[Summary
Aspen 2009 IRV should not be taken as proper trial of IRV. But should be taken as example of how not to conduct Electoral Reform.]
In investigating the Brehen's anomaly of the 2009 Aspen election, referred to in blog "Attack on Alternative Voting based on shaky grounds",
I have opened a virtual Pandora's Box of voting problems.
In the 2009 Aspen vote, mistakes occurred in all possible aspects of an election:
computer glitches,
ballot reading mistakes
computer program that awarded seats to least popular candidates (until fixed on election night), and then worked in such a way as to find winners and awarded enough votes to make them winners (according to one candidate)
no proper testing in advance
boredom among staff...
But perhaps worse - a human foul-up, a basic wrong decision.
This was the use of IRV (AKA Alternative Voting) in the election.
Not because it is a bad system,
not because Aspen voters could not do it, or
not because election officials could not handle it, if they woke up and stayed alert. Alternative Voting is a relatively simple process. Recall that it was used back in 1926 in Alberta long before computers.
No, IRV should not have been used in the Aspen election because the election of city council called for the election of two two people. IRV does not elect multiple people - its sister system Single Transferable Voting is used to elect multiple people using preferential ballots - not IRV. Why no one knew that is beyond me.
I admit IRV could be used to elect two people in a district. More than a hundred years ago, when the world was young and people did not know better, Alternative Voting was used in two-member districts in Winnipeg. Then there were two separate elections with two separate slates and separate ballots. Then Winnipeg discovered STV and for 30 years never looked back.
In the double-IRV districts in Winnipeg the same party took both seats in each district in most cases. No proportionality.
Even that would have been simpler and better than the ad-hoc bolted-together Frankenstein of a system that was innovated in Aspekin in 2009 - a sequential IRV election using the same ballots twice.
The election officials did not trust their own people to hand-sort the votes into piles ,and then move the votes from eliminated candidates to the next preference, in the time-proven manner in which it was successfully used in 8 Alberta elections. so the city hired "private election engineers" who in turn brought in defective programs and ballot-reading equipment.
Rightly the people decided to test the election program ahead of time. ballots were passed out among people in a large room, they filled them in and passed them back and they were fed into the computer and the result spit out. All hailed that the system worked. It was later reported that out of boredom, no one took the time to check the result against the ballots to ensure that the computer read-out was a correct result. As defeated candidate Marilyn Marks wrote succinctly: "No tests of tabulation methodology or software were done."
She enlarged on the point: |In fact, the night before the election, the "test" was made and the candidate with the LEAST votes declared the winner. One of the members of the Election Commission questioned this and the software was tinkered with and a new computation created. Tabulation software should not be changing 15 hours before the polls open. [Editor's note: holy cow!]"
And then she stated a point that is also pertinent to Edmonton city elections:
"City Council had assured us that hand-counts and audits would be performed post election to give voters more confidence. But they declined to conduct them." In Edmonton's case, council never promised a hand-count and in fact from what I have heard a hand-count verification is ruled out by definition in city elections.
Failure to check the "tabulation methodology or software" and the other mistakes proved to be a fatal mistake for the quasi-IRV system.
The screwed-up election turned people off of preferential voting and Aspen voters voted to return to the pre-existing system.
Interestingly, and unusual for North America, Aspen uses a runoff election system, in which a second election is held between the top two candidates if no one receives a majority of the vote in the first election. How this is combined with multiple-seat election I have no idea. I'll leave that to them.
The moral of the story:
For electoral reform to work, we must know what we are talking about and not do it if we don't know.
Keep it simple.
Go with what works, with what worked before.
Learn about basic pro-rep systems. Pick the one that suits the number of seats in the district, etc.
Don't depend on computer and high-tech gadgetry.
Don't depend on legislators who have no interest in the reform, in the systems or in the success of the experiment to work out the details. "The devil is in the details."
A straight-forward success in a few districts is better than a poor experience after prolonged partisan debate over setting up a complicated system across a whole province.
For that reason, I say hold a referendum where the voters in a district or group of districts can vote to bring in AV or STV just in their district or districts.
Reform would face less opposition, and if it works well in these few places, it will offer example for others to learn from and copy.
STV has worked before - the process if somewhat more time-consuming than FPTP, is not fuzzy or overly complicated. Best of all it is already proven and known. Just open the can and serve!
in the BC referendum, Victoria voted in favour of STV. The BC government has the legal right to give it to them. What is stopping it?
Thanks for reading.
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