Pages tagged "STAR Voting"

Posted on Learn by · March 31, 2018 12:47 AM

Read Charter Amendment

We have received and approved our ballot title and explanatory statement for prospective petition MultCoInit-07 STAR Voting, drafted by the Multnomah County Attorneys office. See below to read the Ballot Title and Full Charter Amendment:

 

 

Ballot Title

"STAR Voting for Multnomah County"

 

MultCoInit-07

Caption (10/10 words)
Amends charter: county officer primary election eliminated; scored officer elections.


Question (20/20 words)
Should charter be amended for county officers eliminating primary election, requiring general election using “Score Then Automatic Runoff” (“STAR”) voting?


Summary (175/175 words)
Under current Charter, candidates for county offices appear on the primary election ballot. If a candidate receives a majority of votes, that candidate is elected. Otherwise, the two candidates with the most votes appear on the general election ballot. The amendment eliminates primary elections for county officers, instead requiring “Score Then Automatic Runoff” (“STAR”) voting at the November general election, where voters score each candidate on a zero (lowest) to five (highest) scale. Ballots would explain vote tallying: (1) determine which two candidates received the greatest sum total of scores for a position; (2) for those two candidates, determine in whose favor each ballot was cast (automatic runoff). A ballot is cast in favor of the candidate the elector gave the greater score; if an elector gave the candidates the same score, the ballot benefits neither candidate. The candidate in whose favor the greatest number of ballots were cast in the automatic runoff is elected, and deemed to receive a majority of votes when filling vacancies. The amendment includes Board authority to establish rules for voting administration.

Explanatory Statement (417/500 words)
Under the current Charter, all candidates for county elective offices (Chair of the Board, Commissioners, Auditor, and Sheriff) appear on the primary election ballot, and if a candidate receives a majority of votes cast for a position, that candidate is elected. If no candidate receives a majority of votes cast for the position, the two candidates who received the highest number of votes appear on the general election ballot.


The amendment would eliminate the primary election for county elective offices. County officers would instead be elected at the November general election using “Score Then Automatic Runoff” (“STAR”) voting. Under that system, all candidates for an office appear on the ballot, and voters score each candidate on a zero (lowest) to five (highest) scale. The system uses scoring, rather than ranking, which means a voter can give the same score to more than one  candidate for the same office. If an elector leaves a candidate’s score blank, the elector’s score for that candidate will be zero.


The method for tallying votes would be explained on the ballot. Votes would be tallied as follows: (1) for each office on the ballot, determine which two candidates received the greatest sum total of scores for the position; (2) for those two candidates, determine in whose favor each ballot was cast (automatic runoff). For purposes of the automatic runoff, an elector’s ballot is considered cast in favor of the candidate the elector gave the greater score; if an elector gave the two candidates the same score, the ballot is not considered in favor of either candidate. As between the final two candidates, the candidate in whose favor the greatest number of ballots were cast as determined by the automatic runoff vote tally is elected, and deemed the candidate receiving a majority of votes cast when filling vacancies under Section 4.50 of the Charter. Under that Section, a vacancy is filled by election only if the term of office expires one year or more after the vacancy occurs.


The amendment requires the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, by ordinance, to establish rules for the orderly administration of the new “STAR” (“Score Then Automatic Runoff”) voting system, and requires the Board to prescribe how a tie-vote will be resolved at any stage of the “STAR” (“Score Then Automatic Runoff”) vote tally. Current Charter Section 11.20 requires tie votes for candidates for county elective office to be resolved through public drawing of lots in a manner prescribed by the Board. The amendment does not change that provision.

 

The Ballot Title above is based on the legal charter amendment that Equal Vote submitted to Multnomah County. This amendment has passed the county's legal and constitutional review process.

