Liberadio(!)’s Runoff Election Endorsements

Posted by Liberadio(!) on August 31, 2007 under Uncategorized |

On Tuesday, Sept. 11th, as soon as we’re done with our yearly commemoration of crying into our cereal while watching Jon Stewart memorialize the date for us, we’re heading out to vote. [Early voting going on now if you're into that kind of thing. -- Ed.] You thought your civic duty ended on August 2nd? WRONG! We have yet to elect a mayor, and 4 of 5 council at-large seats are still up for grabs. Not to mention a few important district council seats. That’s right, you’ll just have to drag yourself to the polls once more to HELP SET THE DIRECTION THAT NASHVILLE HEADS IN THE 21ST CENTURY!!! Not that there’s a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders or anything. But seriously, please go vote.

Let’s start with the mayoralty. Sure, the mayor can’t pre-emptively invade Iraq, but he can do a heck of a lot of other things that matter. He’s the guy that sets the budget for the city. And as a city with a $1.5 billion budget, that means quite a bit in terms of local decision-making. And the guy we want making those decisions as mayor is:

Karl Dean
Karl has amply demonstrated his command of the complex issues facing Nashville, offering strong policy ideas that address his top issues - public education, public safety, and economic development. Dean will be pragmatic and keep government humming efficiently along toward these goals which, he will emphatically tell you, are aimed at keeping Nashville an ideal place for families. We do hope, however, that he’ll amp up the progressive end of his agenda on the environment because even though he recognizes that our air quality is the “number one environmental issue” in Nashville, and as cool as bus rapid transit sounds, it’s not going to turn off our air quality alerts by the end of his first term.

One of our favorite things about Dean is that, unlike Congressman Clement, he’s not out to make us all into single-issue voters (we never want to hear the t-word again). He’s demonstrated a broad and deep competency of all things Metro, and policy wonks, not old-school politicians, have steered our ship of city quite nicely for the past 16 years, thank you.

Lastly, Karl Dean already knows Nashville is a great city, and we believe his administration will work hard to keep it that way.

Now let’s move on to the tough job of at-large council. You have to run a county-wide campaign, but your vote isn’t any more powerful than Eric Crafton’s. Still, it is a vote, and it matters. It matters to public education funding, to complicated social and cultural issues facing the city, and to how closely the mayor’s vision for the city is received. In the run-off, we’d like to see the following candidates be in a position to make these difficult decisions:

Megan Barry
We already endorsed Megan once, and our reasons haven’t changed. Barry is an ethics hawk, and if the Bush era has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be more mindful of the ethical stature of our candidates and elected officials. She also fully understands the importance of public school funding, having worked on fundraising campaigns for our local schools. The Council would be a much more effective body under her watchful eye.

Jerry Maynard
We already endorsed Jerry once, too. And again, our reasons haven’t changed. We had the honor of being Jerry’s radio neighbor for 13 weeks on WNSG. His show is called “In Perspective,” and Jerry has wonderful perspective. His ability to bring people together to discuss difficult issues affecting our community is remarkable, and we feel that he would be an excellent leader who could drive consensus.

Luvenia Butler
Ms. Butler has demonstrated a clear passion for Nashville, and her professional experience indicates that she’d be well-qualified to be an official voice in our elected leadership. At a recent candidate forum, she asserted that her current role in the Tennessee Dept. of Health causes her to face issues of discrimination on a regular basis, and she would bring a welcome attitude of anti-discrimination to the new council.

Saletta Holloway
Ms. Holloway has district council experience, and, though some legal scholars might disagree, we think district council is an appropriate stepping stone to at-large council. Ms. Holloway’s experience will be valuable considering the number of freshmen we expect to see. Even better, she wants her experience to be used for building consensus among Nashvillians she sees being torn apart. And in her role at Meharry, she’ll surely help assert the value of our city’s historically black institutions.

We’d like to give an honorable mention to Ronnie Steine. He was a great sport during his interview with us, and we know that he’s got solid policy credentials and has been an effective councilperson in the past. In fact, that’s the problem: he’s already served two terms as an at-large councilman, as well as a stint as vice mayor. Based on existing term limits laws, we’ve got an opportunity to have new voices that have plenty of experience. His fall from grace was steep, but we’re confident that he can continue the process of penance by serving the city in other ways.

