Thanks. I’m using Reddit on my phone so that’s probably the issue.

I don’t even know what this is trying to say?? It also looks like it’s completely made up.

Quick question, when you quote do you have to retype the entire damn text? I can’t copy and paste, it’s just collapses your comment? Or am I missing something???

At least if voters started grouping people it would mean they actually learned about the candidates and didn’t just look for the letter next to their name, that would be an improvement, but I doubt that would actually happen realistically.

We don’t have FPTP voting, so I’m not sure the relevance of that. You can’t win with a plurality (see Shumlin v Milne 2014) or any traditional runoff really.

In VT IRV would actually likely lead to 1 party rule. The GOP would stop being a viable party. Progressives would pick up some of the democrats, but democrats would pick up almost all of the independents/centrists AND conservative voters who no longer have a viable candidate. One party rule is even worse than 2.

It really doesn’t save enough money to warrant a change, mail out balloting negates the “saves time” benefit, and it won’t disrupt the 2 party system (which isn’t really the problem, rather the party system as whole is).

I’ll finish here with my original comment, IRV is a solution looking for a problem.

I appreciate the conversation though and I’m glad we continued it through. I’ve given IRV more thought that I otherwise would have and that’s a positive. I’ll look forward to more dialogues in the future. Thanks.

As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only. If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform, that would give people more options to choose somebody that is most closely aligned with your personal beliefs.

I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule. All parties suck as far as I’m concerned, and as long as we allow political parties to run out elections whether it’s 2,3 or 5 doesn’t really matter. Get rid of all party affiliation on election material and maybe we can rid ourselves of this ridiculous party system all together.

Time isn’t an issue. We mass mail out ballots now.

I appreciate the lesson in quoting on Reddit, thank you.

I think your extrapolating a bit to make your point (and I do think it’s a fair point), If we held runoffs by holding them again and again until we got to 50%, but that’s not actually how it’s done. There are only ever two rounds, the election and then a runoff between the top two candidates. I’ll try again to articulate my point better, but it maybe we just disagree.

Let’s pretend we’ve got Sanders, Warren, Gabbard, Clinton, Biden. I really don’t want to vote for Sanders because he’s my neighbor and I don’t like him, and Clinton and Biden are old and outdated. So I rank Gabbard and Warren, both of whom get knocked out. If we have IRV I’m done, my vote “effectively” has been negated, my vote doesn’t get redistributed as others have that ranked everyone, even those candidates they don’t even know or don’t like.

In a traditional runoff maybe Sanders and Biden are the top two vote getters. I can see clearly the race and although I think Biden’s old and his time has gone by, I dislike sanders because he blows his grass all over my driveway and complains about my pickup. I’ve got the opportunity to vote “against” him. I think that’s a crappy way to vote, but realistically it happens all time. But the point is I have a choice to vote again or not. With IRV I have no choice. I HAVE to rank everyone, even the people I don’t like or I risk having my vote not count because there’s no way to know what the future matchups may turn out to be. I think clarity and choice are two critical aspects to voting and IRV does NOT make the runoff clear at all and I my only Choice is to vote for candidates that May it may not be running. I realize that a small and nuanced point, or maybe I still haven’t made it well.

This also encourages people to vote for candidates they don’t know, again because people are essentially forced to rank everyone. Not something I personally want to encourage.

And again, outside of a token amount of money saved I don’t see a benefit or reason to change the current system that is straightforward and simple. And there’s still the educational challenges that exist. If there’s no real meaningful benefit, what’s the point?

All that said, I really do appreciate this dialogue regardless of the difference of opinions. Thank you for a respectful conversation on the topic. Cheers.

I’ll apologize upfront for not being well versed in quoting in Reddit.

To you response to my #3, in an ideal world you would have researched all 7 candidates. But that’s not where we live and and in fairness, if you’ve found someone that represents you well, why keep looking. I’m glad you at least recognize it as a fair point.

To Your response to my point 2, it maybe poor communications due to typing everything out and trying to be concise. What I was getting at is they’re all running against each other in round 1, but then the lowest vote getter is dropped and those votes redistributed. If there’s still not majority, the next lowest tally gets dropped and those rankings redistributed, at this point when you’re casting your ballot you have no idea who those three left maybe. Because you don’t know who is actually in the “runoff” part how do you know how you want to vote. That’s how Burlington’s worked. I apologize if there’s a different scheme to it now.

That 65% was for both candidates, thus the necessity for a runoff… Montroll was heavily favored, Wright had strong support for a Republican, no one like Kiss and the other two were fringe candidates. I believe Kiss had like mid 20% of the first round tabulation, but seemingly picked up all of the fringe voters and well… we got Kiss who stole roughly $35M of unauthorized funds to build Burlington Telecom (which isn’t a point on the merits of BTC, just criminal malfeasance by the mayor).