 

Full Charter Amendment

"STAR Voting for Multnomah County"

 

CHAPTER XI. ELECTIONS

11.15. Election Of Officers.

(1) All elective county offices shall be nonpartisan.
(2) The manner of nominating and electing officers shall be the same as that established by state law for nominating and electing circuit court judges, except as this charter provides to the contrary. Election of county officers under this Section shall be held at the November general election according to “STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) Voting” as described in subsection (5) of this section.
(3) Petitions or declarations of candidacy shall contain no reference to any political party ballot or to the political party affiliation of the candidate.
(4) The names of all candidates shall appear on the election ballot. The ballot shall direct the elector to score each candidate appearing on the ballot on a scale of zero to five, with zero being the lowest score possible and five being the highest score possible. If an elector leaves a candidate’s score blank, the elector’s score for that candidate shall be counted as zero. The ballot shall inform the elector of how votes will be tallied under subsection (5) of this section.
(5) Votes cast shall be tallied according to STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) Voting, as follows:
(a) For each office for which a candidate appears on the ballot, the vote tally system shall calculate the sum total of the scores received by each candidate and then determine the two candidates who received the greatest total scores.
(b) Of the two candidates identified under subsection (5)(a) of this section, the vote tally system shall determine in whose favor each elector’s ballot was cast, as follows: Each elector’s ballot shall be considered cast in favor of the candidate who received the greater score, but if an elector gave both candidates the same score, the elector’s ballot shall not be considered in favor of either candidate.
(c) The candidate in whose favor a greater number of ballots were cast as determined under subsection (5)(b) of this section shall be elected and, for purposes of section 4.50 of this charter, shall be deemed the candidate who received a majority of votes cast.
(6) The County Commissioners shall, by ordinance, establish rules necessary for the orderly administration of the election using Score Runoff Voting as described in subsection (5) of this section. Such rules shall provide for the determination of the prevailing candidate in cases of a tie-vote at any stage of STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) Voting.

 

 

If you have questions or comments regarding the ballot title or charter amendment please let us know at pdx@equal.vote

Posted on Learn by · March 26, 2018 4:07 AM

Comparing Voting Systems

Comparing Voting Systems: A Report Card

Posted by · April 07, 2018 2:21 PM · 1 reaction

Leading Election Systems: Pros and Cons

Posted by · April 24, 2017 7:03 PM

See all posts
Posted on Learn by · March 26, 2018 2:16 AM

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency

Measuring Election Accuracy

One of the most important criteria we use to evaluate voting systems is "Accuracy", but how do we determine if a voting system is accurate? Does it elect the candidates who should win? Is it fair and representative?

There are a number of tools that voting scientists use to answer these questions and like all good science lovers we advocate taking a close look from multiple perspectives. Looking at the "Condorcet Winner" is one method, "Bayesian Regret" is another. These methods can be an invaluable addition to the data we can collect from real world elections. One of the most exciting and thorough is "Voter Satisfaction Efficiency" (VSE) which analyzes voting systems using thousands of simulated elections. VSE looks at what can happen under a wide variety of scenarios and factors in variables like strategic voters, voters blocks who cluster on issues, and much more.

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Voter Satisfaction Efficiency

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency makes a strong case for STAR Voting. In VSE, STAR out preformed all the other voting systems that are being seriously advocated for, many of them by large margins. The only voting system that was close to on par was a Condorcet Method called Ranked Pairs which had previously set the bar for accuracy but which is too complex to be viable in real world elections.

Here are some of the findings that we can extrapolate from the VSE graphs:

  • STAR is among the very best of the best. When voters are honest STAR delivers it's best results with a VSE of over 98%.
  • Under less than ideal circumstances, such as elections where a large portion of voters are strategic STAR was still highly accurate with a VSE of over 90%. The worst case scenario STAR Voting was basically just as accurate as the best case for Ranked Choice Voting and much better than Plurality Voting (our current system) under any circumstances.
  • Compared to other systems STAR showed a higher resiliency against strategic voters. This means that voter tactics has a smaller impact on overall election accuracy so that even if many people try and game the system we still come out in good shape. The exception was 3-2-1 Voting which was slightly less accurate than STAR and slightly more resilient to strategic voters.
  • VSE strategy simulations also showed that STAR doesn't incentivize strategic voting for voters overall. Strategic and dishonest voting is just as likely to backfire as it is to help the individual voter so why bother?

You can learn more about Voter Satisfaction Efficiency here. 

