[candidate-development] some thoughts on CDLC memo

[Gracegrnrnbw at aol.com]

Dave - I am sorry for the half-baked quality of this response but I have 
nothad time to think this through particularly.   Given the short time line, here 
are some thoughts on the proposal to apportion votes whose preference is not 
now a candidate:

I still need to do more research but here is the problem with this proposal
> from the position of a party that has put IRV front and center...
>
>  Say we have six options - if we do this as a blind formula.
>
>  People go vote
>
>  Option 1 gets X votes
>  Option 2 gets Y votes
>  Option 3 gets Z votes
>  Option 4 gets A votes
>  Option 5 gets B votes
>  Option 6 gets C votes
>
>  In our Massachusetts voting system, we don't rank so if Option 5 gets
> removed, which other option gets their votes?  We don't know who the folks
> who voted for Option 5 would have voted for.  Given that we don't know, we
> can still assume that it is unlikely that everyone who voted for Option 5
> would have all voted for, say, Option 4 or any other option - right?  In
> fact if we know nothing at all (and we don't re-ballot) then don't we have
> to assume that our pool of all voters are more like each other than
> different politically?  Don't we have to distribute the votes that went to
> Option 5 along the same distribution as all the other votes cast?
>
>  In reality, there may in fact be information in the "blank" ballots, since
> most "blank" ballots are simply not counted because the machine could not
> count them (these are not being counted at all).  second, there is some
> information in the "write-ins" which I suspect the Secretary of the
> Commonwealth has to give us since it is in our delegate selection
> plan which htey accepted- but they did not.
>
>  However, we don't have that information.
>
>  What we do know is that everyone who voted for Brown, Ball & Nader had the
> options equally to choose: Swift, Mesplay, McKinney, No Preference or to
> write someone in.  All we know is that they did not choose those options.
> We cannot assume that any one of those options would have been those 
voters'
> second choice (if we knew that then we would not believe in nor fight for
> IRV).
>
>  IF No Preference were not an option on the ballot, you could argue that
> assigning those who voted for B,B or N to No Preference was not unfairly
> advantaging or disadvantaging any other option.  However, on our ballot No
> Preference actually ran as a candidate against all other candidates (and 
did
> pretty well actually).  So how can you give No Preference the huge 
advantage
> of getting all votes that went to those who now are not in the race?
>
>  And I guess the same argument could apply as to why write-ins as a group 
don't go
> to No Preference?
>
> What I think this means is that assigning the votes that went to those who 
are not now running in
> any way except proportionally is both questionable math-logic and not
> legally even-handed.
>
>  Someone tell me why I am wrong here?  Love, Grace
PS. one advantage of handling the apportionment this way is that the 
Secretary of the commonwealth cannot object since it is how the Mass Democrats do:
"If a presidential candidate is no longer a candidate at the time of 
selection of the at-large
delegates, then those at-large slots that would have been allocated to the 
candidate will be
proportionally divided among the remaining preferences entitled to an 
allocation. (Rule
10.C.)"


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