Apparently The Columbian isn’t the only paper being watched over at Columbian Watch. I was intrigued by a link to The Oregonian about a HB 1447 which would allow Vancouver, Spokane and Tacoma to experiment with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). [“Lawmaker promotes new form of voting“]
In an IRV system, voters rank the candidates. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, the bottom candidate is eliminated, and those who voted for him have their second choice counted. This continues until somebody receives a true majority.
Longtime readers may be familiar with my infatuation with IRV, which I see as an opportunity for voters to vote for the candidate they like best, rather than for the lesser evil they think has the best chance of winning. And given a choice between our new, stupid-ass “top two” primary, and eliminating the primary entirely and going to an IRV general election… I much prefer the latter.
HB 1447 would simply authorize local governments to use IRV for local elections. Spokane and Tacoma would have to amend their city charters. Vancouver has already done so.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jim Moeller (D-Vancouver) also makes the following timely observation:
Moeller said he thinks the method would have made the winner in the recent gubernatorial election “crystal clear.”
While an undisputed election might have been bad for us bloggers, I’m pretty sure it would have been good for the rest of Washington’s citizens.
Go to IRVWA.org for more information on efforts to implement IRVs in Washington.
Maybe I would have been willing to trade Gore in the White House for another six years of skelator the fish monger, but that would have been a hard choice to make…
Go Maria!
Hey, c’mon Goldy. Where is your post on the Sims/Logan Press Conference today. Can’t wait for your spin!!
Who in their right mind would hold a press conference like this right before the Republican Attorneys are going to depose them??
What attorney in their right mind would encourage them to do this? They have given the R attorney’s more fodder for questioning than anyone could ever dream for.
Why would they have this press conference:
1) They are so arrogant they think they can talk their way out of anything.
2) They are slightly moronic.
3) They were both ironically dropped on their heads as infants.
4) All of the above.
5) They are desperate to land a slot on a Tv episode of
“AMERICA’S DUMBEST CRIMINALS”!
They only did it because The Shark goaded them into it! We all owe Stefan Sharkansky our thanks. Because of him, we will get to the bottom of MANY election irregularities. Up until yesterday, I was convinced that this was about gross incompetence and neglect. Now I know it is MUCH more than that!
Just wait to see what comes up next week! Remember, we are now in the “questioning”, evidence gathering phase. The R’s still do not have to present all the evidence. When you see some of the stuff that happened in this election, even the worst cynics will be disgusted.
Goldy–when you supported Ron Sims for Governor, did you or did you not know that Sims had a serious decimal-place deficiency???
Hopefully Goldy, you aren’t Sims “closet statistician”!
Did you tell him that 99.98% X 900,000===1,800 ?????????????
This is a classic!!
Here is our KingCo Executive(Sims) and his ACE Election Director(Logan) with PREPARED statements telling us that 1,800 is 99.98% of 900,000!!!!!
It must really gall you Goldy that it took Sharkansky to point out that it’s 99.8%!!!!!!!
If Rossi did something like this, you would be all over his ass.
HURRY! Quick, check the KingCo Budgets and Bank Accounts. Ron & Dean, the numbers wizards, are in-charge!!
I have to agree wit Mr Cynical. I am happy Sims made a Horsesass out of himself today. I haven;t laughed so hard in years. A Model election Ha Ha Ha HA Ha Ha
Yeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaa
GS–
I like the part where Sims expects us to simply accept Logan’s findings of his own “self-examination”!! Priceless!!
I know I will be whacked for being a potty-mouth but when Sims gave results of Logan’s review of himself, I could only imagine Logan as the Doctor who did a close, very, very close exam of his own deep hemmoroids!!! Poor Logan Has his head so far up there he can’t see he is being set up.
Goldy, it’s getting tougher and tougher to be an apologist for the Demolibs! At some point you must be embarrassed to be part of the Ron Sims/Dean Logan/Hillary Gregoire party. Your blog draws some of the best conservative commentary out there!
