[EL] RCV in Maine and Third-Party Spoilers

Mon Dec 3 09:09:38 PST 2018

I've verified the Maine tabulation and would be happy to share my data on
ranking patterns and how ballots were processed. The biggest problem I've
seen people have replicating the results arises from producing 'effective
choices' (that is understanding that a first choice undervote followed by a
valid second choice counts as a valid first choice vote) and Maine rules on
skipped rankings, (two consecutive undervotes exhausts a ballot, but non
consecutive undervotes or bullet votes followed by valid choices do not).

Nathan Tefft at Bates College has a good overview of how to process the
Maine ballots, and has also been able to verify the Maine SoS count:

https://github.com/ntefft/rcv

On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 11:47 AM Hess, Doug <HESSDOUG at grinnell.edu> wrote:

> In exploring the ballot information that ME provides (they provide for
> each ballot the order of choices as well as when that choice was
> under-voted or over-voted), I can also tell that they took the 2nd choice
> for anybody that under-voted for their 1st choice and applied that in the
> second round as well.
>
>
>
> By looking at that data (from the link below), you can also see examples
> of some oddities in how people treated the ballot. See images below (if you
> cannot see them, you can email me privately for them). Seems an electronic
> ballot might be the only way to prevent these errors (unless people were
> trying to communicate something with these odd patterns of choices).
>
>
>
> Is anybody else working on this data? I may contact the state, but I
> cannot get the exact outcome they certified for the final result (earlier
> totals in the process work, but the final is off by just a few hundred).
>
>
>
>
>
> Douglas R Hess
>
> Assistant Professor of Political Science
>
> Grinnell College
> 1210 Park Street, Carnegie Hall #309
> Grinnell, IA 50112
>
> phone: 641-269-4383
>
>
>
> http://www.douglasrhess.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Jack Santucci [mailto:jms346 at georgetown.edu]
> *Sent:* Friday, November 30, 2018 2:38 PM
> *To:* David Lublin <dlublin at american.edu>
> *Cc:* Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>; Hess, Doug
> <HESSDOUG at Grinnell.EDU>
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] RCV in Maine and Third-Party Spoilers
>
>
>
> Ditto on STV in US cities. Batch elimination of candidates below some
> threshold (e.g., 50 votes) was standard procedure in the 1910s-50s. I think
> (but don't quote me) that this threshold was as high as 2,000 in New York
> City.
>
>
>
> Jack
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On Nov 30, 2018, at 15:01, David Lublin <dlublin at american.edu> wrote:
>
> This is handled differently across countries. Ireland often eliminates
> multiple candidates who stand no hope of making the quota at the same time
> in their STV system. I'm not sure how they decide but think that the
> returning officers have some discretion. In Australia, they always report
> each transfer as each candidate is eliminated, which of course makes it
> easier to see how the preferences flowed. Even though it thwarts following
> preferences, the decision in Maine seems reasonable as no one would achieve
> a majority by elimination of only the last place candidate.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> David Lublin
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 2:30 PM Hess, Doug <HESSDOUG at grinnell.edu> wrote:
>
> Here’s a question about the Maine RCV election: Why do they eliminate
> *two* instead of just one at a time? Given how close the election was in
> Round 1 *and* the large vote for the losing candidate, you could have had
> (albeit very unlikely) Poliquin win with 51.7% of the vote if all of Hoar’s
> votes had transferred to him.
>
>
>
> Granted, the probability of that happening in this situation approaches
> null, but you get the idea. Or am I missing something?
>
>
>
> If they do check for that, or even if they don’t, it would be great to
