Democrat politicians have forced American females in prison to share space with male prisoners and American female service members to share barracks with males and they have forced American girls to share locker rooms with males.
Democrats then rush down to Central America on behalf of a foreign gang member.
Feel free to copy and share these observations on other media…
If this story tends to make you feel just a touch queasy on first reading, pause a moment to reflect that this is an intention of the story from its inception. What is actually going on is not the object.
well the IAEA has left me with a queasy feeling since El Baradei, whose performance has been substandard,
who actually wrote the story, afp, ap which even takes credit,
Two good news items
Democrat, Senator Chris Van Holland backpedaling on his photo op with the MS 13 gangster
Sen. Chris Van Hollen claims margaritas were planted by El Salvador government during meeting with alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia
——-
North Dakota becomes the 15th state to prohibit rank choice voting
Today, 19 Apr 2025, marks 30 years since the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
North Dakota becomes the 15th state to prohibit rank choice voting
==
That’s not a good-news item.
Art
That’s not a good-news item.
—-
Respectfully disagree. Reduces the chance of Democrat stealing of elections. Far left California has ranked choice voting and it gave us terrible choices like recalled Frisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. And Oakland mayor Tseng Thao. And Oakland district attorney Pamela Price.
Maine also has it and the Democrats used it to cheat in a congressional election resulting in Democrat Jared Goldin
Provide an example where RCV resulted in a better choice than the simple majority vote system
Reduces the chance of Democrat stealing of elections
==
It does nothing of the kind. It’s a tabulation convention useful in constituencies where > two candidates are competing. It is not biased in favor of any given faction.
Art
“ It does nothing of the kind. It’s a tabulation convention useful in constituencies where > two candidates are competing. It is not biased in favor of any given faction.”
I gave you multiple examples of the failure of RCV. What is your evidence that it is a good system?
I’m at Camden Yards for the second time in two days. That’s a great news story.
Hot damn Mike! Enjoy the day, along with the overwhelming offerings of Hunter Greene. We’ll see how our newbie Brandon Young makes it through his MLB debut, fingers crossed here.
Adorable maybe i should have stuck to zoology as an interest
Ranked choice is the answer to the question no one was asking
Australia has ranked choice voting. I think it’s ridiculous because it bakes into the system back-room preference deals between the parties and guarantees status quo government.
It makes the ballot a huge and complicated thing and for anyone who is a discerning voter (not straight party line all the way) confusing.
They seem to love it here… don’t ask me why except that as a whole Australia leans left as a starting point so wants bigger more entrenched government.
Love this place. Austin Hays got a standing O last night which I loved to see.
Haysie deserved the standing O, and hey, the gun down at the plate’s ok too!
Ced!
We saw that abbott was pm not that long ago but then again how conservative did he turn out to be
Gunner!
I gave you multiple examples of the failure of RCV. What is your evidence that it is a good system?
==
Your link was to an election in Maine wherein the results were perfectly above board. There was no cheating.
==
Many jurisdictions, including New York City, have a history of using run-off elections. You hold an initial ballot. If no one commands a majority, you have a contest between the top two finishers. Ranked-choice voting is a more elaborate version of this.
==
Party conventions in Canada used to make use of multi-round balloting to choose party officers. You have an initial ballot and the candidates can be ranked by totals. If no one wins a majority of the ballots cast, the caboose candidate is eliminated and you hold another ballot among the remaining candidates. Rinse, repeat. The first ballot is among N candidates, the second among N-1, the third among N-2. You continue holding ballots until someone wins a majority.
==
There are short cuts you can institute to make the process briefer. One short cut would be to arrange your candidates in rank-order and calculate a running balance of their vote totals, starting with the caboose candidate and running up the rank order. Then you calculate the gap in vote totals between candidates, starting with the leading candidate and moving down the rank order. You calculate the gap between the 1st and the 2d candidate, the 2d and the t3d, and so forth. If, moving down the rank-order, you reach a point where the gap between candidate X and candidate X+1 in the rank-order exceeds the running balance calculated of the votes of candidates X+2 to the caboose candidate, you can eliminate candidates X+1 et seq, because the sum of vote totals received by candidates X+2 et seq cannot bridge the gap between X and X+1.
==
Another short cut one might use is to simply eliminate all candidates who fail to receive 2% of the ballots cast on the 1st round of balloting.
==
The first method is useful when you have several leading candidates and then a large drop and a mess of also-rans who received modest totals. The second method is useful when you have more of a graduated reduction in support as you move down the rank order. You’d choose whichever method which allowed you to eliminate the largest number of candidates after the 1st ballot. You then hold a 2d ballot among the surviving candidates.
==
What a ranked-choice ballot is is a set of instructions as to how your ballot is to be cast in specified contingencies. Instead of multiple rounds of balloting, you cast one ballot and have multiple rounds of tabulation. In the first round, you rank order the candidates according to the number of ballots on which they werre the stated first-preference of the voter. You’re interested in who won the majority of the tally, if anyone. The ‘tally’ is all the ballots cast deducting the blank and spoiled ballots. If no one wins a majority of the tally on the first tabulation, you have to eliminate candidates and hold a second tabulation. You can eliminate the caboose candidate or choose one of the short-cuts, whichever option allows you to eliminate the largest number of trailing candidates. You take the ballots which had one of the eliminated candidates as their 1st preference and you re-distribute them. A ballot will go to the surviving candidate who is of the highest rank marked thereupon. If none of the surviving candidates are marked on a ballot, that ballot is excluded from the tally. At the conclusion of the redistribution you see whether or not any candidate has a majority of the (recalculated) tally. On subsequent tabulations, you eliminate the caboose candidate and redistribute his ballots. You have as many rounds of tabulation as are necessary until such a point as a candidate wins a majority of the tally.
