FairVote Watch

On this page we highlight the most recent misrepresentations and absurdities perpetrated by FairVote and their friends in the media.

Judge rules instant-runoff campaign should go on trial

Note: The Minnesota Voters Alliance is NOT the "vote no group" mentioned in the article.

This is the latest brochure from FairVote offering TIPS on how to rank candidates. (Scroll to the bottom of the link to see the brochure)

1/3 of the way down they ask the question: HOW CAN I MAXIMIZE MY FIRST CHOICES? Hmmmm, an instruction manual on how to get the most out of your vote(S).... Interesting. This is an admission that with RCV you cast more than one vote, which contradicts their claim that RCV (IRV) doesn't violate the principle of ONE PERSON ONE VOTE. Secondly, it proves that ranking your favorite candidate FIRST may not have the effect the voter intends!

THEY NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTION! Wonder why? Simple: It's IMPOSSIBLE to know!

Our question is: If you can't know whether ranking you favored candidate first is going to help your cause as a voter, then what good is your vote? Can you even call it a CHOICE?

The St. Paul DFL Party rejected IRV for use at their most recent endorsing convention.

Their list may seem impressive, however it's important to remember that if something is wrong, it doesn't matter how many people favor it - it's still wrong. And any voting system in which a voter can't know if they are helping their own cause as a voter, and may not even have more than one vote count in a multi-seat race, is an invalid system.

ABSURDITY ALERT: IRV or Ranked Choice Voting (RCV - as they now call it, since "instant runoff voting" is neither instant nor is it a runoff) is now being pushed by way of a candy bar selection process! As if selecting our representatives is as casual a thing as picking a snack. This is as absurd as comparing voting to choosing ice cream.

If you notice in their their PDF, those who voted for butterfinger NEVER had their second choice vote counted in a multi-seat election where two candidates get elected. If there are two open offices, shouldn't each voter get two votes? Voters couldn't have known this would happen when they voted. But then, it's just a candy bar, right?

"The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Ranked Choice Voting is completely legal and constitutional, a decision that has received media attention statewide."

The truth is the Supreme Court merely rejected the facial claim. The Court did NOT rule IRV constitutional. Future challenges, after an IRV election takes place, are allowed. Bottom line: This battle is FAR from over! And we plan to see it through to the end. This Court ADMITTED that in IRV a voter can not be sure if he is helping or hurting his favored candidate. If this is allowed to stand - and we hope it won't - our democracy and our elections will be meaningless.

ASPEN — Aspen residents can be assured that their votes in Tuesday’s election were counted correctly, based on a random hand count of the ballots.

Local election officials, city attorneys and a few observers participated in a post-election audit in the basement of City Hall on Thursday. Roughly 10 percent of the 2,544 ballots cast were manually checked against the election administrators’’ computer-scanned images of the ballots.

For the TRUTH see this letter we received from a prominent Aspen citizen who is directly concerned with IRV in her city:

They did NO tabulation test. None. (just tested the scanner.) And the test they did in this so called audit was not randomly selected ballots but the first handful from every precinct, because they did not want to mess up the order of the ballots.

But MORE concerning is that there were 2 precincts under challenge. And the city attorney chose NOT to have them “audited”, using the excuse that they were under challenge.

All the more reason they should have been challenged!! That was over 40% (!!!) of the ballots not subject to this audit step. But it was a pretty meaningless audit anyway.

TrueBallot* went back and did their own review AFTER the last time for a recount or challenge, and discovered that they had used the wrong computer logic in their software, and used Cambridge, MS method, not Aspen method for the mayor’s race. The city announced the correction but it is too late for it to be in the official record. The software change appears to have been made without the Election Commissions or the public’s knowledge on election eve, AFTER the LAT. ----which was stated as “passed” but was pretty much a sham as well.

Are you aware of the relationship between TrueBallot and FairVote? I am not aware of the current relationship, if there is one, but it would be nice to know.

*Note: Caleb Kleppner (Vice President for the Northeast Region). Prior to joining TrueBallot, Caleb Kleppner served as a senior analyst at FairVote -- the Center for Voting and Democracy. At FairVote, he focused on public election administration and analysis of election data, as well as the administration of elections in private organizations.