Take a look at this video. A City in Utah just voted 5-2 against implementing IRV. Stated reasons, they'd rather have STAR voting and don't want to pass a stepping stone and then change it, and monotonicity.
Here's a discussion at one of the more interesting comments. https://youtu.be/TQbr4KYzxR4?t=11667
@bternarytau I do remember that exchange as you said as well and I was also in a blur with a number of things happening all at once (I submitted that first draft on my way to the airport to get surgery cross country,) so my apologies for not following up as I should have or remembering that we'd left this a loose end.
My memory is still a bit foggy on what exactly we ended up using as the formal definition, since it was almost a year and a half ago, so I'm going to take a closer look at it right now and see what I can do.
I can say that since the definition in the hard printed part of the issue is Mark Frohnmayer's, and the more rigorous definition you'd been working on is in the appendix, which will be hosted online, we should still be able to put in changes and credit or cite you, so please give some thought to what you would like that citation to be exactly and email me at sara@equal.vote to follow up.
Hi everyone,
I'd like to share some information for people who might have missed previous threads or comments, and I'd like to offer a proposal.
For reference:
Key Motions Passed in Council Meetings (all unanimous!):
Motion 1, v2: “To establish an independent organization with the purpose of owning and maintaining the online discussion forum.”
Motion 2 v2: “Move to establish and try to publish an online discussion forum based on the “NodeBB” forum software.”
Motion 3: “To do due diligence and apply best practices to protect and minimize the storage of PII of users, with these responsibilities explicitly delegated to specific responsible individuals trusted by the council/board.”
Motion 4: “Create a tech committee empowered to make non-controversial “technical decisions” on behalf of the group as needed, with the understanding that the council could revisit those decisions later if needed. The committee should consult the council on questions where the decision may be controversial.”
Motion 5: “Order of operations. 1. Pass bylaws. 2. Elect board. 3. Launch website.”
Motion 6: “Adopt categories list”
Motion 7: “Adopt Code of Conduct, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy.”
Motion 8: “Motion passed unanimously to coalition with Equal Vote and receive donations and pay expenses through Equal Vote account.”
Resources:
Bylaws: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1obwaF82x5022V_K-gifdv7Why-O5LzqFAiB_d4EwqAw/edit?usp=sharing
Procedure Manual: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCRbEXuBqY8N1glKf7YHNWMVIWD7blgZQhwomfteigY/edit?usp=sharing
Privacy policy. Ready for review. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzZp2QAsP60Ti1WWPk29Q8dInGIM2l438rcJDZLd2Ug/edit?usp=sharing
Terms of Service: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AlnP1gvvc986n0iiYYkA0Tc9L33erbxDftM7sX5ypz4/edit?usp=sharing
Code of Conduct: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ExGrryHIFOjSfPiTtHYBRPw7GQY8lRsCfWiWsLEsImc/edit?usp=sharing
Forum Council Members:
Sara Wolk, William "Jack" Waugh, David Hinds, Connor Frankston, Micah Fitch.
Moderators:
Sara Wolk. Connor Frankston, David Hinds, Connor Frankston, Micah Fitch, Gary Litke.
Tech Committee
William Waugh, (Rob Brown was added by Jack and keys have been shared but that has not been officially authorized yet).
Key points: This forum already has a Council that governs it in terms of the big picture decisions. It also has a tech team and moderation team that can work on things and address issues as needed. They are also empowered to make non-controversial decisions without needing to call a Council meeting or jump through unnecessary hoops. The Forum Council can also approve decisions between meetings, as it has done in the past. The main barrier to progress as I see it is that we could use more volunteers to help. If you'd like to volunteer, email us at forum@equal.vote.
I don't think there is any benefit to rehashing our processes or decisions that have already been made with plenty of consideration and lots of input from Council Members (past and current) and with input gathered from Forum participants at large through the forum itself. To date all our votes since the forum launched have been unanimous.
I do think it's very problematic to make consequential or controversial decisions via forum posting. That opens the door to leadership who don't have the time to read all the posts missing a huge decision. Meetings also allow us to bring in perspectives from other spaces where relevant discussion takes place. Voting via forum post would make it next to impossible to ensure that people have read the relevant discussions and have the background needed before they vote. I love the idea about getting feedback from participants and taking polls to inform council decisions, as we have always done, but for bylaw level items, an actual meeting with real face to face discussion protects the longevity and integrity of the forum much better.
For those who don't know me, I've put in a lot of time and effort over the last 2 years to help build an inclusive, robust, and stable forum that will be an asset to our community for years to come. We included everyone in that process start to finish who wanted to contribute. All the work I've put in has been done in a volunteer capacity, (not as part of my job with Equal Vote). I was really excited and proud to have finished our long list of meta level set up tasks (see resource list above) and hope to not spend too much time revisiting them. The more fun work of making the forum better and bigger and discussing voting science is still ahead.