==
A few pitfalls arise from ranked-choice voting. One is that you have to have a satisfactory ballot design. If you don’t, you end up with an abnormal number of spoiled ballots. There’s quite a bit of experience with the method abroad, so there’s a body of literature which can guide one.
==
An adjacent problem is confounding voters by having them ranking too many candidates. (This has been an issue in NYC, I believe). Rank your top seven candidates, your top five, or your top three, perhaps (provided the number running exceeds seven, five, or three).
==
Another is a problem you see in the United States in in particular is in jurisdictions where boards of elections are compelled to tabulate postal ballots which arrive after the polls have closed. That practice has to end. You send postal ballots out to those who have a standing order for one on the 15th of September. They’re back on the day before the polls open or they are deemed invalid by law. One’s arriving later are put in locked boxes and mailed back after the tabulation is over. You are under taking multiple rounds of tabulation. You have to have all the ballots in your possession before you begin tabulating.
==
Another problem is a deficient ballot access system. You can use petitions or you can use monetary deposits, among other methods. If you don’t set the signature thresh-holds or the monetary thresh-hold high enough, you end up with 35 people running for an office. This was an issue in the Minneapolis mayor’s race in 2013 and in the U.S. Congressional race which Sarah Palin lost. If you have an election which has a single victor and you have more than about seven candidates competing, you’ve set the thresholds too low. Many states have voter rolls wherein registrants are sorted by stated party preference. You can set the thresh-hold at 2% of the body of registrants of a given party preference or 0.55% of the body of no-preference registrants. If you do not have party registration (as Virginia does not), you might set the threshold at 0.7% of the total number of voters on the roll. (Again, you’re collecting signatures only from properly enrolled voters residing in the constituency). In regard to calculating electoral deposits, a passable formula would be as follows: (Y x 2.7 / 1,000,000) x (1 / s) x (t / 4). wherein ‘Y’ is the total personal income flow in the jurisdiction per the most recent estimate of the Census Bureau, ‘s’ is the number of ‘seats’ contested in a jurisdiction (for which the answer is ‘1’ for an executive position, ‘2’ for a U.S. Senator’s contest, typically ‘8’ or ‘9’, for a U.S. Congressional race, typically about 100 for the lower house of a state legislature, typically about ‘7’ for a school board), and ‘t’ is the term of office for the position in question. You want to run for Congress in Alaska, the deposit under such a calculation would be about $42,000 for the House seat and $63,000 for the Senate seat. If you achieve certain performance metrics in the election, your deposit is returned to you or to your sponsors as the case may be.
==
You can also make use of party caucuses and conventions and primaries to designate candidates for the ballot, of course.
“Your link was to an election in Maine wherein the results were perfectly above board. There was no cheating.”
Again, I respectfully disagree. The Maine election was stolen.
A bloviation consisting of multiple unsupported assertions is not a convincing argument for your claim.
I described multiple elections, but you did not bother to look them up.
Here are some links to elections in the California Frisco bay area where the voters had to undo mistakes caused by rank choice.voting systems. I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones that I recall (no pun intended) from California
Australia has ranked choice voting. I think it’s ridiculous because it bakes into the system back-room preference deals between the parties and guarantees status quo government.
==
Party bosses cannot control how people fill out their ballots, so I’m not understanding how your first assertion could be true. Party ballots can control nominations if you have defective internal governance rules, but that’s an issue with your internal party governance rules, not ranked-choice voting. You have the same problem in fixed slate PR systems and the same problem in single-member district system where party bosses are permitted to send in candidates via parachute (as they do in Britain and Canada).
==
As for your second complaint, it’s also puzzling. If political competition is kayfabe, that’s not a function of ranked-choice voting. You have the same issues in a raft of occidental countries with as many electoral systems as you’d care to name. Now, ranked-choice voting or ‘the alternate’ vote is sometimes thought (see Donald Horowitz work) to be something which reduces political polarization. That can be utile in certain circumstances.
== It makes the ballot a huge and complicated thing and for anyone who is a discerning voter (not straight party line all the way) confusing.
==
It need not do that in a single-member district system where you have a ballot paper with one column of candidates. If you have elections to conciliar bodies from multimember constituencies, it can do that. You can limit such constituencies to local councils where you might have a slate of 4-7 persons elected per constituency.
Again, I respectfully disagree. The Maine election was stolen.
==
You’re understanding of ‘stolen’ is that someone other than the plurality candidate on the 1st ballot was elected. The whole point of runoffs and ranked-choice voting is to distribute the preferences of those supporting also-ran candidates because awarding an office to a plurality winner can produce perverse results.
== A bloviation consisting of multiple unsupported assertions is not a convincing argument for your claim.
==
IOW, you could not be bothered to read what I wrote, which was to describe alternatives to first-past-the-post tabulation and give a precis of the procedures followed. These alternatives have a certain utility in aggregating individual preferences. (You haven’t addressed that question).
