IRV statewide in Maine this June

[Clay Shentrup]

On June 12, 2018, Maine voters will be the first in the nation to elect their U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Governor, State Senator and State Representative using IRV for primary elections.

http://mainepublic.org/post/mainers-test-ranked-choice-voting-while-deciding-whether-keep-it

[Warren D Smith]

but the Maine supreme court ruled unanimously IRV was unconstitutional.

what gives?


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Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

[NoIRV]

The first article I read about it said that the court struck down the way they got IRV into "action", not IRV itself.

[Warren D Smith]

> The first article I read about it said that the court struck down the way
> they got IRV into "action", not IRV itself.

--well, that is false. They struck down IRV itself, but the way it
got into action (i.e. a referendum) was fine.

[Jameson Quinn]

IRV is only unconstitutional for general elections for state offices. For federal offices and/or primary elections it's fine.

(Also, I disagree with the Supreme Court ruling, but that and a cup of coffee will give me something to sip on.)

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[Clay Shentrup]

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 5:17:31 PM UTC-8, Jameson Quinn wrote:

(Also, I disagree with the Supreme Court ruling, but that and a cup of coffee will give me something to sip on.)

It's almost as if a majority is a Plurality.

[Ciaran Dougherty]

The argument is that, while a majority is a plurality, by law, as soon as any plurality is found, the winner has been found. As such, continuing the process to find a larger plurality is either superfluous (if it is the same as the first round plurality candidate), or in conflict with the legal mandate (if different pluralities name different winners)

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[Nevin Brackett-Rozinsky]

The Maine Constitution is quite clear in its election requirements, and uses phrases such as (Article III, Section 5):

“election officials of the various towns and cities shall preside impartially at such meetings, receive the votes of all the qualified electors, sort, count and declare them in open meeting; and a list of the persons voted for shall be formed, with the number of votes for each person against that person's name”

and:

“copies of the lists of votes shall be attested by the municipal officers and the clerks of the cities and towns and the city and town clerks respectively shall cause the same to be delivered into the office of the Secretary of State”

In other words, each town must list the candidates alongside how many votes each of them received in that town, and send that list to the Secretary of State. So the fact that IRV is not precinct-summable is what makes it unconstitutional in Maine. Similarly, score voting would be unconstitutional as well, because it does not count “numbers of votes”.

However, approval voting appears to be perfectly compatible with the Maine constitution.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 9:37:12 PM UTC-8, Ciaran Dougherty wrote:

The argument is that, while a majority is a plurality, by law, as soon as any plurality is found, the winner has been found.

With IRV, the Plurality has been found when the tabulation process completes.

[Clay Shentrup]

Well, what if you counted IRV by sending the counts up one round at a time? How would that violate this?

[parker friedland]

> It's almost as if a majority is a Plurality.

While I prefer IRV to plurality, let's not forget that an IRV majority is not a majority majority. It's just a majority among a set of non-disqualified candidates, and as such, IRV is only constitutional in Maine if it is also constitutional to determine which candidates your vote can or cannot count towards after you have already voted and if it's constitutional to do that, it's also constitutional to ban your opponent from winning after people have already voted, and if it is constitutional to do that, then allowing the state legislature to just chose the winners themselves and make the whole election irrelevant would also be constitutional. This is why we need to stop calling IRV "majorities" majorities.

[Ciaran Dougherty]

As precinct summable and a having an obvious tally, a score 3 characterized as for/neutral/against (as in China, the U.N., the Venetian Republic, etc) seems to meet those requirements, too.

I think that an argument could be made for any version of score, if presented as, e.g., 5 votes for candidate A, 0 for B, etc.

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[Ciaran Dougherty]

The final plurality is found when tabulation is complete, true, but a plurality is found in every round. If not, you could not find the anti-plurality to eliminate.

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[Jameson Quinn]

None of this is important, of course. The Maine Supreme Court can rule that the sky is by definition purple and for the purposes of interpreting the Maine constitution they'd be right. But I'm going to keep discussing it anyway.

If the Supreme Court decision had been based on IRV's non-summability, I would not disagree with them. This was, in fact, one of the questions the legislature asked them about. But they didn't rule on this basis, only on the basis of the definition of a plurality. And on that basis I think they were wrong.

I don't remember the exact wording of the Maine constitution around plurality, but I did look it up when the ruling came out, and I remember deciding that I thought IRV technically met the requirements and the ruling was wrong.

Again, my opinion here is not important. 

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