My Proposal for Forum Next Steps:
In order to improve engagement on this forum we should double down on the commitments we've already made to make this a non-toxic space for new people and to keep our current volunteers motivated to complete the action items already on the list.
Check out this post on Reddit.
Comment and discuss. The proposal is to change rule #3 from "Do NOT bash alternatives to FPTP" to "Keep criticisms constructive and keep claims factual".
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/124861h/reconsidering_the_endfptp_rules/
I think that's a bit confusing and redundant. Having replies only show up under the comment they are replying to would be better.
NOTE: This thread all happened when I was in Canada last fall taking care of family business. Upon getting back in September I promptly found out that my household received a no-cause eviction and had to find a place for my whole household to move short notice in the midst of a housing crisis. I've just completed that move, launched a statewide ballot initiative, published a paper, our lawsuit for voter disenfranchisement regarding the Eugene Ballot initiative for 2020 was escalated to federal court, as well as a few personal things as well. Life is not usually this busy, but sometimes it is. While considering updates to the categories list is interesting, I think it might be helpful for Forum users to recognize that people who don't check the forum every day might have more urgent priorities and that that doesn't mean they don't care. I didn't lead the charge to schedule a meeting right then (which requires a fair bit of time to organize and host) because I didn't have time to do so. I put it on the to do list and here we are.
Post: A lot of thought and input from way more people than are here on this thread went into the current categories so I'm hesitant to change them, but am open minded and would support simplifying them somewhat. There are good pros and cons in the thread above. The intention to have them as they are was that the forum can scale to include and welcome other reform advocates beyond voting "theorists". I still see that as very possible and as a personal priority for what I'd like to see in this forum.
We did have consensus that we wanted the "Recent" page to be the default when we launched and I think I tried to do at one point but we didn't figure out how, so we can absolutely do that now.
@jack-waugh Yes. I changed your billing access to Read Only, deleted your card, and added mine and Equal Vote's. The Equal Vote card is the default card now. We can go over the permission settings together when we meet if any changes are needed. I won't make any other changes in the Lindoe.
Here's our email blast about it from Equal Vote. http://mailchi.mp/equal.vote/approval-banned
The takeaway is that backlash against having oversold RCV is indiscriminate and we (voting theorists) need to help stop the spread of misinformation.
@Jack-Waugh @Marylander
Sounds good to me.
Thanks for looking into it. I don't think it's time sensitive or anything, just thought I'd flag it here as a feature request.
Nice to have our categories all sorted out so clearly with a spot for these types of questions. 
I haven't had much time to engage here on the forum since we launched, but I've been sending people over and it seems like there are conversations happening!
Looking forward to having more time to invest here soon.
@anniek Interesting proposal! I don't know how this might impact voter behavior. It's likely that most people wouldn't understand the incentives so behavior could be all over the map, or just default to honest. It would be interested to hear back from people after the fact.
Let's say there were 3 seats and the candidates were, A: Great, B: Good, C : Incompetent D : Obnoxious, E: Evil and F: None of the Below.
I would likely score them A:5, B:4, F:3. Hopefully others would agree and we'd only elect the two decent candidates. Worst case scenario others wouldn't agree, Evil would win the 3rd seat, and I would have forfeited my chance to give 1 star to Incompetent or Obnoxious to help prevent Evil from winning.
I will say that for small group elections where good quality candidates can be hard to come by I've seen scenarios come up in real life where a provision like this was needed.
Curious to see what other think.
Hi all,
Sorry for the delay, but this thread was recently brought up again as an example, so I'd like to post a comment addressing the Code of Conduct issues raised.
Making the forum welcoming for new (and old) people is important. We also make a point of being welcoming to people across the political spectrum. To that aim, we do have a code of conduct that can be helpful.
It includes this: "Please make an effort to stay on topic and to not waste people's time. Keep in mind that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that time contributed by participants and moderators is appreciated and valued. Try to keep all discussions relevant to voting theory and reform efforts. Avoid sweeping generalizations or assumptions."
Exactly. When the ruling was made no voting method had delivered an Equally Weighted Vote ever. So "as nearly as is practicable" was good enough. In districting (what the ruling was about) a perfectly equal vote is impossible, because populations move and change faster than district lines, but in voting an equal vote is totally practicable.
Fargo, ND (thanks to the Center for Election Science) made history as the first election where an equally weighted vote was guaranteed to every voter, no matter how many candidates they might have one their side. No vote-splitting in the voting method itself! (Voters can obviously still refuse to coalition and be divided and conquered, but they can also choose not to be.)
So, since Fargo has done it, we have proven that an equal vote in the voting method itself is practicable. (Thank you CES!) The bar has been raised.
I'm not a lawyer or a legal scholar, but I'll lay out my understanding:
Wesberry v Sanders was a Supreme Court Ruling. That ruling, I think, hinges on 'one person, one vote', or actually 'one man, one vote' (but that's another can of worms).
