http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/580023.html

Quote :

"The town council voted 4-3 Thursday night to change the way residents choose their leaders. Beginning this fall, voters will be asked to rank candidates on their ballots. The change will eliminate the need for runoff elections in races where no candidate wins a majority of votes. Under the new system, there will be "instant runoff" on election night between the top two vote-getters. The winner will be the one with the most first- and second-preference votes."

5/25/2007 4:11:23 PM

It'll be an interesting social experiment.

Out of curiosity, if we wanted to change a House race to this format, would that have to be done at the state or federal level? Can't remember where that falls.

5/25/2007 4:19:13 PM

I would like to see a more complicated formula for weighting the ranks.

5/25/2007 8:00:00 PM

This is the way elections should be done. No politician should be put into office with less than 50% of the people supporting them.

5/25/2007 8:13:13 PM

^^ no way, b/c then the weights would be susceptible to changing and rigging to the advantage of people or parties

5/25/2007 8:33:14 PM

There are no "weights" from what I understand

5/25/2007 8:59:51 PM

then how in the world does it work?

5/25/2007 9:03:30 PM

Well its like this

Say you have an election where the results are

Democrat -40%
Republican-40%
Libertarian-20%

You vote by ranking your preference

1- Libertarian
2- Republican
3- Democrat

Your Libertarian Candidate gets the least amount of votes, so being in third place, the candidate and votes for the candidate are dropped. Instead of those votes being discarded, they are reapportioned to the other two candidates based on their second choice among the two remaining candidates, to ensure that the candidate gets at least 50% of the vote.

Lets say 75% of the voters who vote Libertarian favor the Republicans and 25% favor Democrats. That gives an extra 15% of the total vote to the Republicans and 5 % to the Democrats (of the original 20% who voted Libertarian).

Final

55% Republican
45% Democrat

Thus you have an "Instant Runoff", no more need to have another election, another polling day and all the cost. Plus, democracy is enhanced because people get the candidate more people really want. It also makes much more sense, as people who are voting for third parties are no longer "throwing their vote away". They can vote for who they really want and if they don't win, they still have a say, their votes aren't just cast in the garbage.


[Edited on May 25, 2007 at 10:15 PM. Reason : .]

5/25/2007 10:07:28 PM

Yeah! Good for Cary!

But would a Libertarian have much of a chance running in Cary?

5/25/2007 10:31:03 PM

an even better example would be having 1 party initially losing, but then getting a boost winning.

so lets take the hypothetical nader scenario from 2000.

lets say it was 49% rep, 44% dem, and 7% nader (i know right...but humor me). if all of the nader people actually would have voted dem, dems end up winning the election.

makes voting a 3rd party not so "risky" or "wasteful" in some people's minds.


[Edited on May 25, 2007 at 10:34 PM. Reason : wtf was that math before]

5/25/2007 10:32:48 PM

^^ a bunch of people who care about little more than making money and being left alone? yeah, a libertarian would be fine.

besides, cary elections are non partisan, so no one would know.

5/25/2007 11:17:37 PM

Quote :

"a bunch of people who care about little more than making money and being left alone? "

If you ask them, most people do want the gov't to leave them alone. And providing for yourself and your family is a little tough to do without making money.

But of course many prefer that the individual sacrifice his labor, property, freedom and soul to the welfare of the state.

5/26/2007 12:06:36 AM

except Cary is a town that has willingly decided that things like roads and a sewer system are less important than their money.

Towns that are more liberal are generally ok with paying for infrastructure that can handle growth.

5/26/2007 12:12:07 AM

^
Don't forget the bunch of electronic signs that Cary put in at $40,000 a pop. They go months without being used. The last time I saw one with a message - it was advertising Cary Days.

The problem with Cary gov't and all other gov'ts is that Politicians spend other people's money on other people who can keep them in power. Politicians won't control themselves from spending your hard-earned money...and voters are too busy/apathetic to keep an eye on them.

That's how you end up with $40,000 electronic signs that just sit there.

5/26/2007 1:25:52 AM

Two of IRV's flaws are that it is not monotonic and dishonesty can pay. In the example, suppose the 1st voter, instead of honestly stating her top-preference was A, were to dishonestly vote C>A>B, i.e. pretending great love for her truly hugely-hated candidate C, and pretending a lack of affection for her true favorite A. In that case the first round would eliminate either C or B (suppose a coin flip says B) at which point A would win the second round 5-to-4 over C! (Meanwhile if C still were eliminated by the coin flip then B would still win over A in the final round as before.) In other words: in 3-candidate IRV elections, lying can help. Indeed, lying in bizarre ways can help.

In this IRV example, voter1's vote for her true favorite (here A) actually caused him to lose!! Analysis by W.D.Smith (#78 here) shows that slightly more than 1% of 3-candidate IRV elections are non-monotonic. Indeed, in a different probabilistic model, about 5% are. (Whenever this happens we would expect tremendous rage from the "robbed winner" and calls for reform of the idiotic IRV voting system, and for the heads of the idiotic activists who originally advocated IRV and got us into this mess. That has been prevented in practice by simply keeping the votes secret to try to prevent anybody from proving this occurred.)

In contrast, in 3-candidate range elections, it is never a smart move for any voter to be dishonest about her relative ordering of A, B, and C; if an intelligent range voter feels that A>B, she will never provide a vote in which B>A.

http://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html

Still, an improvement.

5/26/2007 2:06:45 AM

yeah, no one is ever gonna be 100% happy, even with that ranged voting. id imagine people would more likely put a 0 to AVOID having someone they arent sure about in office than put an X, which would be the responsible thing to do.

im willing to live with 1-5% of slight mishaps


[Edited on May 26, 2007 at 9:38 AM. Reason : cuz it only happens when the race was semi-close it seems.]

5/26/2007 9:27:09 AM