I’m sorry, but I disagree with you, Goldy. I don’t think instant runoff voting is a good idea for Washington State. I’ll post a link a little later that you can follow which explains my position.
An IRV would not necessarily solve all our problems because at each level of the process, you have to determine which candidates votes get redistributed based on their vote count. So you could still be stuck with the top 2 candidates in a dead heat, or if nobody has 50% dead heats between candidates making it hard to determine who is eliminated.
I actually believe that a non-instant run-off would be preferable because it allows the minority candidates to have some kind of political weight (“I’ll ask my supporters to vote for you if you agree to give strong consideration to such and such issue once in office.”)
The voting can occur a week later.
Of course we would have to eliminate absentee voting, but given the problems it has had that might happen anyway.
Dear Mr Cynical-Idiot @ #2, I think you should either get your ears cleaned or go back to junior high school math. Logan said “He attributed the discrepancy, which he said amounts to two-tenths of a percent of the 900,000 King County votes cast – to human error.” For your information two-tenths is .2, you, in your brilliant spin world are stating .02…..get with it Mr CI, you best get back to the real world and your medications.
OK jpgee can you tell me what percentage of error CG won by, NO, but if you think two-tenths of a percent is just fine, then CG won by 1.4 hundreths of a percent which puts King Counties Error well within the area of a Rossi win and she will be thrown out! Watch the leanings of the court! Sims is a landstealing liar!
Here’s the link to NPI’s position against instant runoff voting: http://www.nwprogressive.org/Topics/IRV.html
GS @ 9
Please cite the statute or caselaw you are relying on for your argument that an election closer than the margin of error gets thrown out. The GOP attorneys would love to know. (Not that I talk to THEM.)
That’s because, unlike the folks on the other side, I don’t consider people who disagree with me “trolls”. I just consider them wrong.
(And since I’ve been wrong once or twice in my life, it’s something I can tolerate.)
jpgee@8–
Ummmm, you are calling me an idiot??
Ron Sims, County Executive read from a PREPARED STATEMENT that the election was 99.98% accurate!!
1800 divided by 900,000 equals a .2% error rate or 99.8% accuracy.
That is different by a magnitude of 10.
Go look at the tape.
When Sharkansky asked Sims what the numerator and denominator were in his computation, Sims looked like he had never heard those 2 words…and he looked like Shark punched him in the nuts.
jpgee-Bad try–NO SALE Dude. It’s on tape. It’s been on the news. Sims is a nincompoop. He is trying to set up Logan to take the fall for this election disaster. Watch when the depositions start.
You have absolutely no idea what hard evidence the R’s have, do you jpgee??
You remind me of the poor little chihuahua who keeps yipping at the Rottweiler…not knowing the Rottweiler has eaten for a week.
OOOps–I meant not know the Rottweiler HASN’T eaten for a week!
Goldy–
Where is your spin on that Sims/Logan press conference?
Was it worse for you than watching the last 5 minutes of the Super Bowl???
Hey idiot… your 1,800 vote so-called “discrepancy” are not errors! I’ll say it again… the voter list and the ballots cast are the results of two separate processes that were never intended to reconcile. Period.
Hey Goldy, the use of the term “error rate” has become pretty standard in describing what the Rossi side is contending. So for you to put words in Ron Sims mouth and try to say the 99.98% didn’t apply to the discrepancy in the vote tallies seems Clintonesque. In other words, nobody buys it.
The irony of Sims and Logan coming out with such a lame press conference at this time is mind boggling. It certainly didn’t enlighten anybody.
Dear Mr. Cynical CPA: The KOMO-4 and KING-5 web sites both report that Sims said “99.8%” not “99.98%.”
I’m sure glad I didn’t hire you to do my tax return, because I don’t want to go to jail!
Don, It was on the radio today.
And check out:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....onf09.html
In his defense (which pains me to do) his prepared text here:
http://www.metrokc.gov/exec/ne.....emarks.htm
says 99.8. So maybe he just decided to embellish on the spot to get a better sound bite.
