You would think that at least some of the county clerks would understand this 
. I wonder if thereâs something else going on that led to a unanimous vote for the resolution, but the final message going to the media was simplified (or corrupted on purpose) to omit some details. Otherwise all these clerks need to be voted out so more capable clerks can take their place.
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I realize that we are in an Internet argument, where the last guy to post wins, but you could at least make it interesting by bringing out some new results instead of your same tired, false arguments assertions..
Hereâs a new result that hasnât been posted on this thread, one of the few ballot wins for RCV was the defeat of the Alaska measure to to repeal their RCV . The measure lost by a few hundred votes even after the proponents were out spent by about twenty to one
Calling out people who have decided they dont like RCV isnt making it interesting. We keep trying to discuss what RCV is and how it works, and your response is never relevant to what it is. Your response is always about how so-and-so is against it or how such-and-such candidate sucked at the job after winning. When it comes to how RCV works, if anything your responses have shown you have some fundamental misunderstandings about it.
We arent keeping a tally of who likes and who doesnt like RCV. It seems the only thing you are doing is keeping such a tally.
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âLikingâ is a crucial issue with a voting system. The only way a democracy functions is if the voters on the losing side of an issue believe the voting system is fair. If they do not think it is fair, they will not accept the results and the government collapses. Whether I understand the system or not does not matter. What matters is if the voters understand it and accept that it is fair
You seem to think voting is a mathematical exercise- if the mathematics are correct then the voters have to accept it. I pointed out multiple examples where this is not true.
When you are advocating one way or the other, understanding what you are advocating certainly does matter. When you refer to something as âan abominationâ, âdisasterousâ, you better be able to back it up with something more than âsome people dont like itâ.
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What are you referring to by âthisâ? Are you stating that you pointed out multiple examples of where (1) the mathematics are incorrect, (2) voters did not accept the results, or (3) that voting is not a mathematical exercise?
I think the only examples youâve pointed out were of elected officials who were bad at their job. But the results were always accepted and the officials were given a chance to do their job for quite some time before they were recalled for improprieties. They werenât recalled because of the voting system.
The problem here is that the voters on the losing side have been bamboozled into believing that the voting system is not fair. They are being lied to by the losing side using all kinds of made up bullcrap.
The truth is in the math. And sure, some math, like statistics (âLies, damned lies, and statisticsâ) or sufficiently advanced algorithms that almost nobody understands (crypto) can be used to lie. RCV / IRV is basic addition, there is no way to make the mathematics incorrect.
The voting system must be fair. If voters are made to believe that a fair system is not fair, it does not mean that the system is not fair. Here we are, trying to explain to one such voter that the system is actually fair and that their beliefs are wrong.
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Good luck.
In this article a newspaper reporter points out the unfairness of the 2025 St. Paul, Minnesota RCV mayor election that stole the election from their current mayor Melvin Carter
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ranked-choice-voting-kaohly-her-210000540.html
When the first round of ballots were counted on Election Night, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter outpaced Kaohly Her by 1,727 votes â or just over 2.5% of all votes cast in the mayorâs race.
âŚ
After the first round of ballots are tabulated, Ramsey County Elections uses a process called âbatch eliminationâ to drop all the candidates who have no chance of winning. Given their low numbers, there was no mathematical scenario in which Chen, Hilborn or Dullinger could overtake Her or Carter, **so they were all dropped from the race**
In the end, Her won by 2.77 percentage points, or 1,877 votes.
There were 4,904 ballots where the voter did not rank Carter or Her, if they ranked anyone. Those ballots were declared inactive because they had no viable choices left.
What a crock. The RCV proponents here want us to believe that voters will accept these bullshit results where far more ballots were declared inactive than the winning margin.
Actually the newspaper reporter said nothing about fairness of the election. I read the article and I see absolutely nothing unfair in the description.
It sounds like 20.64% of the voters took a chance on candidates who were less likely to win (Chen, Hilborn or Dullinger). Most (9218) of these voters also selected a âsafetyâ candidate that they probably thought was more likely to win (Her or Carter), and so their votes were distributed to those safety candidates once it was known that the other three had no chance of winning. The 4904 voters who did not select a âsafetyâ candidate had their votes counted toward one of the three losing candidates. It doesnât really matter which one, since they all lost.
What problem do you see here?
I only see one potential problem in that they combined three âelimination roundsâ into one. This might only be a problem if one of those rounds would have taken any of the leading candidates over 50% (the second or third round might have taken them back below 50%). Itâs not clear whether that was the actual problem in this election, the author did not mention it.
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No, the bullshit result wouldâve been declaring Carter the winner when more voters supported Her over Carter.
You are getting hung up on the âdeclared inactiveâ thing, which just terminology. It only means those voters didnt support either of the top vote-getters so they were not tallied as supporting either of the top vote-getters. Just like any vote cast for any third party candidate in any election.
All RCV did was allow voters to express their support for both Chen, et al, and for Her, without the risk of splitting that support and allowing the other guy to sneak in instead. A traditional election would force voters to say âI wish Chen, et al would win, but theyâre probably not going to so I need to cast my vote for Her because Her can win.â RCV allowed them to support the candidate they wanted to win, before falling back to support the candidate they knew could win. And the voters who only wanted to support a minor candidate were still able to support only that minor candidate.
It sounds like youâd be happy if those inactive ballots supporting the lesser candidates were still tallied in the final results? That you object to the results being reported as âHer 34800 Carter 33000â, instead of being reported as âHer 34800 Carter 33000 Chen, et all 4900â.
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The facts that they reported speak for themselves.
No, the bullshit result wouldâve been declaring Carter the winner when more voters supported Her over Carter.
Where do you see that? Carter lead the election until the RCV mumbo-jumbo was invoked.
