{"id":5935,"date":"2009-11-05T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-05T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5935"},"modified":"2009-11-04T11:47:50","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T16:47:50","slug":"run-this-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5935","title":{"rendered":"Run This<\/i> Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest defeats in Saint Paul Tuesday night was the passage of Instant Runoff Voting.<\/p>\n

“IRV” will bring endless resolutions, opaque unaccountable recounts, and – in the worst cases – elections where “Majorities” can only be reached by tossing ballots who don’t vote for any of the “finalists” in the byzantine counting processes – meaning winners will get “majorities” of ballots with preferences, but minorities of actual votes cast.<\/p>\n

On the upside, “victory” parties will go on forever<\/em>; Minneapolis likely won’t see official results from its various races until Christmas.<\/p>\n

Christmas.<\/p>\n

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius <\/em>tries to explain<\/a> last night’s Minneapolis election results.\u00a0 And I do mean “tries”.\u00a0 Jeff is a capable enough writer, and explains statistics as well as anyone in the Twin Cities’ ‘sphere.\u00a0 (They’re often as not wrong and out of context, but they’re explained well!).<\/p>\n

To wit:<\/p>\n

There were no major surprises, and few chances to really see ranked-choice voting come into play in Minneapolis last night. Joe Bodell has the complete results at MN Progressive Project [Sometimes called “Minnesota “Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis<\/span>” “Progressive” Project”<\/em>]. There were a few races were 2nd-choice votes will be needed to officially put one candidate over 50 percent, but in all but one case the results are clear, with the leading candidate receiving 47 or 48 percent of the 1st-choice vote and the nearest challenger with under 40 percent. These races would all take miracles for the 2nd-place finisher on the 1st-choice votes to come from behind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is a good thing, because recounts will be just plain hell.<\/p>\n

There were two cases, though, where we\u2019ll see ranked choice voting (i.e. Instant Runoff Voting) come into play, both involving the Park Board. In District 5, Carol Kummer and Jason Stone are nail-bitingly close. This one will be determined by 2nd-choice votes\u2009\u2014\u2009in fact, it may even need to be decided by the 3rd-choice votes of those whose first choices were Barland and Looney.<\/p>\n

Because Minneapolis voting machines could not be calibrated to tabulate anything other than the 1st-choice votes, the ballots will all need to be tabulated by hand, which means it will be some time before we know the winner of the Park Board race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is this reminding anyone of rotisserie league baseball yet?<\/p>\n

I mean, that seems to be IRV’s main feature; it gives wonks stuff to chatter about.\u00a0 Forever.<\/em><\/p>\n

Congrats, Saint Paul.\u00a0 You turned your electoral system into a friggin’ wonk’s parlor game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest defeats in Saint Paul Tuesday night was the passage of Instant Runoff Voting. “IRV” will bring endless resolutions, opaque unaccountable recounts, and – in the worst cases – elections where “Majorities” can only be reached by tossing ballots who don’t vote for any of the “finalists” in the byzantine counting processes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minneapolis","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5943,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935\/revisions\/5943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}