Ken wants me to defend the traditional majority-rule election system
because I dislike a part of RCV that takes votes away from voters to
ostensibly "spread the votes around" in multi-seat elections like the
at-large Park Board commissioners. Horrible! that a majority of 50% + one
vote might sway an election!
As one who feels absolutely and utterly disenfranchised by the election and
subsequent behavior of our current U. S. President, I am sympathetic to
those wielding disenfranchisement as an argument for or against a voting
system. For example, I believe that, if it were not that right-wingers
would probably eviscerate the Bill of Rights in the process, we ought to
have a Constitutional Convention to eliminate the Electoral College in
presidential elections and go to a straight national vote count, because
the EC grossly distorts the weight of votes in sparsely-populated states
versus those in densely--populated states, thus disenfranchising many
millions of American voters.
I say that of course, as a member of the solid national majority of voters
(many millions more than 50%-plus-one) who chose Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But note, Ken: I am not at present and in this thread attacking the whole
RCV shebang, although I do not count myself among those taken in by the RCV
parlor game of ice cream flavors or favorite lakes, etc. I am also not
paranoid about "voting blocs." I'm just suggesting that to have three votes
for our three At-Large Park Board commissioners--as we used to have--seems
better to me that to have a shot at electing just one candidate, with my
now-single vote, ranked. That's a diminution of my voting power to
one-third of what it was.
Another reality with RCV and multi-seat positions: we can elect people who
get only 25% of the vote, versus 50%-plus-one vote for each before. So,
using Robin's example, we elect three at-large park board commissioners who
each have only a minimum of 25% of the total vote. We avoid "coalitions of
50%-plus-one" voters, which are a truly terrible phenomenon, right? I
simply don't see RCV here as an improvement. I see Robin's argument about
what RCV does for multi-seat elections, and I disagree with the value of
doing that.
I'm arguing two things: that using RCV for electing our three at-large park
board commissioners grossly diminishes the power of my vote for those
seats (I get one ranked vote, versus the three I had); and that an argument
that justifies that cutting of my voting power based on some supposed
representationality is specious because our park board already has
district-based and district-elected representatives.
Here's a thought, which I implied in my earlier post: Let's redistrict and
eliminate at-large positions on the park board in favor of adding three
more specific districts. Then, everyone who votes gets representation on
the Park Board from an RCV ballot directed at their own district and thus
electing their very own commissioner. No games. No elimination or RCV, just
removing the unfairness of cutting my voting power so we don't have the
horrific situation of a majority electing three commissioners city-wide.
In other words: Why do we have at-large Park Board Commissioners in
Minneapolis, at all? Let's debste their significance, because that's really
the issue: representing the whole or representing a part of Minneapolis.
Somehow, we have to increase the number of potential Minneapolis voters who
actually inform themselves about the candidates and VOTE on them. I'm not
so much worried about majority voting blocs as I am about electing our
officials, again and again, with only a small plurality of eligible voters.
RCV takes the breath away, when you consider how few actual voters can
elect a mayor or a city council member under it.
Connie Sullivan
Como, in Southeast Minneapolis
Rest of post
On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 10:26 PM, Ken B <<email obscured>> wrote:
> On 10/10/2017 3:23 PM, Constance Sullivan wrote:
>
> = = = = =
> [KB] Ms. Sullivan, you conveniently skipped responding to the important
> issue Robin Garwood described with the old voting system you seem to
> love so much:
>
> "[A] cohesive but bare-majority voting bloc can win 100% of seats
> with 50%+1 of votes.
> That outcome leaves a lot of people (just under half of the
> electorate) unrepresented.
> If you have a situation where there's a stable 50%+ voting coalition,
> 'vote for three' disenfranchises anyone not in that coalition."
>
> We're left to conclude from your omission that you were just fine with
> this long-standing unfair result. RCV corrected it by ensuring that the
> vast majority of voters could vote for a city-wide winner. That's better
> democracy in Minneapolis.
>
> By the way, whether or not they're smarter than Minneapolitans, voters
> in Cambridge MA have been using a similar RCV system to elect both their
> city council and their school committee (board) -- at large, city-wide
> -- since 1941. Before you condemn Minneapolis's elections, study them
> for a while and describe their problems for us.
>
>
>
>
> Ken Bearman
> King Field neighborhood, W8-P7, SD 62, Minneapolis
> About/contact Ken Bearman: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/kenbearman
>
>
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