Strange request from the Berkeley League of Women Voters

[Clay Shentrup]

The League of Women Voters

Berkeley · Albany · Emeryville

2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite F ♦ Berkeley CA 94702-2000

Phone: (510) 843-8824

E-mail: off...@lwvbae.org

Website: http://lwvbae.org/

Wednesday, March 1, 2018

Mayor Arreguín and City Council

City of Berkeley

Re: Support for Supplementary MOU regarding ranked choice voting count

Honorable Mayor Arreguín and Members of the City Council:

The League of Women Voters of California supports “election systems for . . . single seat offices

. . . that require the winner to receive a majority of the votes” in a single election, “such as [with]

Instant Runoff Voting.” Berkeley’s use of ranked choice voting meets this goal. However the 1

reporting of the results of Berkeley’s ranked choice elections could be improved by requesting

the Alameda County Registrar of Voters (“the Registrar”) to count runoff rounds up to the final

two candidates in all elections. The League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany, and

Emeryville (LWVBAE) asks you to submit this request to the Registrar by signing the attached

supplementary memorandum of understanding prepared by FairVote.

The San Francisco Board of Elections has followed the practice of counting runoff rounds down

to the final two candidates for the last several elections. LWVBAE has been informed by way of

FairVote that this option is built into the counting software used by the Registrar, which is the

same as used in San Francisco. The Registrar can activate this option at no extra cost.

Asking the Registrar to count votes until the final round with two candidates will help strengthen

the use of ranked choice voting, which is the fairest and most inclusive method for filling an

office. Supporting background for this request is available on the next page. The League is

available for further discussion if that would be helpful.

Sincerely,

Adena Ishii

President

League of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville

Pres...@lwvbae.org

1 https://lwvc.org/position/election-systems

[Clay Shentrup]

Are they just trying to inflate the majority??

[Clay Shentrup]

Anyone have any speculation as to what they may be after here? Just inflating win percentages?

[NoIRV]

On Sunday, March 4, 2018 at 4:56:59 PM UTC-5, Clay Shentrup wrote:
> Anyone have any speculation as to what they may be after here? Just inflating win percentages?

Given that this is pro-IRV, there could actually be no legitimate reason to do this. However, the issue might be with elections like
42 A>...
20 B>C>...
14 D>C>...
15 C>...
09 E>A>...

Clearly A is the IRV winner, but perhaps they want to show the "support" of C that is not immediately obvious. In fact, the election ends up 51-49 for A vs C, not A 51, B 20.

[Toby Pereira]

On Sunday, 4 March 2018 21:56:59 UTC, Clay Shentrup wrote:

Anyone have any speculation as to what they may be after here? Just inflating win percentages?

So we're talking about carrying on with the procedure after one candidate already has an outright majority?

I actually think it makes perfect sense to do this, as long as there are the resources for the extra counting. The rule that you stop once a candidate has a majority presumably exists because that candidate is now unbeatable and any further counts would be a waste of time. But that really only applies if you're only interested in the winner. If you want a full list of results (second, third etc.) it makes sense to carry on the eliminations and counts. Not to do so would create a "knife-edge" situation where second place and down can change depending on whether a candidate has 49.9% or 50.1% of the vote in one of the rounds. Obviously IRV is full of knife-edge situations, but the rule about stopping the count after a candidate reaches over 50% is ultimately arbitrary and is purely a time-saving device rather than a fundamental part of the method, and creates a needless extra knife-edge for the non-first placings.

Similarly, in the discussion of NPV here http://www.rangevoting.org/NPVtrainwreck.html Warren discusses how he would count votes in IRV when it comes to mixing results from different states using different methods:

"IRV (Instant Runoff) voting (and other runoffs):

First step: Count only the votes in the final, 2-candidate-only, IRV round (after all "transfers"). That is, say the final round is "Winn" versus "Secd." Give Winn one point for each final-round ballot for Winn, and Secd one point for each final-round ballot for Secd. Second step: Now, for each candidate "Latr" other than Secd and Winn, award Latr 1 point for every ballot on which he is that voter's topmost-choice, but with the exception that no Latr-candidate is allowed to get more points than Secd gets (and Latr also is not allowed to get more than Winn gets). "

My own method for this would be to run the IRV procedure until all candidates other than the winner have been individually eliminated, and each candidate would get 1 point for every voter whose vote was cast for them at some stage in the procedure. This works much better than if you stop the process once a candidate reaches a majority.