== I described multiple elections, but you did not bother to look them up.
==
That you were dissatisfied with the results of a particular election does not interest me. We are discussing a process, not your particular preferences.
==
Again, ranked-choice voting can be incorporated into a system of designating candidates which is itself defective. So can first-past-the-post balloting. You need to fix the designation system.
==
One system is to have a solitary general election with no preliminary balloting. Every aspirant who can circulate a valid petition or assemble a sufficient deposit is on the ballot. You have candidates of every party designation and you can and do have multiple candidates from each major party. Louisiana instituted such a system some time back, called the ‘jungle primary’. You have an initial ballot. If a candidate wins a majority of the votes cast, he is elected; if no candidate wins a majority, you have a run-off between the top two contenders. Ranked-choice voting fits into such a system satisfactorily as the tabulation process performs the same function as a run-off, so you do not need one.
==
Another system is to sort the electorate into silos and have primary elections in those silos with the general election consisting of a contest between the winner of each primary. One party, one candidate. There can be alternatives to primary elections, such as caucuses and conventions. Designating candidates for a primary ballot can be done via petitioning, via monetary deposits, or via caucuses and conventions (with candidates who achieved certain performance metrics at said conventions guaranteed a spot in a primary). A primary might use one of several tabulation methods, including ranked-choice voting. The primaries would be held in ‘official’ parties, i.e. those who have achieved certain performance metrics in state elections and (commonly) appear on voter registration forms as an option. ‘Unofficial’ parties and non-partisan candidates could achieve a place on the ballot via petitioning or the placement of deposits. (Presumably, the ‘unofficial’ party would hold a nominating convention and then file a petition).
==
The utility of ranked-choice voting in a general election in this second system would be a function of the performance of 3d parties in a constituency. Where you have a multi-party system (as you do in Alaska), ranked-choice voting has considerable utility.
==
Where you have party registration, you can readily classify your electoral constituencies as ‘competitive’ and ‘non-competitive’. The latter might be where the largest party roll exceeded that of the 2d largest by a factor of 2. In that circumstance, you’d favor a ‘jungle primary’ to be held in November. Where you have a competitive constituency, you could have party primary in August followed by a general election in November. (Having a two-stage process in a non-competitive constituency means your true contest is in August and the general election is pro-forma). (Last I checked, about 53% of the state assembly constituencies in New York would be classed ‘non-competitive’, or about 95% in New York City and 23% outside New York City).
==
The system in Alaska was defective inasmuch as (1) you had insufficient screens to ballot access; Sarah Palin was competing in a contest with 34 candidates. (2) you had no party primaries, even though party registration in Alaska is not terribly skewed. (3) you had a gratuitous multi-stage process in the general election. They had one contest to winnow down the candidates to four in number, then a runoff among the four. A salutary feature of ranked-choice voting is that you do not need to hold run-offs.
For believers here, I hope you will be blessed in the celebration of the Resurrection this evening or tomorrow morning.
Art
“ That you were dissatisfied with the results of a particular election does not interest me. We are discussing a process, not your particular preferences.”
It was not me that was dissatisfied with the validity of the election. It was the voters in each of the districts that recalled the people who supposedly won with rank choice voting. The purpose of elections in democracies: is to come to results that are accepted by most of the people affected. The recalls show that your RCV system failed. Your theoretical bloviations do not address that issue at all.
Has Trump been playing the Democrats on the Garcia gangbanger from the beginning?
Trump just displayed a close-up photograph of Garcia’s left knuckles tattooed with MS13. That settle that. Surely they’ve had that photo in reserve all along.
There is new info on the true time line of COVID. This is getting really ugly.
It appears that there was already a lab leak in at least in May-July of 2019 and Fauci + others including Bill Gates(!) knew, at least “hypothetically”.
Bob, can’t argue with a brick wall.
Art, thanks for making it quick and easy to read todays offering.
It was not me that was dissatisfied with the validity of the election. It was the voters in each of the districts that recalled the people who supposedly won with rank choice voting.
==
People get recalled due to their performance in office. (See Boudin). This is not that difficult to understand.
April 19 is also Patriot’s Day in three states, “commemorating the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, the inaugural battles of the American Revolutionary War.” It also is observed on the third Monday in April in four states. Reportedly the OK City attack was planned for that day intentionally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots'_Day
The one book I read about Timothy McVeigh stated that he was a white supremacist who had contempt for nonwhites, but I never saw that reported anywhere else. It seems that the media airbrushed it away.
Also, for me doubts linger about John Doe No. 2, whose likeness appeared on wanted posters, before he was also airbrushed out. The feds claimed he was an innocent soldier who was mistakenly identified by the truck rental clerk, but I never saw a picture of that soldier.
In addition, per Mother Jones magazine, the feds arrested a man named Trentadue based on his resemblence to John Doe No. 2.and beat him to death during interrogation and covered it up by claiming it was suicide. His brother, an attorney, is still pursuing a case against the feds. I think he is also pursuing allegations that feds were involved in the plot, and that there is video of a second suspect running away from the Ryder truck before the blast.
I wouldn’t normally give Mother Jones any credence, but their article seemed sound to me, and the only axe they had to grind was their anti-police/anti-fed ideology.
