I don’t think anyone lied? An academic who wrote a paper on the topic seems
to have made a mistake: they used a preliminary estimate of the turnout
instead of the actual turnout, which seems pretty benign.

Although, on the CES Discord we’re trying to work out whether there
actually was an error in the first place, because we can’t confirm the new
23,000 figure is correct either.

The election count was fine; governments just kind of suck at making it
easy to find data.

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 8:15 PM Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

For one thing the errors didn’t wrongly report winners. The correct winners
were elected.

Unlike some errors in which IRV elected the wrong people.

…not quite the same thing :-)

Count-fraud wouldn’t be worth the trouble if it didn’t do that too.

The mountain of evidence reported by Harpers would be unlikely to be
accidental error :-)

Especially given that a voting-machine supplier promised to “deliver” the
election to G.W. Bush.

For details or substantiation I refer you to the Harpers articles after G.
W. Bush’s two elections, in 2000 & 2004.

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 19:46 Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 20:15 Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

Don’t be an ass.

You might want to look up the definition of the word “Lie”.

The results were still reported incorrectly. That doesn’t inspire
confidence in the system!

And you keep repeating your delusional conspiracy theories about 2000 and
2004. By your own standards, that’s bigoted assertion, not discussion.

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 11:26 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:

If you mean “the system” of peer review (for missing this), well, you’re
not wrong; but the voting system doesn’t have much to do with the clarity
of the North Dakota State Department’s documentation.

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 8:33 PM Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

Inaccurate promotion of an election method is automatically disqualifying,
at least according to Ossipoff’s past comments on here. Perhaps he’s now
realizing the absurdity of his claims.
On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 11:43 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

I mostly disagree with Ossipoff’s argument, but I think there’s a strong
core to it that’s correct: if the properties of a system are consistently
misrepresented, the misconceptions that creates can create problems big
enough to outweigh any potential benefits of IRV.

To give a good example of this, the way FairVote consistently repeated the
idea that you’d never have to vote for a lesser evil in IRV caused some big
problems in Alaska’s special election. There, Palin supporters could’ve
salvaged the election by voting strategically for Begich or convincing
Palin to drop out; but (in part) because FairVote frequently lies about it
being safe to vote for your favorite in IRV, they didn't.

Clearly some people being wrong shouldn't disqualify a voting system, but
if the misinformation is pervasive and consistent enough it can become a
major issue for a voting method.

For me personally, the thing that's soured me on IRV, even as an FPP
replacement, is the way FairVote has promoted it as a radical
transformation to the political process. This means
A) people who see IRV fail mistakenly conclude this means electoral reform
doesn't work
B) people distrust the method as "new", which damages faith in elections.

I think if it weren't for the way it's been sold, I would just barely lean
towards IRV being better than FPP, instead of the other way around.

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 8:47 PM Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 20:32 Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:

Should I care what you hav confidence in?

If you don’t have confidence in counting approvals, when the only errors
didn’t include any wrong winners, then I don’t blame you for especially
having no confidence in IRV, whose much longer & more elaborate count was
bungled badly enough to elect the wrong winners.

I won’t keep replying to Michael G. on this conversation forever.

Surely his need to be blocked is obvious.

Should I care what you think about anything? Considering you repeat the
same bigoted assertions — to use your term — ad nauseam, I’m inclined not
to.

On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 12:32 AM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:

Using the 2020 city commission election as an example, the City of Fargo
reported that there were 18,805 votes cast, but -- according to
Evangeline Moore -- doesn't explain where it got this number. Moore
finds other records that show that 23,819 ballots were cast in the 22
Fargo precincts in that election.

My hypothesis is that 18,805 is the number of voters who voted for at
least one candidate for city commissioner, in other words the number of
voters who didn't abstain from the city commissioner contest. Under this
hypothesis, 5,014 voters went to the polls and submitted a ballot but
didn't choose anyone for city commissioner. That's 21%, which is
reasonable for a down-ballot office in the U.S., where many voters  who
vote in federal and state contests don't vote in the local contests on
the same ballot.

So, the question is, what is the appropriate denominator for reporting
percentages? In plurality elections in the U.S., results are always
reported using the smaller denominator -- if you leave a contest blank
you are counted as an abstention and excluded from the denominator when
reporting percentages.

I think that Fargo's choice of denominator is at least as defensible as
the denominator that Moore wants them to use. At least it is consistent
with the way plurality results are always reported. The language she
quotes from state law might seem to suggest including abstentions (blank
ballots) in the denominator, but if that's what it means then fewer
plurality elections would have majority winners than is reported. And if
that's what it means, then local officials are getting all elections
wrong, not just approval elections.

I think that a far more interesting aspect of these Fargo elections is
the use of approval voting in multi-winner elections. What was the
method prior to the adoption of approval voting for the 2020 election?
Were voters allowed to choose one candidate (single non-transferable
vote or limited vote) or two (multi-winner plurality or the "block
vote")? Was part of the argument in favor of approval that it would be
more proportional than the previous method? If so, how was that argument
made?

--Bob Richard

------ Original Message ------

To election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Date 6/7/2024 9:58:35 AM
Subject [EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results