Richard,

The answer to your first two questions is yes, but maybe in the case of
the Burlington election data we can make reasonable or plausible
speculations about where the voters might have put their approval cutoffs.

In answer to your last question, one possible option would be to have
the approval cutoff listed as one the candidates, maybe named "Approve
none below".  Ballots that truncate this "candidate" would be counted as
approving all the candidates they do rank.

This is fine by me, except that if there aren't enough "ovals" to allow
voters to strictly rank as many candidates as they like, this extra
"candidate" will  somewhat exacerbate that problem.

Am I right is guessing these ballots are counted by some machine that
wouldn't be interested in any marks outside the ovals? Googling around I
found this interview with a couple of  "Ranked Choice Voting" for Oregon
promoters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9xbBHan07U

The discussion isn't very technical or "neutral".  Don't you know the
RCV magically elects more "people of colour", young people and women?  
I suppose it may in practice and if that motivates people to vote for it
that is a good thing.

Chris B.

Here are answers to questions from Chris Benham.  I'm including
Portland-specific info to answer his Portland-specific comments/questions.

On 6/24/2024 6:59 PM, Chris Benham wrote:

Perhaps even better, this special row of ovals (above the candidate
ovals) could be positioned between the choice columns.  Just below each
of these special ovals would be an arrow pointing down.  The legend at
the left (just above the first candidate name) might say "approve above,
disapprove below."  In other words, the marked oval would indicate which
arrow points along the transition between approved and not-approved
candidates.

Currently, election software designers would probably claim this can't
be done.  But as election software becomes better-designed, that better
software could easily handle these ovals, even though they do not align
with the other ovals.

When certified election software is available to correctly count
so-called "overvotes" this complication will become irrelevant.

Yes, any mark that is not inside an oval is not allowed.

As a slight exception, in Oregon, if a voter marks an oval and then
decides that oval should not be marked, the voter can put a big "X"
centered on that oval and the legs of that mark do extend outside the oval.

(Of course the other exception is writing the name of a write-in
candidate, which will be allowed on our ranked choice ballot.  There
will be printed ovals for the write-in candidate.  Or maybe two
candidates.  They haven't yet revealed the final design.)

Oregon promoters:

Thanks for the link to the video.  I watched it to see what voters are
being taught.

Yes, so far the info going out to Portland voters about ranked choice
voting "details" is very basic.

Any better vote-counting method will increase representation for people
who are not old, or white, or male.  That's because plurality/FPTP is
exploited to elect old white males.  Why?  Because they control the
biggest amounts of money, and it's easy to use money to exploit
plurality/FPTP elections.

Here's context for why the TV news discussion included comments about
black representation:  The protests in downtown Portland started out as
anti-Trump protests, just after he was elected.  Aside: That's why in
the presidential debate a few days ago Trump mentioned Portland as a
hellhole (or whatever).  Getting back to the protests, someone, probably
Steve Bannon, recruited MAGA folks from other states to move to
Vancouver (Washington) and shuttles were provided to shuttle those
weapon-carrying protestors across the Columbia river into downtown
Portland.  (FYI, rent is cheaper in Vancouver.)  Then months later the
protests shifted to protests against police brutality against black
people because of that pattern in Portland during the protests, and in
response to police officers killing black people in other states.  That
led to lots of "black lives matter" signs throughout Portland.  That's
why the Portland media makes a point of bringing up racial
discrimination in Portland politics.

Fun facts:  When one of the two white male Portland city-council members
tried to sabotage the STV part of ranked choice voting for electing
city-council members, he claimed our current election system already
favors minorities.  As part of his justification he counted the other
two city-council members as non-white, which they are.  But he failed to
consider that only one of the four councilors is female, even though
female voters are not a minority!  Context: She is Latina.  Shortly
after the meeting I sent him a message to point out his counting
oversight, along with why we need STV.  I don't know how much my message
to him affected his decision, but a couple of hours later he abandoned
his sabotage attempt (part of which was supported by the other
white/male councilor).  Also he got mild pushback from a an RCV election
"expert" during the meeting.  I presume the women from the League of
Women Voters sitting in a group at the back of the council chambers (but
not allowed to speak) also helped.  Not to mention other likely messages
he probably got.  I did get a reply from his admin/assistant that my
message was being forwarded to his "policy advisors."  (Probably the
people who crafted his misleading claims.)  It was the closest I've seen
to a local politician saying "oops" regarding election-method reform.

Again, thanks for your questions, and for answering my questions.

Richard Fobes

On 6/24/2024 6:59 PM, Chris Benham wrote:

racial/ethnic diversity
Sounds substantial!

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 1:26 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

diversity.
Sounds substantial!

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 10:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:

And that’s bad! But it doesn’t negate the point I made. In council races it
helps. And that’s good!
On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 1:44 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm going to go ahead and say I'm skeptical either of these results will
replicate, given there's no theoretical basis to think IRV would affect
city council and mayoral seats differently. My guess is both results would
disappear if you used a hierarchical/partial pooling model to reduce the
noise in the estimates.

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 10:45 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:

Perhaps.

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 1:47 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/11/2024 10:47 AM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:

In the new Portland elections, "ranked choice voting" for city-council
seats is STV (the Single Transferable Vote) with three seats per
district, whereas "ranked choice voting" for Portland mayor is
single-winner IRV (instant-runoff voting).

Of course Portland's three-seats-per-district STV city-council elections
are going to yield more gender and racial diversity compared to
single-winner IRV for electing Portland's mayor.

Richard Fobes

On 7/11/2024 10:47 AM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:

Ahh, yeah, any PR method will outperform winner-take-all on this metric. If
cities are using STV for their city councils, that might imply
single-winner IRV actively reduces minority representation.

That said, my guess is the effect of STV is probably going to be limited
compared to other methods, because STV is only proportional for solid
coalitions, i.e. voting blocs moving in perfect lockstep with each other,
and only if they exceed a full quota. So, for example, if ethnic minorities
tend to vote for a mix of white and minority candidates, or if they're
split across party lines (e.g. Hispanics only go about 60-40 for
Democrats), this will tend to break up and dilute their interests. It's not
enough to have a quota of Hispanics who rate Hispanic Republicans and
Hispanic Democrats highly; you need to have a full quota rank either a
Hispanic Republican or a Hispanic Democrat at the top of their ballots. The
effect is the same as center-squeeze, where your vote gets "stuck" with a
weak candidate who nevertheless has enough first preferences to stay in the
race for several rounds. By the time this candidate is eliminated, the
more-electable candidates with fewer first preferences have been defeated.

But from what I can tell, this is much trickier to resolve than
center-squeeze; proportional Condorcet methods don't seem to have any
guarantees on how out-of-whack a coalition can get, although I think
Schulze STV has a nice local stability property.

Most ethnic minorities aren’t solid coalitions, although African-Americans
happen to be so overwhelmingly Democratic they might act like one.
Something like PAV that approximately satisfies the core property should do
better at giving minority voters more representation.

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 8:40 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote: