Score Voting for Washington (state)

[Clay Shentrup]

I'm spearheading a group calling itself EqualVote Washington, which will seek to run concurrent voting reform initiatives in multiple cities including Olympia, where I now reside. There's a lot of local interest, and we have interested parties in Kirkland, Seattle, and Lynnwood already.

Because a top two general is a state requirement, we'll be using Score Voting on a 0-5 scale to pick the top two general finalists.

[Rob Wilson]

Good luck.  I hope it is successful. I think approval voting would be better for a top two primary though because it is simpler and voters might view giving scores as more homework that they don't want to do.  I'm also worried that voters would give an unvetted little known candidate a middle score by default which may help unknowns accidentally win. I still think it would be a step up though.

[Felix Sargent]

Awesome. EV are great. Let us know how we can support you. We're all in this together.

Felix Sargent

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From: electio...@googlegroups.com <electio...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Clay Shentrup <cshe...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 11:46:17 PM
To: The Center for Election Science
Subject: [CES #18281] Score Voting for Washington (state)

 

I'm spearheading a group calling itself EqualVote Washington, which will seek to run concurrent voting reform initiatives in multiple cities including Olympia, where I now reside. There's a lot of local interest, and we have interested parties in Kirkland, Seattle, and Lynnwood already.

Because a top two general is a state requirement, we'll be using Score Voting on a 0-5 scale to pick the top two general finalists.

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[Clay Shentrup]

Thanks. I'm still debating whether it makes more sense to just do Approval to eliminate cost and complexity objections. Talking to lots of local stakeholders including city council, Thurston County Auditor, etc.

[NoIRV]

On Sunday, May 6, 2018 at 1:44:51 PM UTC-4, Clay Shentrup wrote:
> Thanks. I'm still debating whether it makes more sense to just do Approval to eliminate cost and complexity objections. Talking to lots of local stakeholders including city council, Thurston County Auditor, etc.

Have the measure allow for approval voting in the first 4 or 6 years before being forced to use a finer scale. This way if it is really that hard to upgrade, they have time to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to get funding.

[parker friedland]

Hum...

There is the argument that the primary electorate is not generally the same as the general election electorate. Only a fraction of the population that votes in the general election turns out for the primary. As such, I can see people making the argument that if more republicans showed up on primary day in a reliably democratic district, democrats might have to chose between the two republicans that won the primary, and vise versa with republican leaning districts.

There are several ways to reduce this potential flaw:

1. Require that no more then 1 candidate for each preferred party is allowed to advance to the runoff. Thus if the candidate with the most approvals prefers party X, the second candidate to make the runoff will be the candidate with the most approvals that does not prefer party X.

2. Require the the primary election to take place less then a month before the general election.

3. (I'm not sure if this option would be legal in Washington state but Louisiana does this) Make the primary election the new "general election" (hold the primary election on the normal general election date) and then hold the runoff election on a later date shortly after the primary election.

[Ciaran Dougherty]

I'm not certain that that's going to be a problem; the local chapter of PropagandaName got confirmation that they could have up to six ranks for IRV using the voting machines in use in King (Seattle's) County, and I believe the same is used in all the counties we're currently targeting.

As such, a 0-5 range should be equivalent

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[Ciaran Dougherty]

That's not what WA nor CA have found, in practice. Instead, you consistently have either a r/d combo, or a single party combo from the majority party, because while the turnout for a primary is not the same as for the general, it's normally the most passionate/politically active subset.

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[Clay Shentrup]

On Sunday, May 6, 2018 at 4:31:50 PM UTC-7, NoIRV wrote:

Have the measure allow for approval voting in the first 4 or 6 years before being forced to use a finer scale. This way if it is really that hard to upgrade, they have time to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to get funding.

I honestly considered this but I think it could go badly. It would be perceived as changing the system twice in a short time.

I will continue to discuss it with my WA network.