As for Election Day round 2, as much as we love voting, um… instant runoff voting anyone?

Volunteer Voters » The Liberadio(!) Endorsements said,

[...] Fredcini have endorsed their favorites for the Metro runoff. You may not agree with their choices but I think most of us can agree with their last line: As for Election Day round 2, as much as we love voting, um… instant runoff voting anyone? Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
Clay Shentrup said,

Instant Runoff Voting is promoted largely on the basis of myths and misconceptions in the public. The truth is that better and simpler methods than IRV exist - and IRV is lethal to third parties, because voting for a non-major-party candidate is statistically more likely to hurt you than help you. The world needs Range Voting or its simplified form of Approval Voting. Here’s why.

Consider this hypothetical election using IRV.

#voters - their vote
10 G > C > P > M
3 C > G > P > M
5 C > P > M > G
6 M > P > C > G
4 P > M > C > G

C is the clear Condorcet (condor-SAY) winner, meaning he is preferred by a landslide majority over all his individual rivals. C is preferred over G, P, and M all by an 18-10 margin.

But… M wins, even though he also has fewer first-place votes (6 voters) than C with 8.

Also:

1. P is preferred to M by 22 of the 28 voters, yet he’s the first candidate eliminated.
2. G also has more first-place votes (10) than M’s 6.
3. So M either loses pairwise to, or has fewer first-place votes than (or both) every rival, but still IRV elects M.

The example above was intended to be “realistic,” perhaps somewhat resembling the situation in the (now evolving) 2008 US presidential race with G=”Green”, M=McCain, C=Edwards, and P=Paul. But if you are willing to drop realism and construct artificial election scenarios, then this demonstrates how to construct arbitrarily-severe election examples of this kind: http://rangevoting.org/IRVamp.html#bad

IRV sounds initially appealing, because people picture a weak third party candidate who loses in the first round. The myth is that this takes away the fear of voting for your sincere favorite candidate, and gives third parties a fair chance to grow; but if that candidate or his party ever grows to be a contender, he is statistically more likely to hurt the party closest to his own than to win. It doesn’t matter how unlikely you imagine the above scenario to be - it’s still _more_ likely than the odds “Green” will win. And so third party voters will learn to strategically vote for their favorite major-party candidate, because it will more often be a good strategy than a bad one. You don’t have to buy my math; you can look at decades of IRV usage in Australia’s house, and Ireland’s presidency. Both use IRV, and have been two-party dominated. So much for the myths that IRV allows you to “vote your hopes, not your fears”, and eliminates spoilers. Now you can see why the Libertarian Reform Caucus calls IRV a “bullet in the foot” for third parties, and why Australian political analysts at AustralianPolitics.com say that IRV “promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.” Ironically, most of the many countries in the world who use a genuine _delayed_ runoff have broken free of duopoly. Yet third parties just worked to help replace that system with IRV in Oakland, CA. This can be chalked up to a result of massive public ignorance, largely perpetuated by groups such as FairVote and the League of Women Voters (http://RangeVoting.org/Irvtalk.html).

Electoral reform advocates (especially third parties!) should be demanding Range Voting - score all the candidates and elect the one with the highest average. Its simplified form, Approval Voting, is probably the most feasible to implement. It simply uses ordinary ballots, but allows us to vote for as many candidates as we like. Consider the benefits:

* More resistant to strategy: As we see above, IRV strategically “forces” voters not to top-rank their sincere favorite; the general strategy with IRV is to top-rank your favorite of the front-runners (typically the major party candidates). But with Range Voting and Approval Voting, this _never_ happens. The worst a voter may do is exaggerate his sincere scores to the max and min scores allowed. But with Range Voting, a vote for your favorite candidate can never hurt you, or the candidate, whereas with IRV it can hurt both. — http://RangeVoting.org/StratHonMix.html

* The previous fact helps to explain why IRV results in two-party duopoly, just like plurality voting. — http://RangeVoting.org/TarrIrv.html

