[EM] New tryIRV free IRV survey website online
I hope everyone is interested in a new online survey site intended to prove how much better IRV-enabled surveys are than traditional one choice or approval surveys.http://TryIRV.us is the current url, and we are still correcting it and adding features. It is based on Demochoice code. The goal is that people invited to vote in a survey will be more likely to vote in multiple surveys (created by different authors) than they do using http://Demochoice.org polls, so it will evolved into service for useful for taking IRV surveys of the general web-surfing public, and ranked voting will more rapidly catch on. We're doing a little web publicity this week so that it will already be going a little bit when the wider publicity starts next week, so it would be great if you can help it get started by checking every once in a while and voting the first new surveys created to motivate IRV newbies. By next week you will be able to easily embed hot links within the surveys, sot it will be easy to have a survey about best ranked voting system and link each survey choice to a site explaining each system.Thanks. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] : How did local IRV affect CA state elections?
It would/will be great if any student of statistics will do a statistical regression on these two bay-area elections, to prove that higher voter turnout in CA's IRV-modernized cities made the difference for Kamala Harris and Jerry McNerney. This letter is in this week's east bay Express: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/letters-for-december-8/Content?oid=2258889storyPage=2 Ranked-Choice Voting Will Help Democrats Kamala Harris and Jerry McNerney won BECAUSE we modernized to RANKED-CHOICE VOTING. Because of IRV/RCV, the higher turnout in Oakland and San Leandro, mostly Democrats, tipped the balance for Rep. McNerney. McNerney should acknowledge this and be an advocate for IRV modernization nationwide.Kamala Harris also owes her victory to higher turnouts in SF, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro because we are still the first cities in the state to modernize to IRV elections. What this demonstrates is that the cities that use RCV in 2012 will also have a disproportionate/greater effect in statewide/regional elections because of higher voter turnout. Alameda County was a leader for RCV-capable voting equipment, so hopefully every city in the county will allow IRV modernization before 2012. Hopefully Debra Bowen, Jerry Brown, and McNerney will fund RCV machines state-/nationwide so that other cities will not have to wait four-plus years like we had to. The more progressive cities will probably modernize first, boosting Democrats on a much wider scale in 2012. _(end) By my estimate, it seems most likely that Neither NcNerney or Harris would have won except for the extra-large voter turnout in bay area districts using IRV. The most basic calculation is of how many votes were needed from IRV-induced voters. T0 do that, we need to know how many voters on average turn out in the IRV-using areas vs how many usually turn out in the non-IRV areas. This is easy for Kaplan, but for McNerney we need to learn what percentage of his district is included in Oakland and San Leandro. With this research and calculations, authors will be able to say, Luckily for Harris and McNerney, turn-out was especially high in certain bay area cities that used Ranked Choice Voting. Depending on how much research it done, a study of this could make for a dr. thesis in statistics. The challenge is to determine logistical regressions for how much of the higher voter turnout was because of RCV, and how much of the observed higher turnout was needed in the cities that supported them most. Since I have not researched hardly any of these figures, my estimate is that if IRV increased turnout by 5%, McNerney may have lost without it. I haven't even tried to calculate for Harris. Thanks, -s Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] breakdown of Oakland mayor ballots
Here are the results on an actual election: http://www.demochoice.org/dcresults.php?poll=OakMayortype=table Perata (or maybe someone in his camp) accuses the other candidates of gaming the system by promoting each other as 2nd choices. Some challengers tried to do that to IRV-leader Kriss Worthington too, but he won by a landslide. What you could really do if you are serious about promoting a different ranking system is to download the Demochoice Code and rewrite it to use your preferred voting system, then put it online, because the code is public domain. -Lee Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Greatest Majority is the future of elections
I just joined this list and some of it is kind of bewildering. 1-what is your goal for elections? I would assume that it is to have the best govt. which presumably can be identified as the system of govt. supported by the most people. 2- Since there will probably be more than one exclusive/competing policy/candidate supporter by more than a majority we can call this goal GREATEST majority voting. 3- Thus the goal would be determine the best or at least better structure of govt./voting to require the greatest majority support possible. 4-This would probably be a combination of local representatives and executives elected by ranked ballots, ranked pairs if possible, but that counting the system is not realistically practical and the IRV counting system is realistically equivalent. I suggest the ranked voting forum for debate: http://4gmv.org/ We would rather not have any new govt. policies unless, at least, the greatest majority of the population agrees that it hopefully be the best govt. policy. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