Is 'one person, one vote' in the Constitution? My understanding is that it would have been if it were not for the "great compromise" which replaced the 'one person, one vote' concept with the familiar 'one state, 2 votes,' system we know all to well from the US senate and electoral college. (Article 5 of the constitution.) Still, each voter or each state is guaranteed an equal vote in the constitution and the equality of the vote is a fundamental concept.
IRV and FPTP do not ensure an equal vote for voters, or for states.
Per wikipedia, "The constitutionality of IRV has been subsequently upheld by several federal courts.[24][25] In 2018, a federal court ruled on the constitutionality of Maine’s use of ranked-choice voting, stating that "'one person, one vote' does not stand in opposition to ranked balloting, so long as all electors are treated equally at the ballot."[26]
The operative there is "so long as all electors are treated equally at the ballot." Voting method scholars know that all electors (voters) are not. Some will have their 2nd choices counted if their favorites are eliminated. Some will not. A voter whose ballot is exhausted is not equal to a voter whose ballot counts in the final round.
"In 1975, a Michigan court ruling declared that [IRV] did not violate the one-man, one-vote rule:[23] ... no one person or voter has more than one effective vote for one office. No voter's vote can be counted more than once for the same candidate. In the final analysis, no voter is given greater weight in his or her vote over the vote of another voter."
In IRV, yes, no voter has a vote weighted more than 1, but some voters absolutely have their vote reweighted to 0 between the 1st round and the final round.
I added a sentence on explicitly opting in to email notifications under section 1. From what I read I think we may need this in there for legal reasons.
"If you create an account on the Website, you are explicitly authorizing the Forum to send you emails regarding forum activity and updates. You may opt out of most email notifications at any time."
Hi all,
The above post is unnecessarily alarmist and antagonistic. If people want to help make it better, then do so without attacking the people doing the work. The council voted for Equal Vote to take on responsibility the Forum officially and to join the Equal Vote Coalition as it's own entity some time ago and so we've been slowly checking off boxes to get that squared away on the back end, including paying for the hosting for it. Equal Vote only has 2 people on staff and we do a lot, so it's our volunteers and community who are doing the posting and discussion, not so much just our staff. (Currently Sass and I.)
Jack and the council haven't "given up control". This is the first time I'm hearing that there was a conduct issue with Jack. If so, and if it hasn't resolved itself by now, I invite everyone to take a look at the code of conduct and DM me if there is action required on that.
Rob's ideas for the forum (before and now) are good, but the way he came at the conversation back at the CES forum when we were first deciding what to do, and again now, are out of line. People voted on what to do. There was a bug in the tally on the new tool Jay was building at the time, the bug was caught, discussion was had on whether to revote or keep working towards a more broadly supported censuses since the race was very close and the winner wasn't broadly popular, people opted to call it done, and the results were accepted by all.
Bringing it up again in the context of a mutiny is ridiculous for a forum that all can agree could use more involvement from everyone, not less. I'd love to post and engage more, but have been busy with a move lately. In the meantime the forum is here as a resource for those who do have questions to post or ideas to share.
We are looking for more people to be involved in moderation and leadership roles. If that's something you're interested in please let me know. One issue is that after CES let their forum die, and after we stepped up to recreate it here, they launched their discord as the space for similar conversations. My understanding is that took away some of the demand for a new forum. Reddit also fills the niche somewhat. Still, I think this is a great resource, and it's here when we need it.
UPDATE: The North Dakota Governor vetoed the bill and the legislature wasn't able to get enough votes to veto the veto, so Approval Voting in Fargo stands!!!!
Montana did just successfully pass another RCV ban bill this week though.
@rob The thread you linked is a great example. (I just skimmed a small portion of it.)
Sidenote: The Reddit post is about the Reddit Rules. We already have a code of conduct here that fills the same purpose, though with a lot more specifics, but in any case, the thread is relevant for introspection on either so I cross-posted it here.
The question is which rules, if enforced, would have made that Forum conversation more productive? I find the debate itself on Burlington potentially constructive, but the tone and quotes you cited break Reddit's Rule #1 and don't comply with our Code of Conduct either.
I agree with you that some well done moderation there would have likely kept @Andy-Dienes and others more engaged and made them feel more respected.
Great. I updated it as suggested. If Connor and David approve it as well we can call it done and check the Code of Conduct off the list.
PS: I have shown consistent effort and currently have put in more time set up, moderate, and host this forum than anyone else other than Jack.
I may not post a lot, and I'm not volunteering to be a main moderator because of bandwidth, but I just spent hours on the back end stuff this last week to keep it up and make sure the expenses are paid. To do that and then come here and find this thread feels super insulting and hurtful.
The forum is posted from the Equal Vote website under the Resources drop down.