> know how the votes transferred by each eliminated candidate instead of both
> together. I haven’t checked their other RCV races.
>
>
>
> The table below is my arrangement of data from the Nov 26, 2018 file of
> certified results on the Maine SOS website. This means the totals are
> slightly larger than in Vladimir’s email, but the relationships are largely
> the same.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Douglas R Hess
>
> Assistant Professor of Political Science
>
> Grinnell College
> 1210 Park Street, Carnegie Hall #309
> Grinnell, IA 50112
>
> phone: 641-269-4383
>
>
>
> http://www.douglasrhess.com
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.douglasrhess.com_&d=DwMGaQ&c=U0G0XJAMhEk_X0GAGzCL7Q&r=2fMgMunsCtJpikIZXRvVAXXnXpXnW1DdeOa9_DBJVAg&m=K0zyd2Z4j71d02w628AD_m72Qvxaezv6R7sioWtTbJU&s=NT0GLzCbJIai0ZWyEKGwGSUWHu-a3BNQS-Fm0Pzkefw&e=>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Kogan, Vladimir [mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu]
> *Sent:* Monday, November 26, 2018 8:08 PM
> *To:* Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org>
> *Cc:* law-election at UCI.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] RCV in Maine and Third-Party Spoilers
>
>
>
> Rob: Completely agree that off-cycle runoffs are horrible!
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Rob Richie [mailto:rr at fairvote.org <rr at fairvote.org>]
> *Sent:* Monday, November 26, 2018 9:00 PM
> *To:* Kogan, Vladimir
> *Cc:* law-election at UCI.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] RCV in Maine and Third-Party Spoilers
>
>
>
> I thought Vlad's email offers an opportunity to think why sometimes voters
> "exhaust" ballots with ranked choice voting or don't come back for runoff
> elections -- with, on the latter, the average drop inf participation in
> federal congressional runoffs this year being 47% of the first round, with
> half the runoff winners in fact earning fewer votes in the runoff than they
> did in the first round.
>
>
>
> Although it's perhaps fun to look at the new kid on the block (ranked
> choice voting), I thought i'd look at the old standards of runoffs through
> the eye of exhaustion - -specifically the Top Two elections in California
> this year.
>
>
>
> See some numbers below that I generated from the California Secretary of
> State's website. As of Nov. 26, with votes still being tallied
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vote.sos.ca.gov_returns_governor&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=toVAec3-Hd1lH-6OfgFj2QG2wvva5-kmJj0jrp32VbI&s=4XOeQxhf0TSSUpky2UH4GkXicW7q7zmSroDzQAaIB0s&e=>.
> you'll see votes for governor (a Democrat-Republican runoff), Secretary of
> State (a Democrat-Republican runoff), and Lt. Governor (a Democrat-Democrat
> runoff).
>
>
>
> My comparison isn't with the June preliminary round ("primary"), but
> within the same contest with voter reacting to the choices being offered to
> them. With the D-R runoff in statewide races, the dropoff from governor to
> those races is small. For Secretary of State, for example. it is only
> 1.53%. But for the D-D runoff for Lt. governor (and to a large, if lesser
> extent for US Senate), the dropoff is much bigger - 16.24% in the case of
> Lt. governor, or nearly 1.9 million votes.
>
>
>
> If you think about who is likely dropping off, it's almost certainly
> Republicans. If you generously use the Cox vote in the governor's race as a
> the baseline for Republicans, that means that more than 40% of Republican
> voters likely skipped the Lt. Governor race -- they indicated a "pox on
> both your houses."
>
>
>
> That is actually higher than the percentage of Maine independents who
> didn't indicate a Republican or Democrat as a backup preference. And I'm
> actually not surprised by that dropfff - there often is a core of third
> party and independent voters who really do think some version of "the
> lesser of 2 evils is still evil" or "don't encourage them with a vote."
>
>
>
> So, then, the question is whether those voters are "spoilers" or really