========================================
My thinking about Ranked Choice Voting is that it unnecessarily complicates the voting process. I think we should focus on election integrity first and foremost. I’m not sure what problem RCV is supposed to fix, but think we should stick with what we’ve used for ~250 years. I generally prefer the K.I.S.S. principle, and think that if it takes Art Deco 10 paragraphs to defend RCV, maybe we shouldn’t go there.
PS I see Neo has a new post about RCV, which I will check out.
The female celebrity Blue Origin space tourism flight–the “girrls” not wearing the usual actual protective clothing, but specially commissioned designer uniforms–was all a cheesy stunt–with their talk of their “training,” about their “mission,” their status as “crew,” about some sort of supposed “science experiment” they did on their trip, and their new status as “Astronauts”–complete with a set up so that they could be filmed “ringing the bell,” like real Astronauts do when they return to Earth.*
Then, there was the spectacle of Bezos running around the just landed capsule, and falling flat on his face. **
I’d imagine that a lot of actual Astronauts are not very pleased by this cheapening of what they spend many years learning, dedicate themselves to, sacrifice for, train for, and endure; this charade.
Although not well known, there are lyrics to “Baby Elephant Walk.” And I know them. And I’m not really sure I remember why.
I have a vague memory of seeing the sheet music when I was young, maybe 8 years old. I think my sister and I were at an Aunt’s house, and that Aunt owned an organ and I found the music and played it, and also sang the lyrics as written, which made my older sister laugh. They are very hoakie lyrics, especially when sung to the melody.
I think that may be how it started. Regardless of how I first discovered the lyrics and that fact, I know I have always been able to make my sister laugh by singing them. Sometimes, when we are together at a somber occasion I’ll simply hum a few bars quiet enough that only she hears me and she invariably cracks up.
A Japanese ska band, Tokyo Ska Paradise doing a rendition of “Baby Elephant Walk.”
Heh, good stuff, Rufus. The Ska Paradise Orchestra made me wish the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band had seen fit to cover it too.
Art… with all due respect…
You don’t understand because you don’t have to live with it.
Preferential voting allows the parties to negotiate the weight of any #2-3 or 4 they receive on any individual ballot.
So my party can agree with your party to “preference” each other. If your candidate comes in a close 2nd and mine a narrow 3rd…my preferences just might sneak your guy into 1st.
For that… your party might sign off on a version of our pet policy.
Backroom wheeling dealing is baked into the system. And the narrow 1st place guy loses.
Your whole response is from the abstract… should, could, might… again until you see the sausage made you have no idea what you’re eating.
Looking again, the letters and numbers don’t look like tattoos. More like they were typed in using graphics program. In which case they would be instructions for reading the tattoos properly
M – Marijuana
S – Smiley face with x-ed out eyes
1 – Cross
3 – Skull
Perhaps those images do spell out MS-13 in gang code. I haven’t found any evidence of that.
Not happy stuff in any event. Tattoos a gang member might chose.
“People get recalled due to their performance in office. (See Boudin). This is not that difficult to understand.”
We understand it perfectly. Now give some *examples* of RCV producing superior performers. Bob gave a some examples of it failing to do that, if it’s so great it should be easy for you to generate a bunch of examples to the contrary.
Now give some *examples* of RCV producing superior performers. Bob gave a some examples of it failing to do that, if it’s so great it should be easy for you to generate a bunch of examples to the contrary.
==
He gave examples of politicians elected in ranked choice contests later recalled. Gray Davis was elected in a first-past-the-post contest and later recalled. Somehow that does not discredit first-past-the-post in your mind.
==
Examples wouldn’t do you a blessed bit of good. You’ve got 7,000 state legislators. Cherry picking five of them tells you nothing. Even if you could undertake valid survey research, there are a number of vectors which enter into the performance of a body of politicians in office.
==
And, of course, you’re demanding ‘proof’ of claims no one ever made. Ranked-choice voting is a means of aggregating voter preferences. That’s all it is. The contention of ranked-choice advocates is that it does so more elegantly and reliably than other methods.
My thinking about Ranked Choice Voting is that it unnecessarily complicates the voting process
==
Uh huh. And I gave you a scrum of examples of how to make the voting process less complicated and the lot of you do not give a rip.
== and think that if it takes Art Deco 10 paragraphs to defend RCV, maybe we shouldn’t go there.
==
Why? Because I’m thorough?
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Mancini, natch: https://youtu.be/b1z4JfxFb6c
Democrat politicians have forced American females in prison to share space with male prisoners and American female service members to share barracks with males and they have forced American girls to share locker rooms with males.
Democrats then rush down to Central America on behalf of a foreign gang member.
Feel free to copy and share these observations on other media…
https://www.timesofisrael.com/second-round-of-us-iran-nuclear-talks-ends-after-hours-of-discussions-in-rome/
If this story tends to make you feel just a touch queasy on first reading, pause a moment to reflect that this is an intention of the story from its inception. What is actually going on is not the object.
well the IAEA has left me with a queasy feeling since El Baradei, whose performance has been substandard,
who actually wrote the story, afp, ap which even takes credit,
Two good news items
Democrat, Senator Chris Van Holland backpedaling on his photo op with the MS 13 gangster
https://nypost.com/2025/04/18/us-news/sen-van-hollen-claims-margaritas-were-planted-by-el-salvadorians-during-meeting-with-alleged-ms-13-gangbanger-kilmar-abrego-garcia/
Sen. Chris Van Hollen claims margaritas were planted by El Salvador government during meeting with alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia
——-
North Dakota becomes the 15th state to prohibit rank choice voting
https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/17/north-dakota-becomes-15th-state-to-prohibit-ranked-choice-voting-in-elections/
Today, 19 Apr 2025, marks 30 years since the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
North Dakota becomes the 15th state to prohibit rank choice voting
==
That’s not a good-news item.
