Saturday, September 25, 2004
A lot of folks are concerned about the confusion around Rank Choice Voting.
Of course, there's a pretty good website explaining it, but it's not the web-savvy people we're worried about. While ranking things first, second and third, is not that hard, it's that people think they need to understand it more deeply... that they can 'game' the system by voting for someone specific for their 3rd choice or something.
It doesn't work that way, but people think it must. I have a little explanation on my website as well... http://www.tyssniffen.com/rcv.htm but again, lots of people aren't going to hear about that.
What's more, a lot of people are blaming Rank Choice Voting (RCV) for the flood of candidates we have in District 5. Having this many candidates does in fact make the process even more confusing, but it's not the cause of the flood.
We have 22 people running in this race because the incumbent dropped out and the job pays $90,000. In the 'old' voting system in 2000, Matt Gonzalez got 12,000 votes and the nearest competitor got 8000 votes. In the December runoff, 2600 people voted, with 1800 votes going to Matt. That's how he won. The winner of this race will probably get about 10,000 or so votes this fall.
We have a lot of people in this race who are just thinking they should take a shot at getting those votes. Don't blame RCV, but candidate ego.
Of course, there's a pretty good website explaining it, but it's not the web-savvy people we're worried about. While ranking things first, second and third, is not that hard, it's that people think they need to understand it more deeply... that they can 'game' the system by voting for someone specific for their 3rd choice or something.
It doesn't work that way, but people think it must. I have a little explanation on my website as well... http://www.tyssniffen.com/rcv.htm but again, lots of people aren't going to hear about that.
What's more, a lot of people are blaming Rank Choice Voting (RCV) for the flood of candidates we have in District 5. Having this many candidates does in fact make the process even more confusing, but it's not the cause of the flood.
We have 22 people running in this race because the incumbent dropped out and the job pays $90,000. In the 'old' voting system in 2000, Matt Gonzalez got 12,000 votes and the nearest competitor got 8000 votes. In the December runoff, 2600 people voted, with 1800 votes going to Matt. That's how he won. The winner of this race will probably get about 10,000 or so votes this fall.
We have a lot of people in this race who are just thinking they should take a shot at getting those votes. Don't blame RCV, but candidate ego.