Don, the State laws do not allow the altering of a ballot so that it can not be determined what the original voter had marked. The State laws do not allow provisional ballots to be fed into counting machines before they are verified. The State laws do not allow felons to vote. The State laws do not allow Dead people to vote. The State laws allow one vote per valid voter, not 1800 + votes without voters or voters without votes. I realize CG thinks she won a huge victory by 129 votes. That is .014 percent of the King County votes! I think all that is plenty to throw this election out. And I think the judge seems to think there are plenty of reasons to allow this case to go forward. He is getting paid to determine what exact section of the law is being violated, and I believe he has studied the evidence enough to smell a rat. I smell at rat also. And so do most of the people in this state. The courts will decide, not RON THE PROPERTY STEALING TAX HAPPY DEMORAT……..We shall see who prevails in this race, and I have a great feeling of success!
Zip @ 16
Oh… so if Rossi or Snark call it an “error rate” I must as well? You can call it whatever the fuck you want, but none of the metrics used to measure the accuracy of elections would consider this to be part of the error rate. The whole point of an “error rate” is to compare the accuracy of one election with another.
This so-called “discrepancy” is not evidence that there were more ballots than voters. At the very worst it represents the lack of evidence to the contrary.
Goldy–
If this is any example of your “spin” efforts…I can’t wait until the depositions and evidence come out.
You will need to take Dramamen—to keep yourself from becoming violently ill (motion-sickness).
Don–
Nice try by the lawyer. Watch the tape.
zip @ 18
I wasn’t there, so I didn’t hear what he said, but at least one news organization got it wrong.
gs @ 19
“Don, the State laws do not allow the altering of a ballot so that it can not be determined what the original voter had marked.”
I don’t know whether this happened or not, but in any event it’s a red herring because every single one of those ballots was inspected by a GOP observer before it was enhanced.
“The State laws do not allow provisional ballots to be fed into counting machines before they are verified.”
True, but you’re omitting several important facts. This was done by voters at polling places, not by candidates, parties, or county officials. How do you prevent it? The poll workers are essentially volunteers who receive minimal training, nor can they supervise each individual voter because they have multiple tasks to perform and must keep the lines moving. Second, provisional voting is a new procedure that poll workers weren’t familiar with, and there were bound to be some mistakes made by voters and poll workers the first couple times. Third, a high percentage of these provisional ballots probably would have been validated and counted, so the total number of invalid votes is much less than the number of improperly canvassed provisional ballots. Fourth, you don’t throw out elections because mistakes were made; you have to prove the mistakes changed the outcome.
“The State laws do not allow felons to vote.”
No one is arguing with this statement as a general principle. However, the GOP’s list of “felons” was put together by amateurs, and it remains to be seen how many errors the list contains. Such ineligible felon voting as occurred almost certainly resulted from confusion, not fraud. Given how confusing Washington’s system of disqualifying felons is, it’s almost certain that every election and every officeholder in the state in living memory has been tainted by ineligible felon votes. Again, you do not throw out an election unless it is proved that invalid votes changed the outcome. That’s the legal test. To date, Rossi and the GOP have alleged much, but proved nothing.
“The State laws do not allow Dead people to vote.”
Again, again … this happens in every election, and to get this election nullified, the GOP must prove that invalid votes changed the outcome. Maybe they can piece together enough ineligible felon votes and enough dead votes, maybe not. The Seattle Times reported that 8 dead people voted in King County. That number is in doubt, because the county says it has valid signatures for 4 of them. These may well be cases of mistaken identity — the Sr. and Jr. problem being the foremost suspect (John Doe Sr. and John Doe Jr. living at the same address; John Doe Sr. died, John Doe Jr. voted, the reporter or BIAW volunteer or whoever is trolling the lists for dead voters fails to distinguish between Doe Sr. and Doe Jr.) Of the other 4 “dead votes,” 2 people admitted to reporters they voted their deceased spouses’ ballots — 1 for Rossi, the other unknown. The other 2 are under investigation. There are not 129 dead votes in the entire state, and it’s entirely possible that more invalid “dead votes” were cast for Rossi than Gregoire, in which case the “dead votes” may end up offsetting ineligible felon votes, although based on what we currently know of the latter, Rossi may have received more ineligible felon votes than Gregoire did. This won’t get him from Point A to Point B. The GOP has to come up with a net difference of 130 more invalid votes for Gregoire than for Rossi, and right now all of their claims are purely hypothetical.
