Comments for MNVoters.org Blog

Comment on IRV decision goes to the MN Supreme Court by Burton Haynes

Burton Haynes — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:16:45 +0000

I’ve been reading a few posts and really and enjoy your writing. I’m just starting up my own blog and only hope that I can write as well and give the reader so much insight.

Comment on Primary v. General by Ken Salerno

Ken Salerno — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:54:33 +0000

You IDIOTS. This story simply means that if more than two candidates file for each office or for each party — normally making a primary necessary — IRV will be used INSTEAD. Your ignorance seems to know no bounds.

Comment on IRV Screws Up Colorado Election by Bob in Seattle

Bob in Seattle — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:17:39 +0000

Dear Unimpressed,
The fault is not with Ms Marks: she has asked the city to make scans of the ballots available for inspection, inasmuch as they are public records. The city has refused.
Ms. Marks would love to see “exactly how it worked out in this case,” she has even sued the city to make the facts available. The city refuses.

Comment on IRV Screws Up Colorado Election by unimpressed

unimpressed — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:38:26 +0000

Why don’t you show us the numbers, rather than repeating a bunch of propaganda? It’s very easy to find people claiming this supposed non-monotonicity, but no one is willing to demonstrate exactly how it worked out in this case.

I, for one, am more interested in seeing the facts, and would be more willing to consider the viewpoint, if someone would present them.

All three of your links (at the end of the article) are broken, by the way.

Comment on FRANKEN RULING REACTION by Matt Marchetti

Matt Marchetti — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:54:09 +0000

It is FairVote who is spreading opinion and claiming it as fact. We prove our points.

How can IRV help third parties while simultaneously eliminating their effect? It is a self-contradictory claim of the pro IRV people.

There is nothing wrong with plurality voting. But even if there is, we have proven that IRV does not guarantee a majority winner.

As we state repeatedly, even if IRV did perform the miracles its proponents claim, it would still be an undemocratic form of voting because voters can’t know whether they are helping or hurting their favorite candidate by raising that candidate in rank – which both the District and Supreme Courts were compelled to admit.

We are more interested in how a voting system affects each individual voter than what outcomes a system can create. If voters can’t know what the effect of their vote will be – i.e. that a vote FOR a candidate will help that candidate – they have been effectively disenfranchised.

Finally, if we are a propaganda arm of the Republican Party (a charge which pretty much discredits your comments, since it is blatantly false), doesn’t that make FairVote and their friends in the Press a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party? Frankly, that is absurd.

Comment on FRANKEN RULING REACTION by Michael Arth

Michael Arth — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:30:02 +0000

Your site, Minnesota Voters Alliance, completely misrepresents IRV/RCV. Read the basic literature–or any encyclopedia article on the subject. It helps third parties; prevents spoilers; it is more democratic, and the vast majority of democratic countries use it for those reasons. Only 22.5% of the world’s 191 UN members use plurality voting.

Plurality voting preserves the two-party duopoly, which makes me think (judging by the post about Franken) that you are a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. FYI, the RNC actually uses IRV for electing their own chair (Michael Steele) because they realize that it is more fair, but they won’t promote it outside the party because it will weaken the two party system.

You are doing a great disservice by spreading opinion and claiming it as fact. You should have followed the advice of Daniel Moynihan, who you quote as saying everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.

Comment on Court Rules IRV Constitutional? Not Quite by matt

matt — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:21:20 +0000

Disagreeing with you is not lying. You discredit yourself by calling people liars.

IRV will not save one dime – as was confirmed by Ramsey County elections manager Joe Mansky.

We are not trying to limit options. With no primary you will no longer have the opportunity to choose your candidate to run in the general election. That means IRV limits your options!

People who think IRV will help “third parties” are uninformed and muisguided. IRV will homogenize elections making it virtually impossible for anyone except the bureaucratic elite political insiders to win an election. That’s the whole purpose of it.

They are telling you that IRV will help your coause, when it will actually take your options away.

How? You may ask. It goes to the structure of ranked choice voting – where even the MN Supreme Court acknowledged that in IRV a voter cannot be sure if he is helping or hurting his favotrite candidate.

The court brushed this off as merely “disconcerting,” but it is way more than just that.

How can anyone support a system in which a voter can’t even know that his vote for a candidate is going to count as a vote FOR that candidate and not as a vote against him?

There are many other sever problems with ranked choice voting, but this one is one of the worst.

With all due respect, I think you need to inform yourself a little better.

Comment on Court Rules IRV Constitutional? Not Quite by Mr. Dana W. Carlson

Mr. Dana W. Carlson — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:32:54 +0000

Yeah, I would just like to comment with regard to the lies that your organization is telling the public about IRV. I whole-heartedly support IRV. Having both a primary and general election is wasteful and expensive. I will not sit quietly while the so-called “Minnesota Voters Alliance” misrepresents IRV and tries to limit the options of the new silent majority (i.e. moderate and independent voters). The Minnesota Voters Alliance is the political equivalent of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Comment on Court Rules IRV Constitutional? Not Quite by matt

matt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:58:05 +0000

Thanks for your knowledge of legal procedures, but far from licking our wounds (as if that isn’t a “rhetorical flourish”) we are licking our chops.

We see this as a setback, no doubt, but we also see it as a blueprint for filing future as-applied challenges.

If your sensibilities are offended, sorry, but this is a blog, where we can blow off steam and where others can tell us off.

I don’t deny that it may not be a “flimsy” technicality, but when there is legal precedent, and when the courts (both the district and the supreme court) admit that voters can harm their preferred candidate by voting FOR that candidate, and then turn around and rule the way they did, seems contradictory at best – to “laymen” like me.

Maybe facial challenges to “new” laws are very difficult to mount, but 1) this isn’t a new law, it’s a slight modification of a system that is iver 100 years old and has a poor track record of catching on with voters for the very reasons we cite in our brief, and 2) maybe facial challenges shouldn’t be that difficult….

The attitude that we’re right and everyone else is wrong is a better description of the pro-IRV crowd – especially in light of the snobbish condescension present in almost every response to our various editorials we’ve managed to get published.

Nevertheless, I do thank you for your response.

Comment on Court Rules IRV Constitutional? Not Quite by Jeff Maas

Jeff Maas — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:20:56 +0000

I just have to note that while it may feel nice for folks who are licking their (increasingly serious) wounds to toss around rhetorical flourishes like “flimsy technicality”, and “judicial self-contradiction”, the reality is that facial challenges to new laws are VERY difficult to mount in all cases. And when the disputed law was enacted not by a judge or a legislature but by direct electoral action, this outcome seems fairly straight-forward and unremarkable. Courts prefer not to reach the constitutional question when there is a non-constitutional rationale available; that is a basic legal principle learned by all first year law students (try googling “constitutional question avoid”, if you don’t trust me, but I refuse to cite such a basic concept)). To attack it as “flimsy” is either ignorant or disingenous. Calling the judges at both the district and supreme court level “mistake(n)” comes off as sour grapes. You folks could do better (and did so, thankfully, in the newspaper articles — where your attorney noted that this was just the start and that the “as-applied” challenge would be another step in the process). You’ll get more days in court, but this attitude of MVA — that every other position is wrong but your own — is, frankly, offensive to my democratic, pluralistic sensibilities.