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There are currently 6 responses to “Choice voting too complex for Lowell?”

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1. 1 On September 27th, 2009, Cliff Krieger said:

   I don’t think Choice Voting is too complex.

   I think one reason to pick this form of voting is that those who now vote for only one candidate for fear they will dilute that vote if they then vote for a different candidate will be able to relax and vote for as many as they have votes for.

   And, I hope the buzz from all the discussion will cause more voters to turn out for our election in November.

   Regards  —  Cliff

2. 2 On September 28th, 2009, Jackie said:

   The below comment was emailed to me from Victoria Fahlberg:
   Most people find that ranking their vote is quite simple. Check out this sample ballot to see just how easy it is (although our ballot will have more candidates): http://www.fairvotelowell.org/sample_ballot.pdf

   There will be voter education prior to our first election with Choice Voting and by law, voters are allowed to have up to 3 ballots if they make a mistake. When a ranked voting system was implemented in 2006 in Burlington, VT, the validity rate was 99.9% for the first election and it went up to 99.99% for the second election.

   When people refer to the complexity, they generally are talking about the vote tabulation. In the United States, unlike most democratic countries, the winner take all system is used for almost all elections. In that kind of a system, vote tabulation simply requires counting one at a time. Anything other than that will be more complicated.

   Voters do not need to know the details of the tabulation, as the optical scanning equipment will be programmed to do that. However, if they want to know, we have a short video and other information on our website: http://www.fairvotelowell.org.

   What voters do need to know, though, is that they can trust that the vote tabulation equipment and software are programmed correctly so that they can have confidence that their votes are accurately counted, same thing they need to know with our current system. It is important to be clear that the same people who run Lowell’s elections now, and who do so accurately and impartially, will continue to run and monitor Lowell’s elections in the future, no matter how the scanning equipment is programmed to count votes. If you have faith and trust in our current election officials, you should be assured that those same folks will continue their diligence with whatever voting system we have in place in Lowell.

3. 3 On October 1st, 2009, kpemscott said:

   This seems like a very easy system to understand for the voter- Rank 1-9
   It also encourages new people to run that may have felt excluded in the past.

4. 4 On October 1st, 2009, Jackie said:

   I like that it requires the voter to prioritize, which eliminates the concern of one vote potentially canceling another. Also, it doesn’t seem to support one group of voters being able to elect a block of candidates because they also have to prioritize their votes. The chance of more voters having at least one of their favorites get elected seems more likely under this system, which, as you mention, should encourage more candidates and hopefully more voters too.

5. 5 On October 1st, 2009, kpemscott said:

   “Also, it doesn’t seem to support one group of voters being able to elect a block of candidates because they also have to prioritize their votes”

   This all comes down to getting voters to vote. I am hoping that there really are that many voters that did not vote in the past because they felt their candidate could not win.

6. 6 On October 1st, 2009, Jackie said:

   No way to know for sure how many people opt out because they don’t feel their vote matters or how many never participated in the first place because they couldn’t be bothered. Either way, if democracy is going to survive and our community thrive, we must get more folks paying attention and engaged in the process. Otherwise, we have government by the connected few–Now this might be appealing to longterm incumbents who’ve got their base locked in, but what promise does it hold for the community as a whole? In the end, it comes down to getting the government we deserve.