North Carolina - More on IRV Instant Run-off Voting

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:26 AM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

So - if DemocracyNC and FairVote create all this demand to use IRV through "discussion" groups with voters all around NC, that might results in pressure to use uncertified software or workarounds to do the job in the same way that the SBOE used to do non-random election audits in violation of the law.  That must be why they set up this first meeting before the Governor even signed the legislation.

Federal voting standards don't allow for mixing and matching - you need a system that has to be tested and approved as a whole.  That wasn't done with either the op-scan or DRE procedures for doing IRV in NC. 

I wonder how many candidates were in each of the seven ranked contests on those 14 RCV ballots?  From Kathy Dopp's paper, in a contest with N number of candidates, they had to do N-1 number of rounds of counting for each contest.

Remember that it took the Wake County BOE 6 hours (2.5 hours of set up according to Cherie Poucher and 3.5 hours to tabulate) to process 1 single IRV contest with a little over 3000 votes.  Had they also had to tabulate the other two contests - District D with 4336 votes cast, and the At-Large race with 16,415 votes cast - it would have taken another 41.2 hours minimum to tabulate.  But who knows how many counting and calculator errors would have been made - and they might even have awarded the win to someone who didn't cross the 50% plus one vote threshold.

Chris Telesca

Joyce McCloy wrote:

Hey, another way to make it easier to hide election fraud or error.  Amazingly - officials couldn't even correctly count the Cary District B contest. Hand counting and couldn't get it right, just 3,000 ballots and had to go back another day and have an "audit" which led to a  do-over count. 

The weird thing is, hand counting normally is the most accurate and honest counting method, with two bi partisan teams of 4 people each. Unlike computers, humans can correct their mistakes and can correct them.  (No need to go back to the computer room for new programming.)

What does it say about a voting method that it is so difficult to count just 3,000 ballots correctly by hand?

I guess that is why Pierce County Washington has obtained conditional approval of their Sequoia voting machines, in spite of all of the problems and that the machines do NOT meet their state standards. 

Instant runoff forces Pierce County Washington to use uncertified voting systems

Pierce County Washington adopted "instant runoff voting" in November 2006. Pierce County officials were backed into a corner in May 2008 and ended up getting permission to use uncertified IRV software, violating their own state's laws.

From the Voting System Certification Hearing in Washington State Report May 23, 2008 by Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite:

Pierce County officials said: they tried hand-counting just 14 RCV ballots with seven ranked contests and found that it was "horrendous." Using software to tally this sort of balloting was absolutely essential. She found that it simply couldn't be done any other way.

...Patty thoroughly described the problem that had occurred, the discrepancy in the results, and the possible workarounds proposed by Sequoia —which involved "patching" the software in both the scanner that falsely reported a blank ballot box and in the WinEDS software that counted ballots from the "stuffed" ballot box.

Then she added a new thought we hadn't heard before — the possibility of using the Edge touch-screen machine, the central count optical scanner, and the WinEDS tabulating software without using the flawed Insight scanner. I thought that sounded like a possible solution.

--- In Democracy4NC@yahoogroups.com, "Jasmine" wrote:
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jerry williamson [mailto:jww@...]
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:37 AM
> To: Jerry Williamson
> Subject: Fw: Molly Beacham of Democracy NC
>
> Molly Beacham, Director of Development for Democracy North Carolina, will be
>
> at the Golden Corral in Boone at noon on Thursday, August 7, to discuss with
>
> interested citizens the system for Instant Runoff Voting. All interested
> voters are invited to attend.
>
> The Watauga Democrat's Scott Nicholson had a story about Instant Runoff
> Voting and quotes from Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North
> Carolina, a voting-advocacy group. Hall pointed out that local voters pay
> for expensive primary run-offs, not the state. There was a turnout in July
> for the primary run-off of 263 voters in Watauga. State-wide, that run-off

-- 
Support Election Integrity by not particpating in NC's 
IRV pilot program until legal procedures are developed
http://www.gopetition.com/online/20902.html

__._,_.___

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Raleigh NC - Update on Instant Runoff - Raleigh Could Be Sending an Election Disaster Your Way

Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:07 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

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Raleigh NC - Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) Contact House and Senate Conferees to ask them to KILL IT

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 8:16 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

-There were issues with the instant runoff pilots.   