* Spoiler free: Whereas IRV merely _reduces_ spoilers. — http://rangevoting.org/FBCexecSumm.html

* Decreases spoiled ballots: Since voting for more than one candidate is permissible, the number of invalid ballots experimentally goes down with Range and Approval Voting. But IRV typically results in a seven fold increase in spoiled ballots when we started using IRV. — http://rangevoting.org/SPRates.html

* Simpler to use: In 2006, the Center for Range Voting conducted an exit poll experiment in Beaumont, TX. There were 5 gubernatorial candidates, and voters were allowed to rate them 0-10 (or “abstain”). They all seemed to find the process as simple and intuitive. There were no complaints of complexity, or any questions for clarification. And the fact that spoilage rates go down with Range Voting, but up with IRV, shows that there is some objective sense in which RV is simpler. Voters literally make fewer mistakes.

* Simpler to implement/tabulate: A simple one-round summation tells us the results, whereas IRV’s potential for multiple rounds can cause long delays before the final results are determined. A positive side-effect of Range Voting’s simplicity is that it makes the necessary transition to manual counting, and away from voting machines, more feasible. And Range Voting can be conducted on all standard voting machines in the interim. Whereas IRV’s complexity leads most communities implementing it to purchase expensive and fraud-conducive (electronic!) voting machines, the fraudster’s best friend. — http://RangeVoting.org/Complexity.html

* Greater voter satisfaction: Using extensive computer modeling of elections, a Princeton math Ph.D. named Warren D. Smith has shown that these methods lead to better average satisfaction with election results, surpassing the alternatives by a good margin. But IRV turns out to be the second _worst_ of the commonly proposed alternatives. This mean that all voters will benefit from the adoption of either of these superior voting methods, regardless of political stripe. — http://RangeVoting.org/vsi.html

* Reduces the probability of ties: While they are not extremely common, they do happen. IRV statistically increases them, but Range Voting decreases them. — http://RangeVoting.org/TieRisk.html

* In case you’re going to say, “But IRV has more _momentum_ than Range Voting”, you should consider this. — http://RangeVoting.org/IRVsplitExec.html

* In case you wonder why groups like FairVote and the League of Women Voters support IRV, maybe you should consider all the misleading and even patently false claims they’ve made about it. — http://RangeVoting.org/Irvtalk.html

Get the facts at RangeVoting.org and ApprovalVoting.org

And if you’re in the market for a better system of proportional representation (http://RangeVoting.org/PropRep.html) than the antiquated STV system, check out Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting.

http://RangeVoting.org/RRV.html
http://RangeVoting.org/Asset.html

Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA
415.240.1973
clay@electopia.org
said,

Saletta Holloway was my councilwoman for eight years. During that time, I reckon I had two or three-dozen conversations with her. She is, and I’m being kind, an idiot. She wasn’t qualified to be a district member of the Metro Council, and she’s damn sure not qualified to be an at-large member of the Council.

Go back and review some of the incoherent speeches Councilwoman Holloway gave in the Council chamber. You will soon be asking yourself, “What the **** is she talking about?” And then, hopefully, you’ll ask yourself this: “Why in God’s name did we endorse this numbnut?!”

Freddie said,

Django,

This is a marvelous example of a pure character attack. You fail to provide a single issue on which Ms. Holloway failed to represent you well, and you vaguely reference incoherent floor speeches.

We based our endorsement on our own personal encounters with Ms. Holloway, her performance at at-large candidate forums, and her issue statements and resume.

If there’s something you feel the need to bring to our attention from her background, I’d be happy to review it. In the meantime, I can safely say that I’d prefer to be represented by Ms. Holloway than by by J.B. Loring, Ronnie Greer, or Charlie Tygard based on similar knowledge I have about them and their past council experience and statements about the next council.

If she was such a bad elected official, it surprises me that she won re-election in your district, as few before her were able to hold that seat for more than a single term.
Freddie said,

Clay, the folks at the Center for Voting and Democracy have already touched on Range Voting and Approval Voting. Honestly, I find their argument more persuasive than yours, but I’m always interested in ideas for improving the basic tools of our democracy.