Art
That’s not a good-news item.
—-
Respectfully disagree. Reduces the chance of Democrat stealing of elections. Far left California has ranked choice voting and it gave us terrible choices like recalled Frisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. And Oakland mayor Tseng Thao. And Oakland district attorney Pamela Price.
Maine also has it and the Democrats used it to cheat in a congressional election resulting in Democrat Jared Goldin
https://apnews.com/article/maine-house-congress-golden-theriault-bb072ca55aaab2ebae3fb8b6339cb545
Provide an example where RCV resulted in a better choice than the simple majority vote system
Reduces the chance of Democrat stealing of elections
==
It does nothing of the kind. It’s a tabulation convention useful in constituencies where > two candidates are competing. It is not biased in favor of any given faction.
Art
“ It does nothing of the kind. It’s a tabulation convention useful in constituencies where > two candidates are competing. It is not biased in favor of any given faction.”
I gave you multiple examples of the failure of RCV. What is your evidence that it is a good system?
I’m at Camden Yards for the second time in two days. That’s a great news story.
Hot damn Mike! Enjoy the day, along with the overwhelming offerings of Hunter Greene. We’ll see how our newbie Brandon Young makes it through his MLB debut, fingers crossed here.
Adorable maybe i should have stuck to zoology as an interest
Ranked choice is the answer to the question no one was asking
Australia has ranked choice voting. I think it’s ridiculous because it bakes into the system back-room preference deals between the parties and guarantees status quo government.
It makes the ballot a huge and complicated thing and for anyone who is a discerning voter (not straight party line all the way) confusing.
They seem to love it here… don’t ask me why except that as a whole Australia leans left as a starting point so wants bigger more entrenched government.
Love this place. Austin Hays got a standing O last night which I loved to see.
Haysie deserved the standing O, and hey, the gun down at the plate’s ok too!
Ced!
We saw that abbott was pm not that long ago but then again how conservative did he turn out to be
Gunner!
I gave you multiple examples of the failure of RCV. What is your evidence that it is a good system?
==
Your link was to an election in Maine wherein the results were perfectly above board. There was no cheating.
==
Many jurisdictions, including New York City, have a history of using run-off elections. You hold an initial ballot. If no one commands a majority, you have a contest between the top two finishers. Ranked-choice voting is a more elaborate version of this.
==
Party conventions in Canada used to make use of multi-round balloting to choose party officers. You have an initial ballot and the candidates can be ranked by totals. If no one wins a majority of the ballots cast, the caboose candidate is eliminated and you hold another ballot among the remaining candidates. Rinse, repeat. The first ballot is among N candidates, the second among N-1, the third among N-2. You continue holding ballots until someone wins a majority.
==
There are short cuts you can institute to make the process briefer. One short cut would be to arrange your candidates in rank-order and calculate a running balance of their vote totals, starting with the caboose candidate and running up the rank order. Then you calculate the gap in vote totals between candidates, starting with the leading candidate and moving down the rank order. You calculate the gap between the 1st and the 2d candidate, the 2d and the t3d, and so forth. If, moving down the rank-order, you reach a point where the gap between candidate X and candidate X+1 in the rank-order exceeds the running balance calculated of the votes of candidates X+2 to the caboose candidate, you can eliminate candidates X+1 et seq, because the sum of vote totals received by candidates X+2 et seq cannot bridge the gap between X and X+1.
==
Another short cut one might use is to simply eliminate all candidates who fail to receive 2% of the ballots cast on the 1st round of balloting.
==
The first method is useful when you have several leading candidates and then a large drop and a mess of also-rans who received modest totals. The second method is useful when you have more of a graduated reduction in support as you move down the rank order. You’d choose whichever method which allowed you to eliminate the largest number of candidates after the 1st ballot. You then hold a 2d ballot among the surviving candidates.
==
What a ranked-choice ballot is is a set of instructions as to how your ballot is to be cast in specified contingencies. Instead of multiple rounds of balloting, you cast one ballot and have multiple rounds of tabulation. In the first round, you rank order the candidates according to the number of ballots on which they werre the stated first-preference of the voter. You’re interested in who won the majority of the tally, if anyone. The ‘tally’ is all the ballots cast deducting the blank and spoiled ballots. If no one wins a majority of the tally on the first tabulation, you have to eliminate candidates and hold a second tabulation. You can eliminate the caboose candidate or choose one of the short-cuts, whichever option allows you to eliminate the largest number of trailing candidates. You take the ballots which had one of the eliminated candidates as their 1st preference and you re-distribute them. A ballot will go to the surviving candidate who is of the highest rank marked thereupon. If none of the surviving candidates are marked on a ballot, that ballot is excluded from the tally. At the conclusion of the redistribution you see whether or not any candidate has a majority of the (recalculated) tally. On subsequent tabulations, you eliminate the caboose candidate and redistribute his ballots. You have as many rounds of tabulation as are necessary until such a point as a candidate wins a majority of the tally.
