Draft of an email to the iowa dem party?

[NoIRV]

Note: Anyone who senses and is put off by apparent liberal bias should write a conservative letter to the Iowa GOP with the goal of getting range voting in THEIR primary. This is currently a nonpartisan issue and should stay that way, or else we may have cycles of Score Voting appearing and disappearing and third parties growing and then dying ad infinitum.

This letter is probably choppy, which is why I am posting it here so we can revise it and maybe someone else can send it off.

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To: in...@iowademocrats.org

To whom it may concern:
The year is 2018. In less than two years, Iowa will play a pivotal role in selecting the candidate who will run for President in the 2020 election. And it is important that we select a candidate both strong enough to get elected, and also empowered enough to advance the progress of the country.

However, with our current vote for one system, candidates may split votes, causing someone whom a majority (of Democrats) would oppose to win. In fact, this is probably what pushed Trump into the general election. But there is a way to fix this, and it depends on a redefinition of the vote itself.

The answer is with a method known as Score Voting. In it, each voter gives EVERY candidate a score, say from 0 to 9 (not 1 to 10 or else people might think "1" means "best") and then the candidate with the highest average score wins. For more about this, see the website www.scorevoting.net which has many pages on this topic.

One nice thing about this is that it actually works on today's existing voting machines! See scorevoting.net/VotMach.html for more info on this.

If you are willing to look deeper, there are some slightly more complicated systems like STAR and 3-2-1 that work a bit like Score Voting but with some added stuff at the end to change the dynamics.

Ultimately, I would like to see one of these implemented in the 2020 primary. With Iowa's position in the order of primaries, reforming the voting system can go a long way in helping the Democrats put up a strong fight in the 2020 general election.

But CAUTION: There are some people promoting a system known as "ranked choice Voting" (RCV, also known as instant runoff voting or IRV) that appears to solve the same problems, but RCV is not as good as Score for reasons mentioned in ScoreVoting.net/rangeVirv.html (the biggest being that RCV can suffer from spoilers, while Score Voting cannot).

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen outside of Iowa

[Clay Shentrup]

I can probably save you some time and tell you this is extremely unlikely to go anywhere. But what you can do is start a local initiative where you live. Or move some place where you can. 

[Sara Wolf]

EDITED:

To whom it may concern:

The year is 2018. In less than two years, Iowa will play a pivotal role in selecting the candidate who will run for President in the 2020 election. And it is important that we select a candidate both strong enough to get elected, and also empowered enough to advance the progress of the country.

However, with our current vote for one system, candidates may split votes, causing someone whom a majority (of Democrats) would oppose to win. In fact, this is probably what pushed Trump into the general election. But there is a way to fix this, and it depends on a redefinition of the vote itself.

The answer is with a method known as Score Voting. In it, each voter gives each candidate a score, say from 0 to 5 and then the candidate with the highest average score wins. You can give the same scores to multiple candidates if you don't have a preference and those who are left blank get a zero.) For more about this, see the website www.scorevoting.net which has many pages on this topic.

One nice thing about this is that it actually works on today's existing voting machines! See scorevoting.net/VotMach.html for more info on this.

If you are willing to look deeper, there are some cutting edge systems like STAR and 3-2-1 that work a bit like Score Voting but with hightened accuracy and strategic resilience. See: www.starvoting.us

Ultimately, I would like to see one of these implemented in the 2020 primary. With Iowa's position in the order of primaries, reforming the voting system can go a long way in helping the Democrats put up a strong fight in the 2020 general election.

But CAUTION: There are some people promoting a system known as "Ranked Choice Voting" (RCV, also known as instant runoff voting or IRV) that appears to solve the same problems. RCV is better than our current system, but is not as good as Score or the alternatives suggested here for reasons mentioned in ScoreVoting.net/rangeVirv.html RCV can unfairly ignore some voters' rankings. Because of this it has issues in elections where there are multiple viable candidates. The biggest issue is that RCV can suffer from "Spoilers" aka "vote splitting", while Score and STAR Voting cannot.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen outside of Iowa

On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 7:44 PM, Clay Shentrup <cshe...@gmail.com> wrote:

I can probably save you some time and tell you this is extremely unlikely to go anywhere. But what you can do is start a local initiative where you live. Or move some place where you can. 

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-Sara Wolk

Chief Petitioner for "STAR Voting for Multnomah County"

Portland Equal Vote

971-222-9364

sa...@equal.vote

​www​

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​starv​

o

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​us​

www.equal.vote

“The fact is that FPTP, the voting method we use in most of the English-speaking world, is absolutely horrible, and there is reason to believe that reforming it would substantially (though not of course completely) alleviate much political dysfunction and suffering.”

-Jameson Quinn, The Center For Election Science

[Jameson Quinn]

I'd suggest that, for public activism like this, it's important to look as "serious" as possible. We should thus avoid linking to scorevoting.net in this kind of context if we can. That website makes many valid points, but the overall impression it gives is other than serious. That's mostly a matter of design and/or tone rather than substance, but it's still the case. 

[Clay Shentrup]

Jameson's right.

[Phil Uhrich]

There is approximately a 0% chance Iowa would even consider risking it's treasured first in the nation status with any system that hasn't been used somewhere else first. On top of that it would have to be a statewide convention that moves to ammend the delegate selection rules basically dumping their whole caucus http://iowademocrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Rules-for-the-2018-Caucus.pdf (not gonna happen) in favor of a new primary.

On top of that, one of the rules that will be coming out of the DNC's unity and reform commission will be that all delegates are locked in to the initial vote, and a bunch of other things that you would have to hope don't necessitate a FPTP election to have any chance.

A more better option would be pushing for one, or both, of the two states (NE and WA) that have non-binding beauty pageant primaries after their binding caucus to use Score if it is possible to change the ballot. If not I would just try to generate enough publicity and do a non consensual approval vote. I bet that after the fact you could get them counted, you might have to pay for it though.

That is of course if the DNC commission doesn't force those states to abandon their caucus for the more representative primary, which it might. This is a recent draft of DNC changes, it still has to be finalized by the rules and bylaws committee. https://frontloading.blogspot.com/2017/12/unity-reform-commission-caucuses.html

NE: https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=32-401
WA: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=29A.56.020

The WA law looks much more flexible, unless I'm just only looking at the bit about scheduling. It looks like all you would need to do is have the state party (which is dominated by Bernie people) ask to submit a score ballot and then just hope the DNC doesn't nix the caucus. I think it would be a great contrast to the inevitable clusterfuck that main's centralized counting of RCV ballots will be.

[Sara Wolf]

WA Berniecrats are already using STAR for their statewide endorsement votes. These guys are the majority in the WA Democratic party and they are kicking ass and taking names. 

We set it up for them using keyed voter registration and more through star.vote

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-Sara Wolk

Chief Petitioner for "STAR Voting for Multnomah County"

Portland Equal Vote

971-222-9364

sa...@equal.vote

​www​

.

​starv​

o

​ting​

​

.

​

​us​

www.equal.vote

“The fact is that FPTP, the voting method we use in most of the English-speaking world, is absolutely horrible, and there is reason to believe that reforming it would substantially (though not of course completely) alleviate much political dysfunction and suffering.”

-Jameson Quinn, Election Science expert and PhD candidate in statistics at Harvard University