OR TOWN MAY AMEND ITS CHARTER IF
REQUIRED FOR THAT
27 CITY OR TOWN TO ADOPT AN ORDINANCE TO IMPLEMENT AN APPROVAL
VOTING SYSTEM AS
28 PRESCRIBED BY THIS ARTICLE.
Municipalities in Arizona have great flexibility in choosing their
own voting systems. I have looked at four cities in Arizona, and I
have found two systems in use. Tucson is the only municipality which
runs partisan elections.
In Tucson, there is a regular party primary, and the winner of the
primary advances to the general election. So Tucson runs five
elections each election cycle.
In all other towns, that I've checked, there is currently top-two
runoff. It is no easy to check small-town elections, some of those
may simply be plurality. My experience in small towns is that often
there is only one candidate anyway....
It is possible that municipalities could tweak this, or even do
something different. Tucson has demonstrated that it can defy the
state; the legislature attempted to prevent Tucson from holding
partisan elections, and Tucson won in court.
HB2518 has the support of the majority of the Republican Party in
Arizona. The vote in the House was, Clay Shentrup's analysis:
Republicans:
Yes: 31
No: 4
Not voting: 1
Democrats:
Yes: 0
No: 22
Not voting: 2
So 86% of Republicans voted yes. So what are prospects in the senate?
<http://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster.asp>http://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster.asp
17 Republicans
13 Democrats
86% would be 14 Republicans. JUST ENOUGH to pass.
I did more research. This bill was introduced as HB2569 in last
year's legislature. See
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/electionscience/QTpV0Qr3Tfo/POWiz0m15NcJ
for coverage of HB2518 committee actions in the 2013 session, and
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/electionscience/QTpV0Qr3Tfo/X9fgzrTPOoEJ
for the Judiciary Committee in 2012.
Three Democrats approved this bill in the committee vote in 2012
(which was unanimous, 7-0). Two of them left the legislature, the one
that remained (Hale), voted in the first committee meeting in 2013,
No. And then in the second, Yes. And then on the floor, No again.
I have been unable to find any coherent criticism of this bill. What
was semi-coherent, *one blogger*, I addressed in
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/electionscience/QTpV0Qr3Tfo/eaDRR4WLDAEJ
(which was written just before the previous two linked posts).
I'd like election methods activists to realize the potential here.
1. If this passes, Phoenix might adopt it. Phoenix is a much larger
city than any in the U.S. that have adopted IRV. It's quite possible
that the *momentum* that FairVote has been claiming for IRV could
vanish in the dust of this. If, say, Mesa, Arizona, adopts the
procedure, the population of towns using Approval Voting would pass
that of all those using IRV (in the U.S.) Mesa is the home town of
the representative who introduced the bill, Mesa is just south of
Phoenix, part of the Phoenix Metropolitical Area.
2. This method wtih a two-stage election is actually a highly
sophisticated election method. It's been shown to be very strong
through simulations, in terms of Bayesian Regret. Range in general is
improved, in the presence of "strategic voting," by a two-stage election.
3. It appears that this is *not* a runoff-if-no-majority system, but
the language does seem to call the second election a runoff. It is
possible that a municipality, implementing it, could decide to
consider the primary complete if a majority is found, but given that
the "runoff" would be held with the general election, the system,
with the understanding that there is *always* a second election, will
not add much expense. The runoff is not a special election, the
primary is. And cities in Arizona can decide to use mail balloting.
4. Approval in a primary system is a fix for the Center Squeeze
problem that top-two runoff normally suffers (like IRV). Even better
would be Bucklin, which would be a next reform, that allows Ranked
Approvals. Bucklin is essentially Instant Runoff Approval, and the
mandatory runoff, if kept, would address certain complaints about
Bucklin. Bucklin would encourage additional approvals.... (as it did,
historically.)
5. The passage of this bill in the Arizona House is the best news
I've seen *ever* as to U.S. voting systems.
6. We need to encourage contacts in Arizona, and especially
progressives, i.e., Democrats and Greens, etc., to support this
legislation. It is *not* what that lone Democratic blogger called it,
some Republican trick. (It's *conceivable* that some Republican or
other thinks it would advantage their party, but, as written and as
it would be applied, it would not.)
The monolithic opposition of the Democratic Party in the floor vote
is mysterious. There was no maintained opposition in committee by
Democrats, but some wavering. It's looking like "party discipline"
was enforced, i.e., some Democratic minority leader made a decision
and made it important for all Democrats to vote together. But ... why?
Had there been this kind of system in, say, Florida in 2000, Gore
would have won, it's nearly certain. Approval, in general, does fix
the spoiler problem, to a degree. (Bucklin, i.e., Instant Runoff
Approval, would do it better.) But this bill does not apply to
partisan primaries and elections. It wasn't designed for that. If it
were to be applied to party primaries, as in Tucson, the election
would have to be ordinary one-round Approval. Very simple, and
definitely an improvement.
There has been some confusion with a failed Proposition in Arizona
that attempted to require all *partisan* primaries to be "open,"
i.e., unified, all voters vote in it, not just party voters. It
*only* applied to primaries where the candidate's party is listed the
ballot, and, except for Tucson, that is only for state elections. (I
think it didn't apply to federal elections.) *That* was a power grab,
possibly, or maybe just stupid.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