-No communities are really asking for instant runoff.  

-Cary Town Council Member Julie Robison who originally supported it, now opposes it saying,

“If you do not have confidence in process, hard to have confidence in results.” 

-This issue needs more study and is a long session issue.

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IRV - Instant Runoff Voting - WUNC TV interview - Janice Sears, Chris Telesca, Perry Woods

Monday, July 14, 2008 at 8:06 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

You can advance the video so that you don't have to watch it all.

Janice, Chris and Perry appear around 21.20 minutes into the video.

Bob Hall with Democracy for NC is interviewed, and says "There's always going to be little glitches...".

Don Frantz, who won the District B contest under IRV, says:  "I'd rather have conventional voting.... I'd rather go head to head..."

Go to http://www.unctv.org/legweek/video.html and click on July 11.

	July 11, 2008

See related links:

IRV - Instant Runoff Voting

NC Coalition for Verifiable Voting

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Critical Alert: Verified Voting threatened, please act before Tuesday July 8, IRV . . . .

Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 10:08 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

See related link:

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Raleigh NC - Please say no to adding an Instant Runoff Voting pilot to S 1263 or any other bill.

Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 8:29 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

Please say no to adding an Instant Runoff Voting pilot to S 1263 or any other bill. No more Instant Runoff Experiments.

On Wed July 2, 1:00 PM the House Election Law Committee will hear an amendment in Sb 1263 to extend the Instant runoff experiment.

The only way we can have another instant runoff experiment is to gut our Verified Voting law - to allow our state to use uncertified software and cut corners on audits and election night reporting. There is no software or firmware developed to tabulate IRV, none tested or federally approved for our voting machines. If new software is developed in the next few years, our elecdtions should not be beta tests for it.  Since IRV is being sold as a "cost saver" - no money will be spent to educate our nearly 6 million voters about this drastic change in our elections and many will be disenfranchised. There are other simpler less expensive ways to eliminate costly runoff elections.

ACT NOW BEFORE WED. JULY 2ND: email the House Election Law Committee, their email addressess and a sample message are below:

Melanieg@ncleg.net; joek@ncleg.net;paull@ncleg.net;Deborahr@ncleg.net; Angelab@ncleg.net;
Deborahr@ncleg.net;Angelab@ncleg.net;waltc@ncleg.net;Billcu@ncleg.net;Susanf@ncleg.net; Priceyh@ncleg.net;Georgeho@ncleg.net;Carolynju@ncleg.net;Davidl@ncleg.net;
Grierm@ncleg.net; Mickeym@ncleg.net; Pauls@ncleg.net; Edgars@ncleg.net, verlai@ncleg.net; elliek@ncleg.net;

Subject: S 1263- say NO to IRV pilot

Please say no to adding an Instant runoff voting pilot to S 1263 or any other bill. No more Instant Runoff Experiments.  IRV is a well intentioned idea that produces unintended consequences, and fails to deliver as promised. It does not save money, is confusing and violates the KISS principle of elections (Keep it Simple).

This is not a partisan issue, but about maintaining the integrity of our elections. Our equipment currently can not handle IRV, and it would lead to a push for more electronic voting machines, and we have seen the problem with those. IRV costs will include changes to our voting machines or software, increased ballot printing, and voter education. Many voters won't be reached by the education and most will not know enough about all of the candidates to choose 2 or 3 for each contest. This is inherently unfair to the average voter and also will harm the down ticket contests. Another IRV experiment cannot be done without gutting key provisions of the Public Confidence in Elections Law - standards that protect our state from unscrupulous voting vendors and defective voting software.

There are other simpler less expensive ways to eliminate costly runoff elections. We can stop having statewide runoffs - most states don't have them, or appoint the Labor Commissioner as do 45 other states, or adjust the thresholds for these elections. Third parties can be helped by making ballot access easier, and considering other voting methods that don't require complex tabulation.