“The State laws allow one vote per valid voter, not 1800 + votes without voters or voters without votes.”
This issue has been repeatedly hashed on this board. It’s pointless to keep repeating something to people who aren’t listening because they don’t want to hear. These are apples-to-oranges lists. The GOP is basing the 1800 number on a list that was never intended to show who voted, and doesn’t. However, I would add a couple more points. One, Federal Write In Ballots could account for as many as 1300 of these votes. Two, the Address Confidentiality Program accounts about 120 more. Three, voters who failed to sign the poll books account for some more. Finally, even if there is a discrepancy, that still doesn’t prove that a single ineligible vote was cast. For each vote that was counted in King County, there is an actual paper ballot, and an actual human being cast that ballot. What that means is the number of actual ballots in the vault is a more accurate and reliable number than the theoretical number derived from counting names on a list that has been updated and changed since the election. Of all the GOP allegations, this one is probably the most baseless, with the possible exception of the ludicruous (and false) allegation that military voters were prevented from voting.
“I realize CG thinks she won a huge victory by 129 votes.”
You only need 1 more vote than the other candidate to win the office. That’s the rule we’ve all lived under all of our lives, and Gregoire knows that rule, too. I can tell you that this whole experience has been a nightmare for Gregoire and her family. It has for Rossi and his family, too. Not to mention their supporters. A super-close election is not good for anyone — not for the candidates, the parties, the campaign contributors and campaign workers, and least of all for the voters and general public. It happened. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s the voters’ fault, because it was the voters who divided their votes evenly between the candidates. However, it was the GOP that chose to create the climate of invective and incivility that now surrounds this election, and for that they should be held responsible.
“That is .014 percent of the King County votes!”
When you are dealing with a margin of 129 votes out of 2.9 million, the result is going to be well within the margin of error, which inevitably creates uncertainty. However, uncertainty is not the legal test for nullifying an election. We do not have a law that says you have to win by more than 1 vote. The legal test is that Rossi and the GOP must show that Gregoire received at least 130 more invalid votes than he did. They will get their day in court.
“I think all that is plenty to throw this election out.”
In view of the fact that much has been alleged but nothing proved, I think your conclusion is premature. The evidence may bear you out, or it may not. If Rossi wins the lawsuit, I will accept that result, because I believe in the rule of law. If Rossi loses the lawsuit, will you accept Gregoire as the legitimate governor of this state, or will you bitch and moan because you didn’t get your way?
“And I think the judge seems to think there are plenty of reasons to allow this case to go forward.”
That’s not an accurate characterization of the judge’s rulings. A legal case is dismissed if the plaintiff’s allegations, even if proved, would not entitle the plaintiff to relief. The judge’s determination that the GOP’s allegations were sufficient to entitle them to a trial is not a ruling on the merits of the allegations.
“He is getting paid to determine what exact section of the law is being violated,”
Wrong. He is getting paid to determine WHETHER the “law is being violated” (as you put it, although this characterization also is inaccurate; the issue is not whether a law was “violated” but rather whether the certification should be set aside and the election nullified because Gregoire’s victory resulted from invalid votes).
“and I believe he has studied the evidence enough to smell a rat.”
If the judge “smells a rat” at this stage of the case, he should be removed for bias, because he has not heard any evidence and is not permitted to prejudge the case.
“I smell at rat also.”