To your response to my point 1. I understand the logic that’s it’s akin to not voting, but at the same time it’s not the same. If I chose to only rank 3 candidates because I think the other two are crooks, and all my candidates get knocked out and my vote can no longer be distributed than I have voted, but my vote has effectively been tossed out. I didn’t CHOOSE not to vote, I went to the polls, took time out of my day, etc to go cast a ballot. I have the right for that ballot to be counted. In order for my ballot to be counted I would have to vote for one of the remaining candidates and that’s coercion. I realize that’s very principled argument, and that may not be important to everyone. But in a traditional runoff I have a choice to vote again or not, in IRV that choice is made for me based on how everything works out.

For the sake of argument I’ll pretend everyone can be educated, but point out that in the meantime we are discounting a lot of peoples votes and I’m still not sure what the benefit is 🤷🏼‍♂️

You asked what ME had to do with it and I explained the reasoning for bringing it up. Your displayed maturity level is a part of that explanation, ergo no ad hominem attack rather it provided the basis for determining your lack of first hand experience with IRV along with not having lived in ME.

But here goes…

1.) perhaps most importantly, IRV violates the one vote- one person principle that is the foundation of our democracy. I get a vote and you get a vote. With IRV however, if I don’t rank all candidates (and there are several valid reasons someone may choose not to) then depending on how the future rounds break down, I may not actually get a vote. If I only rank one person and they’re eliminated, my vote is effectively tossed out in the trash and that’s about as anti democratic as we can get. Especially at a time where voter participation is encouraged.

2.) it’s completely obscure and which candidate is running off against which other candidate isn’t clear prior to casting your vote. Who is matched up in the 3rd round is literally anyone’s guess and how an individuals ranking plays out is as well ( I strongly suspect this is what happened with the Kiss re-election but I have no evidence for that, there were two other candidates that had 65%+ of voter support, no one thought Kiss had a shot and would have been eliminated in an earlier round). Voting should be crystal clear which candidates are running and which candidates are available to vote for. This uncertainty disenfranchises voters, especially if they know their vote may not count. In a traditional runoff you’ve got 2 clear choices, there is no confusion and it’s a straightforward as it can be.

3.) traditional runoffs allow for additional time to vet the two candidates. If you’ve got 7 candidates in a field it’s hard to get to know them all well. Maybe one candidate seems like a stellar choice and you vote for them, but they don’t make it through the first round, now you’ve got a chance to become more informed of the remaining 2 choices. IRV would force you to lose your vote, or make uninformed choices about other candidates. You should never be coerced into voting for a candidate you’re not comfortable with just to have your vote count.

4.) Even IF the prior experience with IRV was due to voters not understanding the system instead of a weird anomaly, you would now have to educate the entire state, everyone from Brattleboro to Montpelier to the backwoods of the NEK… when it couldn’t be done in Burlington… a college town full of educated people. Many of those same people still vote and would have the same struggles they had last time. Make it easy for people to cast their vote, not harder.

5.) we have a system that works. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Work on fixing the broken things.

It would probably be more productive to just read the other posts to see the other points I made rather than repeating that assertion over and over as if repeating makes it more true…

ME has IRV so if you had lived in ME you too may have had first hand knowledge… it doesn’t appear your maturity level is such that you participated when Burlington tried it.

Good day.

It wasn’t a small subset, it took a majority to repeal.

You don’t have to believe my first hand experience, but that’s on you. I assure you it’s not “made up” and my name is on a voter roll and checked off for that election. The point is I have first hand knowledge and since you didn’t live in ME you don’t.

I have posted several reasons and I’ve offerred to have a dialogue on those points if you cared to actually read through the threads. It appears you’d prefer to engage in ad hominem attacks and rant away here rather then do so, so I’ll just bid you good day.

So You think the majority of residents in Burlington are uneducated people…and you don’t care about them. I mean you do you boo, but that’s not a look I’d be posting on the inter web.

I’m a person who has first hand knowledge, which I’m guessing is more than you have in this instance, but possibly you’re from ME and I’m wrong…

I guess ONE point is it was tried and the majority of people didn’t like it… for more points you’ll have to do some reading of my other comments, assuming you actually want to understand WHY some don’t like it.

Final note, IF the voters actually wanted him to be mayor, they wouldn’t have tossed IRV directly after the election and there wouldn’t have been a push for a recall (which weren’t and still aren’t a thing in Vt). But those things did happen and it’s pretty clear IRV led to a Mayor the people didn’t want.

I guess you’d need to read a few more comments as I’ve addressed a several things including discounting people’s votes as well as clarity of candidate matchups and voters having a chance to become informed. If you’d like to address those points I’m happy to continue that dialogue in those existing threads.