==
A few pitfalls arise from ranked-choice voting. One is that you have to have a satisfactory ballot design. If you don’t, you end up with an abnormal number of spoiled ballots. There’s quite a bit of experience with the method abroad, so there’s a body of literature which can guide one.
==
An adjacent problem is confounding voters by having them ranking too many candidates. (This has been an issue in NYC, I believe). Rank your top seven candidates, your top five, or your top three, perhaps (provided the number running exceeds seven, five, or three).
==
Another is a problem you see in the United States in in particular is in jurisdictions where boards of elections are compelled to tabulate postal ballots which arrive after the polls have closed. That practice has to end. You send postal ballots out to those who have a standing order for one on the 15th of September. They’re back on the day before the polls open or they are deemed invalid by law. One’s arriving later are put in locked boxes and mailed back after the tabulation is over. You are under taking multiple rounds of tabulation. You have to have all the ballots in your possession before you begin tabulating.
==
Another problem is a deficient ballot access system. You can use petitions or you can use monetary deposits, among other methods. If you don’t set the signature thresh-holds or the monetary thresh-hold high enough, you end up with 35 people running for an office. This was an issue in the Minneapolis mayor’s race in 2013 and in the U.S. Congressional race which Sarah Palin lost. If you have an election which has a single victor and you have more than about seven candidates competing, you’ve set the thresholds too low. Many states have voter rolls wherein registrants are sorted by stated party preference. You can set the thresh-hold at 2% of the body of registrants of a given party preference or 0.55% of the body of no-preference registrants. If you do not have party registration (as Virginia does not), you might set the threshold at 0.7% of the total number of voters on the roll. (Again, you’re collecting signatures only from properly enrolled voters residing in the constituency). In regard to calculating electoral deposits, a passable formula would be as follows: (Y x 2.7 / 1,000,000) x (1 / s) x (t / 4). wherein ‘Y’ is the total personal income flow in the jurisdiction per the most recent estimate of the Census Bureau, ‘s’ is the number of ‘seats’ contested in a jurisdiction (for which the answer is ‘1’ for an executive position, ‘2’ for a U.S. Senator’s contest, typically ‘8’ or ‘9’, for a U.S. Congressional race, typically about 100 for the lower house of a state legislature, typically about ‘7’ for a school board), and ‘t’ is the term of office for the position in question. You want to run for Congress in Alaska, the deposit under such a calculation would be about $42,000 for the House seat and $63,000 for the Senate seat. If you achieve certain performance metrics in the election, your deposit is returned to you or to your sponsors as the case may be.
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You can also make use of party caucuses and conventions and primaries to designate candidates for the ballot, of course.
“Your link was to an election in Maine wherein the results were perfectly above board. There was no cheating.”
Again, I respectfully disagree. The Maine election was stolen.
A bloviation consisting of multiple unsupported assertions is not a convincing argument for your claim.
I described multiple elections, but you did not bother to look them up.
Here are some links to elections in the California Frisco bay area where the voters had to undo mistakes caused by rank choice.voting systems. I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones that I recall (no pun intended) from California
Frisco district attorney Chesa Boudin recall
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chesa-boudin-san-francisco-da-recalled/
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao recall.
https://oaklandside.org/2024/11/06/heres-what-happens-if-oakland-mayor-sheng-thao-is-recalled/
Alameda county district attorney Pamela Price recall
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/11/08/election-2024-alameda-county-district-attorney-recall
Australia has ranked choice voting. I think it’s ridiculous because it bakes into the system back-room preference deals between the parties and guarantees status quo government.
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Party bosses cannot control how people fill out their ballots, so I’m not understanding how your first assertion could be true. Party ballots can control nominations if you have defective internal governance rules, but that’s an issue with your internal party governance rules, not ranked-choice voting. You have the same problem in fixed slate PR systems and the same problem in single-member district system where party bosses are permitted to send in candidates via parachute (as they do in Britain and Canada).
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As for your second complaint, it’s also puzzling. If political competition is kayfabe, that’s not a function of ranked-choice voting. You have the same issues in a raft of occidental countries with as many electoral systems as you’d care to name. Now, ranked-choice voting or ‘the alternate’ vote is sometimes thought (see Donald Horowitz work) to be something which reduces political polarization. That can be utile in certain circumstances.
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It makes the ballot a huge and complicated thing and for anyone who is a discerning voter (not straight party line all the way) confusing.
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It need not do that in a single-member district system where you have a ballot paper with one column of candidates. If you have elections to conciliar bodies from multimember constituencies, it can do that. You can limit such constituencies to local councils where you might have a slate of 4-7 persons elected per constituency.
Again, I respectfully disagree. The Maine election was stolen.
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You’re understanding of ‘stolen’ is that someone other than the plurality candidate on the 1st ballot was elected. The whole point of runoffs and ranked-choice voting is to distribute the preferences of those supporting also-ran candidates because awarding an office to a plurality winner can produce perverse results.
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A bloviation consisting of multiple unsupported assertions is not a convincing argument for your claim.
