Reply #19: There is no hidden agenda against IRV

[VerifiedVoter]

But if you study the claims made for IRV, you will see that few if any ever come true.

In two of the three IRV contests you had a winner declared with:

1) only two candidates left standing AND

2) all the other ballots were exhausted AND

3) the threshold had not yet been crossed.

Know how they did it? Instead of holding a traditional runoff election because they had no clear winner, it appears as though they took a look at the subsequent rankings for the ballots belonging to the second place finisher at that point, and saw if there were any votes for the first place finisher - then added just enough votes to cross the threshold.

If you take votes from the second-highest vote getter finisher and give them to the top vote getter, you need to be able to see if there were any votes cast for the second-highest vote getter in subsequent rounds on the top-vote getter's original ballots - and allocate them in the same round.

That did not happen in Aspen. All candidates need to be treated the same in a round - otherwise you are merely manufacturing a preferential majority using ENRON vote counting techniques!

There does seem to be some sort of hidden agenda with the IRV folks - they are pushing for Proportional Representation as the end and IRV is the means to that end. Richie and Hill even put that down in print!

Chris Telesca
Wake County Verified Voting
http://noirvnc.blogspot.com