I’ll also note, it wasn’t just me that didn’t like the guy, almost no one did and that’s why an overwhelming majority of residents decided IRV was not a good system. The VOTERS of Burlington decided it wasn’t a good system, not one single person.

Also, many posters on this thread, I’ve already stated that they vote a party ticket without learning the candidates. I could go back and find the post, but it doesn’t seem to be a very controversial position that some people vote for party without getting to know the candidate

Well, this thread alone showed that most people didn’t realize Zuckerman blatantly stole taxpayer funds. As for the sheriff, do you really think people would have voted for a guy that openly abused handcuffed people on camera if they actually knew about it. on top of that, a previous poster on this thread, who is an advocate, has stated that party affiliation is necessary, because people don’t know the candidates name. Do you have any evidence suggesting otherwise?

If that were true, the Franklin county sheriffs race would’ve turned out differently snd David zuckerman wouldn’t have been reelected.

I disagree. We want MORE INFORMED voters, not more uninformed voters. Uninformed voters are not a positive thing.

And IRV actually discounts the votes of people that don’t rank candidates they don’t know anything about, so it’s not benefitting that aspect either. At least with a traditional runoff it gives the voter some time to read up and learn about the two remaining candidates. And no one should ever be forced to vote for a particular candidate to have their vote count, which in some IRV scenarios is the case.

If you don’t know the name of the candidate you support and are instead using their self described party affiliation then you aren’t really casting an informed vote or participating in democracy in a positive way. I don’t think we should be encouraging or advocating for that.

It IS OK to not cast a vote in every box if you aren’t informed, in fact it’s preferred.

I’m not talking about eliminating parties all together, just eliminating them on the ballot. Which is doable.

I don’t agree IRV is more “bang for the buck”. The cost savings would be pretty minimal and IRL it saved Burlington tens of thousands of dollars and then cost them $17M. It’s also kind of silly to mass mail out ballots including 10% more than we even have voters, and then worry about the cost of holding a simple run off every few years. Besides the fact is a traditional runoff is transparent, straight forward, and ensures each person gets a chance to vote. IRV prevents people who don’t want to rank all choices from having equal voting representation compared to those that rank all choices. I thought we were supposed to trying to ensure everyone’s vote counts, IRV seems to do the opposite for those that don’t want to rank a candidate they don’t like, or don’t feel like they can make an informed choice about. Not to mention no one knows what that 3rd round match up is going to look like, it completely obscures the process.

Trump was never part of a runoff??

I’m not sure about Lepage, I don’t follow ME politics since they’re fairly irrelevant to Vt.

It saves like 5 minutes of time, minimal money (which if costs were a concern we wouldn’t do mass mail out ballots and would just have people request absentee ballots so that “benefit” comes off as a bit silly and a lot hypocritical)

You didn’t save me anything… you’ve waste more of my time spouting redundant talking points then it would take to request an absentee ballot, fill it out and send it back in.

That and it violates the one person one vote principle that really is the foundation of democracy for people who don’t rank every candidate.

It’s not just me who didn’t like it… it was a VAST MAJORITY. You seem to think everyone who voted using IRV previously were idiots and now a days everyone’s smarter, even though many of those same people will still be voting.

Finally if you are voting for the lesser of two evils and not the best candidate please stop worrying about IRV and try to focus on just plain voting. You’re doing it wrong.

I’m aware of the so-called benefits (and I agree there are a few minimal benefits) I’m also aware of the pitfalls having already participated in IRV in VT and the resulting aftermath from that debacle... Back when Burlington voters almost immediately reverted to traditional runoffs (with broad support) after giving IRV a try resulting in the reelection of Bob Kiss. The benefits do not outweigh the downsides is what we learned from the last time. Sometimes it’s best to learn from past mistakes and not repeat them 🤷🏼‍♂️

Care to explain how IRV would eliminate the two party system better than eliminating party designations? I would argue when people don’t know what parties the candidate are from, parties become irrelevant and as an added bonus people will vote for the actual candidate. Parties lose power. IRV if anything will encourage a two party system in the greater Burlington area. It just switched republicans with progressives. No where else in the state will it make a difference. I’d love to hear your analysis though.

Well I did allude to the fact that the last time we tried it, we ended up with the criminal incumbent mayor that had less than 30% of the first round vote, and no one really wanted as Mayor, yet somehow that’s who we got. Within months IRV was gone (with near unanimous support) and we were back to the tried and true traditional runoff which works as elections should. The match up of candidates is clear and upfront. Voting shouldn’t take a statistics degree to figure out every possible match up and how their vote may play out. It also violates the one vote one person principle in some instances where someone doesn’t rank the entire field.

There are lots of issues with it, and it’s not necessary. The system we have works.

Please post a picture of yourself so we all know who to quietly walk by.