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IOW, you could not be bothered to read what I wrote, which was to describe alternatives to first-past-the-post tabulation and give a precis of the procedures followed. These alternatives have a certain utility in aggregating individual preferences. (You haven’t addressed that question).
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I described multiple elections, but you did not bother to look them up.
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That you were dissatisfied with the results of a particular election does not interest me. We are discussing a process, not your particular preferences.
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Again, ranked-choice voting can be incorporated into a system of designating candidates which is itself defective. So can first-past-the-post balloting. You need to fix the designation system.
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One system is to have a solitary general election with no preliminary balloting. Every aspirant who can circulate a valid petition or assemble a sufficient deposit is on the ballot. You have candidates of every party designation and you can and do have multiple candidates from each major party. Louisiana instituted such a system some time back, called the ‘jungle primary’. You have an initial ballot. If a candidate wins a majority of the votes cast, he is elected; if no candidate wins a majority, you have a run-off between the top two contenders. Ranked-choice voting fits into such a system satisfactorily as the tabulation process performs the same function as a run-off, so you do not need one.
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Another system is to sort the electorate into silos and have primary elections in those silos with the general election consisting of a contest between the winner of each primary. One party, one candidate. There can be alternatives to primary elections, such as caucuses and conventions. Designating candidates for a primary ballot can be done via petitioning, via monetary deposits, or via caucuses and conventions (with candidates who achieved certain performance metrics at said conventions guaranteed a spot in a primary). A primary might use one of several tabulation methods, including ranked-choice voting. The primaries would be held in ‘official’ parties, i.e. those who have achieved certain performance metrics in state elections and (commonly) appear on voter registration forms as an option. ‘Unofficial’ parties and non-partisan candidates could achieve a place on the ballot via petitioning or the placement of deposits. (Presumably, the ‘unofficial’ party would hold a nominating convention and then file a petition).
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The utility of ranked-choice voting in a general election in this second system would be a function of the performance of 3d parties in a constituency. Where you have a multi-party system (as you do in Alaska), ranked-choice voting has considerable utility.
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Where you have party registration, you can readily classify your electoral constituencies as ‘competitive’ and ‘non-competitive’. The latter might be where the largest party roll exceeded that of the 2d largest by a factor of 2. In that circumstance, you’d favor a ‘jungle primary’ to be held in November. Where you have a competitive constituency, you could have party primary in August followed by a general election in November. (Having a two-stage process in a non-competitive constituency means your true contest is in August and the general election is pro-forma). (Last I checked, about 53% of the state assembly constituencies in New York would be classed ‘non-competitive’, or about 95% in New York City and 23% outside New York City).
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The system in Alaska was defective inasmuch as (1) you had insufficient screens to ballot access; Sarah Palin was competing in a contest with 34 candidates. (2) you had no party primaries, even though party registration in Alaska is not terribly skewed. (3) you had a gratuitous multi-stage process in the general election. They had one contest to winnow down the candidates to four in number, then a runoff among the four. A salutary feature of ranked-choice voting is that you do not need to hold run-offs.
For believers here, I hope you will be blessed in the celebration of the Resurrection this evening or tomorrow morning.
Art
“ That you were dissatisfied with the results of a particular election does not interest me. We are discussing a process, not your particular preferences.”
It was not me that was dissatisfied with the validity of the election. It was the voters in each of the districts that recalled the people who supposedly won with rank choice voting. The purpose of elections in democracies: is to come to results that are accepted by most of the people affected. The recalls show that your RCV system failed. Your theoretical bloviations do not address that issue at all.
It’s a trap!
–Admiral Ackbar, “The Return of the Jedi” (1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA
__________________________________
Has Trump been playing the Democrats on the Garcia gangbanger from the beginning?
Trump just displayed a close-up photograph of Garcia’s left knuckles tattooed with MS13. That settle that. Surely they’ve had that photo in reserve all along.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114361211919694573
Tricksy Trump.
There is new info on the true time line of COVID. This is getting really ugly.
It appears that there was already a lab leak in at least in May-July of 2019 and Fauci + others including Bill Gates(!) knew, at least “hypothetically”.
Here’s a time line chart that lays it all out
https://directorblue.substack.com/p/the-covid-timeline-we-were-never
and a discussion of the data
https://truthovernews.org/p/when-did-covid-really-start?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2487193&post_id=161652902&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=ch1ue&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Bob, can’t argue with a brick wall.
Art, thanks for making it quick and easy to read todays offering.
It was not me that was dissatisfied with the validity of the election. It was the voters in each of the districts that recalled the people who supposedly won with rank choice voting.
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People get recalled due to their performance in office. (See Boudin). This is not that difficult to understand.
April 19 is also Patriot’s Day in three states, “commemorating the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, the inaugural battles of the American Revolutionary War.” It also is observed on the third Monday in April in four states. Reportedly the OK City attack was planned for that day intentionally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriots'_Day
The one book I read about Timothy McVeigh stated that he was a white supremacist who had contempt for nonwhites, but I never saw that reported anywhere else. It seems that the media airbrushed it away.
Also, for me doubts linger about John Doe No. 2, whose likeness appeared on wanted posters, before he was also airbrushed out. The feds claimed he was an innocent soldier who was mistakenly identified by the truck rental clerk, but I never saw a picture of that soldier.