> "abstainers." Are they fundamentally different than the some 40% of Maine's
> eligible voters who didn't vote at all? I'd suggest not. Just like those
> non-voters, they were "in play" for the candidates, and the candidates in
> fact did do enough to earn the votes of almost two-thirds of the
> independent candidate backers. The fact that they didn't earn the rest is
> something they'll need to reflect on, just like they need to reflect on not
> inspiring so many potential voters to get to the polls in the first place.
>
>
>
> Speaking of runoffs as an alternative to RCV, I trust Vlad will keep an
> eye on the upcoming runoffs in Mississippi and Georgia. The Mississippi
> runoff turnout in the US Senate race may end up being pretty high , given
> the stakes -- we'll see. The Georgia turnout for next months' runoffs for
> secretary of state and another statewide office... not so much. You can be
> absolutely sure that a winner with RCV in the GA Secretary of State race
> this year would have won with a much larger number of votes than will end
> up being the case with runoffs.
>
>
>
> - Rob Richie
>
>
>
> CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
>
> Gavin Newsom (D)
>
> 7,213,464
>
> John H. Cox (R)
>
> 4,481,280
>
> Total Votes
>
> 11,694,744
>
> CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE RACE
>
> Alex Padilla (D)
>
> 7,385,637
>
> Mark P. Meuser (R)
>
> 4,130,499
>
> Total votes
>
> 11,516,136
>
> Dropoff, votes
>
> 178,608
>
> 1.53%
>
> CALIFORNIA LT. GOVERNOR RACE
>
> Eleni Kounalakis (D)
>
> 5,542,766
>
> Ed Hernandez (D)
>
> 4,253,319
>
> Total votes
>
> 9,796,085
>
> Dropoff, votes
>
> 1,898,659
>
> 16.24%
>
> Dropoff of GOP Voters (est)
>
> 42.37%
>
> (lt. governor dropoff divided by Cox vote)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 7:45 PM Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
> I wanted to flag the election results in Maine’s 2nd Congressional
> District, where ranked-choice voting was used. Four candidates ran — one
> Democrat, one Republican, two independents. Here are the results:
>
>
>
> *Round 1*
>
> *Round 2*
>
> *Candidate Names*
>
> *Votes*
>
> *Percentage*
>
> *Transfer*
>
> *Votes*
>
> *Percentage*
>
> *Transfer*
>
> Bond, Tiffany L.
>
> 16260
>
> 05.73%
>
> -16260
>
> 0
>
> 00.00%
>
> 0
>
> DEM Golden, Jared F.
>
> 128999
>
> 45.48%
>
> *10232*
>
> *139231*
>
> *50.53%*
>
> *0*
>
> Hoar, William R.S.
>
> 6753
>
> 02.38%
>
> -6753
>
> 0
>
> 00.00%
>
> 0
>
> REP Poliquin, Bruce
>
> *131631*
>
> *46.41%*
>
> *4695*
>
> 136326
>
> 49.47%
>
> 0
>
>
>
> Several things worth highlighting: (1) The “ballot exhaustion” rate was
> fairly low, about 2.8% of valid first-round votes; (2) the victor still did
> not win a majority of valid first-round votes; (3) by my calculation 35%
> (!) of voters who picked one of the independents as their #1 choice did not
> subsequently rank either the Democrat or Republican in a lower-ranked
> position.
>
>
>
> I bring this up in response to the argument that RCV is a solution to the
> problem of third-party spoilers (who syphon off enough votes from one
> major-party candidate to lose him/her the election). Of course, all of
> those 35% may not have voted at all had the independent candidates not run;
> or perhaps they would’ve voted for Bond or Hoar even in the absence of RCV
> (assuming, of course, that Bond and Hoar would’ve still run had the
> election not been held under RCV…). But I thought this was worth flagging.
>
>
>
> Note: This is not meant to be a general indictment of RCV or an argument
> that RCV is worse than the alternative.
>
>
>
> Vlad
>
>
>
> *Error! Filename not specified.*
> *Vladimir Kogan*, Associate Professor
> *Department of Political Science*
>
> 2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
> 510/415-4074 Mobile
>
> 614/292-9498 Office
>
> 614/292-1146 Fax
>
> http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
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> kogan.18 at osu.edu
>
> *Error! Filename not specified.*@vkoganosu
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