cepheus42 t1_j6hmgll wrote on January 30, 2023 at 11:42 AM

Reply to comment by reidfleming2k20 in Debating ranked-choice voting in Vermont by orange_wires

Mass confusion should be blamed on a failure to educate your voters. That's not a failure of ranked choice voting.

How many times has normal "first past the post" voting failed now? Thousands. Look at Maine and their two-term governor Paul "Drunk asshole and fuck the poor" LePage, who billed himself as "Donald before he was Donald." Splitting the vote is the only reason he got in the first time, with something like 37% of the total vote. He was despised. He never won an actual plurality. When MORE than 50% of your voters hate someone, the system is broken. At least with RCV, you guarantee that 50% of the voters think the winner is at least tolerable.

Mass confusion is often what happens on voter referendums, too. They word them in such a way no one is sure what voting for or against them really means. Should we ban all voter referendums, too? Or maybe... you know... require they word them clearly?

reidfleming2k20 t1_j6i1q59 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 2:09 PM

Well Bob Kiss won with 30% of the vote using IRV.

"At least with RCV, you guarantee that 50% of the voters think the winner is at least tolerable."No, you do not guarantee that. The night Kiss won, there was a elderly woman on the news saying that she thought she had to vote for every candidate in a preferred order. Her vote ended up going for Kiss, and that literally drove her to tears.

It seems like something that would be very easy to educate people on, but short of sending people out to everyone's homes and sitting with them until you're 100% sure they understand, that just isn't ever going to happen. If you'd been there, you'd know that Burlington really, really, REALLY tried to educate people, and it just didn't work.

You can require a majority and have a series of separate runoffs. Then you can be sure that every vote cast was intentional. With IRV etc. that will never be the case, which is why Burlington ditched it.

EveryDayIsAGif t1_j6j2cu7 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:12 PM

you are misunderstanding the original commenter's meaning. Bob Kiss actually had ~52% of the vote using IRV... this is why he won at the end of Round 3. His 29% total at the end of Round 1 is what you are likely remembering.

I'm not sure the details of why Burlington's education efforts failed... but there are many success stories we can look to and learn from now.

reidfleming2k20 t1_j6j2zqf wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:16 PM

Yes I understand, but what I'm saying is that a lot of the votes in that 52% were from people who were confused about the process and absolutely did not want Kiss to be the mayor.

EveryDayIsAGif t1_j6j3pwn wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:20 PM

may be so - I was not following the story at the time. To me the major tell is that those same Burlingtonians who repealed ranked choice in 2010 voted to reinstate it in 2021.

reidfleming2k20 t1_j6j4yk1 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:28 PM

I really doubt it was the same people. Enough time had passed that people either forgot, or weren't around the first time. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken 12 years (and they wouldn't have limited it to city councilors).

EveryDayIsAGif t1_j6j64yj wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:35 PM

actually, the city councilor vote was vetoed by Miro. Ranked choice was passed by the voters directly and with strong support. Personally, I trust that sort of a result

reidfleming2k20 t1_j6j7e10 wrote on January 30, 2023 at 6:43 PM

I don't know if I'd characterize 64% as "strongly" on a binary vote, especially when it's only a 16 point bump from the repeal vote 11 years earlier. And these threads are directly proving my point that a lot of proponents of the system weren't around in 2009.