In addition, per Mother Jones magazine, the feds arrested a man named Trentadue based on his resemblence to John Doe No. 2.and beat him to death during interrogation and covered it up by claiming it was suicide. His brother, an attorney, is still pursuing a case against the feds. I think he is also pursuing allegations that feds were involved in the plot, and that there is video of a second suspect running away from the Ryder truck before the blast.
I wouldn’t normally give Mother Jones any credence, but their article seemed sound to me, and the only axe they had to grind was their anti-police/anti-fed ideology.
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My thinking about Ranked Choice Voting is that it unnecessarily complicates the voting process. I think we should focus on election integrity first and foremost. I’m not sure what problem RCV is supposed to fix, but think we should stick with what we’ve used for ~250 years. I generally prefer the K.I.S.S. principle, and think that if it takes Art Deco 10 paragraphs to defend RCV, maybe we shouldn’t go there.
PS I see Neo has a new post about RCV, which I will check out.
The female celebrity Blue Origin space tourism flight–the “girrls” not wearing the usual actual protective clothing, but specially commissioned designer uniforms–was all a cheesy stunt–with their talk of their “training,” about their “mission,” their status as “crew,” about some sort of supposed “science experiment” they did on their trip, and their new status as “Astronauts”–complete with a set up so that they could be filmed “ringing the bell,” like real Astronauts do when they return to Earth.*
Then, there was the spectacle of Bezos running around the just landed capsule, and falling flat on his face. **
I’d imagine that a lot of actual Astronauts are not very pleased by this cheapening of what they spend many years learning, dedicate themselves to, sacrifice for, train for, and endure; this charade.
* See https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/viral-video-shows-blue-origin-crew-celebrating-historic-flight-with-a-special-ritual/ar-AA1CUeee
* * See https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/jeff-bezos-falls-as-he-greets-fiancee-lauren-sanchez-after-blue-origin-space-flight/
sdferr,
Although not well known, there are lyrics to “Baby Elephant Walk.” And I know them. And I’m not really sure I remember why.
I have a vague memory of seeing the sheet music when I was young, maybe 8 years old. I think my sister and I were at an Aunt’s house, and that Aunt owned an organ and I found the music and played it, and also sang the lyrics as written, which made my older sister laugh. They are very hoakie lyrics, especially when sung to the melody.
I think that may be how it started. Regardless of how I first discovered the lyrics and that fact, I know I have always been able to make my sister laugh by singing them. Sometimes, when we are together at a somber occasion I’ll simply hum a few bars quiet enough that only she hears me and she invariably cracks up.
And now the Internet led me to this: https://youtu.be/8Xk8QVfogjE?si=_Ni2JZ0Keyvk8LSR
A Japanese ska band, Tokyo Ska Paradise doing a rendition of “Baby Elephant Walk.”
Heh, good stuff, Rufus. The Ska Paradise Orchestra made me wish the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band had seen fit to cover it too.
Art… with all due respect…
You don’t understand because you don’t have to live with it.
Preferential voting allows the parties to negotiate the weight of any #2-3 or 4 they receive on any individual ballot.
So my party can agree with your party to “preference” each other. If your candidate comes in a close 2nd and mine a narrow 3rd…my preferences just might sneak your guy into 1st.
For that… your party might sign off on a version of our pet policy.
Backroom wheeling dealing is baked into the system. And the narrow 1st place guy loses.
Your whole response is from the abstract… should, could, might… again until you see the sausage made you have no idea what you’re eating.
Re: Trump photo of Garcia’s MS-13 knuckles
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114361211919694573
Looking again, the letters and numbers don’t look like tattoos. More like they were typed in using graphics program. In which case they would be instructions for reading the tattoos properly
M – Marijuana
S – Smiley face with x-ed out eyes
1 – Cross
3 – Skull
Perhaps those images do spell out MS-13 in gang code. I haven’t found any evidence of that.
Not happy stuff in any event. Tattoos a gang member might chose.
“People get recalled due to their performance in office. (See Boudin). This is not that difficult to understand.”
We understand it perfectly. Now give some *examples* of RCV producing superior performers. Bob gave a some examples of it failing to do that, if it’s so great it should be easy for you to generate a bunch of examples to the contrary.
Now give some *examples* of RCV producing superior performers. Bob gave a some examples of it failing to do that, if it’s so great it should be easy for you to generate a bunch of examples to the contrary.
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He gave examples of politicians elected in ranked choice contests later recalled. Gray Davis was elected in a first-past-the-post contest and later recalled. Somehow that does not discredit first-past-the-post in your mind.
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Examples wouldn’t do you a blessed bit of good. You’ve got 7,000 state legislators. Cherry picking five of them tells you nothing. Even if you could undertake valid survey research, there are a number of vectors which enter into the performance of a body of politicians in office.
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And, of course, you’re demanding ‘proof’ of claims no one ever made. Ranked-choice voting is a means of aggregating voter preferences. That’s all it is. The contention of ranked-choice advocates is that it does so more elegantly and reliably than other methods.
My thinking about Ranked Choice Voting is that it unnecessarily complicates the voting process
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Uh huh. And I gave you a scrum of examples of how to make the voting process less complicated and the lot of you do not give a rip.
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and think that if it takes Art Deco 10 paragraphs to defend RCV, maybe we shouldn’t go there.
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Why? Because I’m thorough?