Both of you are ignoring my point. It is crucial for the voters to accept the fairness of an election. You may be comfortable with the arcane mathematics but I and many other voters are not. With the complicated processing it is too easy for the election results to be rigged.
I am not a Carter supporter, but it is easy to see how they would not accept the election results.
On a related point, computer processing must be used with RCV to get results in a reasonable amount of time. The article mentions that the election officials used an open source software package. Was the package audited and the software the election officials used also audited? Who does the auditing?
The article also mentions that other municipalities use spreadsheets to process the results. The use of spreadsheets in scientific research is deprecated because it is so hard to verify them. The same issue applies to vote processing.
In the results, obviously. You needing to ask shows you clearly dont understand the whole premise, it isnt mumbo-jumbo. Her won because 9,000 (per Scriptaâs comment) voters supported both Her and one of those other candidates over Carter. RCV allowed them to express their first choice, and also express their support of Her should it come down to Her and Carter. So with the others out of the running, their support went to Her. And thus Her won.
A traditional election wouldâve required those voters not vote for their favorite candidate, and instead base their vote on the candidate most able to win. Or throw their vote away on a candidate with no realistic shot at competing, which would be a de facto vote for the candidate they oppose. RCV allowed them to support their favorite without helping the candidate they dont like.
Itâs no more or less easy to be rigged than any other election. Yes, voters will tend to not accept results when there are people shouting about how complicated and rigged it is, and that has nothing to do with any complexities or rigging that does or doesnt actually occur.
And now youâve delved into conspiracy theories. There might be a bad line of code in the software . Come on, you are starting to drag the bottom of the barrel looking for reasons to object.
I obviously donât see it âin the resultsâ. What I see is that Carter was leading, and then the votes were thrown into the RCV Cuisinart and out came Her.
No one has to sit down and study traditional voting systems. They are simple and easy to implement and easy to audit. Those that study RCV see it is complex and easy to cheat. And requires complex software that is impossible for laymen like election officials to audit.
It is not a conspiracy theory to require important results like those of elections to be audited.
I agree, no one who does not care has to sit down and study any voting systems. But anyone who does care, must understand basic addition in order to understand RCV. Nobody who actually studied RCV sees it as requiring complex software nor is it easy to cheat â you are making things up without providing evidence. None of the articles you linked claim this. They did claim that it is more complex to administer, and it may be more complex to vote if the voters are not educated or the ballots are too long. The software is not complex. You could get anyone with any basic knowledge of programming and data structures (self-taught or 2nd-3rd college semester in Computer Science) to write such software in less than an hour. I mean this quite literally, without thinking too much the votes can be stored in a 2-dimensional array of integers. Once you have that, all you have to do is count them according to the rules.
Software only helps to speed up the process. Without software, every ballot would have to be counted two times in that election, the first time for the first round, then again once losers are eliminated.
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Then you are intentionally blinding yourself.
And that is what happens all the time - one candidate is leading early, and ends up losing once everything is tabulated. There is no magical voodoo with RCV, it is simply counting like any other election.
Thatâs because, for whatever reason, they want it to be complex. IT IS NOT.
It can be audited as easily as anything else can be audited. Again, there is no magic voodoo involved, it is simply tabulating votes.
But that isnt what you said. You argued that the potential for software bugs is reason to simply scrap the entire voting system. You didnt argue for it to be audited - it can be, and likely has been (people hellbent on spreading misinformation about RCV tend to leave those kind of pesky details out of their rants). Any audit results is not going to change your mind.
Of course RCV requires complex software. Apparently an open source software project was organized to develop software to process the complex RCV ballots. Then the software is adopted by elections officials who are not software experts without auditing. According to the article other areas in Minnesota use spreadsheet software since this is apparently the software tools the officials are familiar with. The article I linked points out numerous problems with using spreadsheets for reliable data processing.
I cannot believe that you are advocating for the adoption of software for an important task like ballot, counting without audits. Campaigns spend millions of dollars for advertising and voter turnout. Thereâs a strong incentive for them to cheat. Thereâs a long history of ballot fraud in American politics.
Any engineer will tell you that simple systems are more reliable. RCV is easier to cheat than conventional voting systems and that is why the left strongly pushes for it. The left literally has organizations called âby any means necessary.â
When you do not have anything to say you engage in strawman arguments. Provide actual quotes for your claims.
First, it isnt complex. Itâs different. No matter how much you insist, it is never going to be complex like you want it to be.
Second, no one said anything about a lack of auditing. Auditing the accuracy of software is typically part of the adoption process, yes if software was used without any verification of itâs accuracy itâs a problem - a problem with dumb election officials, not with RCV. YOU are one insisting it must not be audited, presumably because then you can complain about it. To the extent of assigning us arguments while outright ignoring our comments stating the exact opposite.
Um, thatâs you. Weâre merely disputing your baseless, strawman arguments.
Spreadsheets are not complex software. Back in the day it was an individual semester-long project for a college junior or senior, so a bit more complex than the RCV counting system that could be done by a freshman or sophomore in an hour. But yes, there are pitfalls with using spreadsheets when theyâre not used correctly â the article you linked mentions incorrect input and incorrect formulas being used, and concludes that spreadsheets should not be used in a regulated laboratory environment (not that they should not be used to calculate votes). The problem is the user, not the software. But I agree that voting software should be made with a goal of eliminating user errors. You could probably do this by having two or three people monitor the spreadsheet inputs and verifying the formulas independently. Basically an audit of sorts.
I am not advocating for anything without audits. I cannot believe you thought I was advocating such a thing. Nothing I wrote before should suggest this.
You have yet to present any evidence that cheating with RCV is easier than with any other voting system. This was your claim:
But ballot fraud does not care about which system is used to calculate the results.
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