You are prejudging the case before any evidence has been presented at trial, but that’s okay, because you’re not the judge.
“And so do most of the people in this state.”
Speak for yourself and your friends, and leave the half of us who voted for Gregoire out of it. Actually more than half, probably considerably more, because there’s some reasonable Republicans out there who — unlike you — have not prejudged the case before hearing the evidence based on blind partisan loyalty to your candidate.
“The courts will decide,”
It seems you’ve already decided, but who cares.
“not RON THE PROPERTY STEALING”
This is a separate issue that doesn’t belong on this board because it’s off topic. If you want to talk about it, ask Goldy to start a thread on the CAO.
“TAX HAPPY”
Ask him to start a thread on this topic, too, if you want to talk about it. Although for once I agree with you. Ron Sims never met a tax he didn’t like, and I can’t afford all the taxes he wants me to pay. He’s right about a state income tax, though.
“DEMORAT”
Oh please. This is a liberal board. If you want to engage in this kind of juvenile name calling, go post on Free Republic. They welcome this kind of lib-bashing there.
“We shall see who prevails in this race,”
The Republicans are entitled to their day in court, and I’m very glad they’re getting it. Yes, let’s get to the bottom of it, and find out who really won. If it was Gregoire, then I think it’s reasonable to expect you to accept her as the legitimate governor and come back and try to do better next time — in 2008. We Democrats welcome competition. The last thing I want in our state is a one-party system, although I’m afraid we’ve got close to that because the GOP has gotten so looney over the last 20 years they’ve made themselves all but unelectable. With a few exceptions.
“and I have a great feeling of success!”
Better rush out and buy a bunch of lottery tickets while you’re feeling hot!
There you go again Cynicalidiot. What the hell is dramamen? You still fixated on the guys? Or did you mean Dramamine? Perhaps you should recheck your meds again…….
Don @ 23–
Thank you for re-re-re-re-repeating the Dem talking points.
It would seem like you agree with Cristine Gregoire:
“This election is a model for the nation and the world at large”.
However, as a lawyer, you know you are spinning before depositions and seeing all the evidence.
My guess is when you start seeing election workers fold before your eyes…you will disappear.
jpgee-
I’ll bet other kids used to steal your lunch money and piss on you just for grins. Your a real hoot!
Excellent analysis, Don. I’m afraid these fools (Cynical, gs, et. al.) are not open to discussion, but I appreciate your charitable attempt to engage them in real debate.
Andrew @ 10 — Without regard to the overall merits of IRV vs other current and alternative voting systems: almost everything you say in this piece is just plain erroneous.
There are more potent lines of attack, and the recent WA Gov experience raises a couple:
1. The more candidates and last-place elimination steps you have, the greater likelihood of a near-tie requiring a recount process before final certification.
2. IRV can’t be counted — or recounted — just by “divide and conquer” summation of results within electoral subdivisions (e.g., precincts).
These problems remain mere theoretical possibilities in general practice … but so was the WA hand recount cycle.
Cyn @ 25
Repetition is the established method of teaching something to little children and organ grinder monkeys.
Don @ 28
Might I suggest you stop grinding your organ before you go blind!
Goldy @ 15 & 20
Even your buddies at Also Also call this an error rate so get off it.
Don @ 23
You downplay the provisional ballot issue based on conjecture. These are the ballots that were counted only due to King County’s negligence. Is not the law ultra clear that none of these ballots are valid?
Regarding your opinion that “it was the GOP that chose to create the climate of invective and incivility that now surrounds this election, and for that they should be held responsible.” Gregoire had a choice after the machine recount, and she chose to go for the hand recount. The invective and incivility was demonstrated by Democrats after Florida 2000 (for 4 years and still hasn’t stopped) so was entirely predictable no matter which way the hand count went. Gregoire knew this and made her choice. It was her choice whether to start the ball rolling towards inevitable invective and incivility or not. She screwed the state by choosing to go for the hand recount.