Raleigh N&O: Instant runoff voting poses problems

Raleigh News and Observer, Jun 24, 2008

Joyce McCloyWINSTON-SALEM - Today's runoff election for state labor commissioner will be a costly, low-turnout contest. One proposed remedy is "instant runoff voting" at the primary election, ending the need for separate runoffs. But that would be a drastic change in our way of voting and could prove worse than the problem it tries to solve.

Instant runoff voting means that in races with more than two candidates, voters mark a first, second and third choice for each office. It can be described as retallying without revoting, until a majority of votes are reshuffled into one pile.

In our state's May 6 primary, with its record turnout, ranking the choices on a long ballot with many races would have been extremely confusing to voters. It would likely have led to greater "fall-off" on down-ballot races, harming those candidates.

There are better alternatives -- using winner-take-all voting, using different thresholds or percentages needed to win or having a mail-in ballot for low-intensity runoffs. Conducting a runoff is made easier by provisions for early voting and mail-in balloting. The real problem is a lack of voter interest.

Here's the bottom line:

* North Carolina's voting machines cannot count IRV ballots. According to the State Board of Elections, "There are no provisions on ... equipment to tabulate IRV."

* IRV ballots are difficult to count. Officials had to manually tally the IRV results for an instant runoff election held in Cary as a pilot project last year. One small error cascaded into a miscount that had to be corrected at another date. One Knightdale resident, commenting on the Cary test at a follow-up meeting, said that "If the best board of elections in North Carolina had this much trouble counting 3,000 votes, this is too dangerous to try statewide."

* IRV creates new costs. The system requires specialized voting machines and software, increased ballot-printing expenditures and voter education, something North Carolina does poorly. Wake County spent $9,000 on voter education for the Cary experiment, with advocacy organizations donating the rest.

* In Cary, the winner in the District B Town Council contest took office with less than 40 percent of the first-choice votes cast, and less than 50 percent of the votes of people who showed up on Election Day.

* Some voters in the Cary IRV experiment ranked the same candidate more than once. Some did not rank choices. Don Frantz, winner of the District B contest, said he heard from many confused voters on the campaign trail. Vickie Maxwell, another candidate, said that having to explain a novel voting process was a distraction from discussing the issues with voters. Another candidate instructed supporters to vote for him as their first, second and third choices, a confusing message that effectively caused voters to pick nobody else as a second choice.

* IRV places a cognitive burden on voters. Who should you rank second or third, or should you rank at all? Voters should not need calculators to figure out how to vote. According to Eugene Weeks, chairman of the Wake County Voter Education Coalition, "The ballot that is being used now is already confusing to some voters, yet you want to antagonize and confuse the voters more by asking them to not only vote for one candidate, but indicate a second and third choice before leaving the voting booth. Where is the voter's rights in this process?"

* No instant-runoff capable equipment meets North Carolina's tough election standards -- so will we gut those standards and risk harm caused by uncertified software or unscrupulous voting vendors?* North Carolina still has trouble counting votes the plain old vanilla way. On May 6, 15,000 ballots in Wake County and 2,500 in Mecklenburg County were double counted, and 4,000 were omitted in Onslow County.Instant runoff creates new opportunities for problems.

If the objective of an election process is to discern the will of the voters, then our lawmakers should work to make our voting process the simplest, most transparent and most enfranchising method for all voters.(Joyce McCloy is with the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting.)http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1118100.html

See related links:

Instant Runoff Voting

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Raleigh NC - SB 1263 IRV disenfranchises some voters

Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 11:20 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

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Politics - IRV - Instant runoff voting raises concerns

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 11:29 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN

IRV - Instant run-off voting raises concerns. I am totally against IRV at the moment because I do not see it helping but hurting the voting process. Because of friends like Chris and Joyce McCloy I have been educated on the IRV process.

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Raleigh NC - Alert: Threat to NC's Election Integrity resurges, please read.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:20 PM

Posted in IRV - Instant Run-off Voting

by DCN