 

Why not just skip the simulations and go straight to real world data?

Real world, empirical election data is a critical source of information, but it can only go so far. Where it comes up short is when ballots are not expressive enough to collect the voters' full opinions, and when we have no way of knowing if the votes cast were honest or dishonest. For example if our current system elected the candidate with the most votes, that is generally considered a fair and accurate election according the the available information, but that still doesn't mean that the candidate with the most support won. The problem is that in some elections if voters could have showed a degree of support for multiple candidates or if voters had not voted strategically for a "lesser evil" a different candidate may have won.

For assessing voting systems with less expressive ballots, pre voting day polling, and exit polls can be a valuable addition to election results and ballot data. In many cases ratings are used in this kind of polling because a rating is able to collect the kind of data needed to asses less expressive ballot data and election results.

Real world data is particularly insightful when we are looking at election results from voting systems that do use more expressive ballots. For example Instant Runoff Voting uses an expressive ballot, but also uses a multi-round, tournament style elimination process which doesn't count all the rankings. When we go back and look at the ballot data again, sometimes we find elections where the candidate who won wasn't actually preferred by the voters... according to the ballots cast.

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Condorcet Winner as a Measure of Accuracy

The Condorcet winner is the candidate that was preferred over all others head-to-head. When there is a Condorcet winner there's a good case to be made that that candidate should have won. Unfortunately Condorcet can be limited because there isn't always a single winner that was preferred over all others. Sometimes preferences are cyclical.

A ranked ballot is all that is needed to find the Condorcet winner if one exists, but a score ballot also shows preferences and so will also find the Condorcet Winner if one exists.

There are a few situations where some people may argue that the Condorcet winner didn't actually have the most support. Advocates of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) often argue this to defend the results of a recent Burlington Vermont IRV election which didn't elect the candidate who was preferred over all others. In order to make that argument convincingly we would need to know more than just voters' preference orders, we would need to know how much each voter liked each candidate.

In ranked ballot systems there's no way to know if a voter actually liked their second choice. Second choice could mean full support if a voter really loves more than one candidate. Conversely a voter's second choice may be a candidate who they strongly dislike, but who is better than their worst case scenario.

In a 2009 Burlington Mayor's race there were three viable candidates, a Democrat, Republican, and a Progressive, and all three had significant support. The Democrat was preferred over all others (the Condorcet Winner) but came in third place after voters first choice votes were counted. The Progressive won.

Many Republican voters had ranked the Democrat as their second choice to show that they preferred the Democrat to the Progressive candidate. If these voters would have actually been significantly more satisfied if the Democrat had won, then the Condorcet winner did deserve to win after all. On the other hand if Republicans would have been almost equally dissatisfied with either the Democrat or the Progressive then the Progressive was probably the candidate with the most support after all. To learn more about Burlington read more from Equal Vote here and more from The Center for Election Science here, and the Center for Range Voting here.

The point is that in these kinds of close three way ties it's critical to have enough ballot data to determine if the candidate who won had the most support or not. For that we need a ballot that allows us to show degree of support as well as vote no preference if desired. In Burlington the ballots clearly showed that the Democrat was preferred over all others and was the Condorcet winner and so he clearly deserved to win according to the ballots cast. Instant Runoff Voting was repealed the following election.

STAR Voting would almost always elect the Condorcet winner, but if it doesn't, there is a convincing case to be made for why another candidate actually had more support and better represented the people.

Posted by · April 08, 2017 2:30 PM

STAR Voting: a cutting edge proposal for our elections

from the Equal Vote Coalition

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Simply give each candidate a five star rating.

 

Lets rise above the polarization and allow voters to show their full opinion!

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You only need to vote once in November and those ballots are counted in a 2 step process:

 

First:   All the scores from all the ballots are totaled and the two highest scoring are finalists.

Second:   Your ballot already shows which finalist you preferred.  The finalist preferred by more voters wins.
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We are currently collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to adopt STAR Voting for Multnomah County offices.  The proposal will replace our antiquated "vote for one only" system with a single November election with all the candidates on one ballot. STAR Voting breaks the polarization and allows us to give each candidate a score, showing our full honest opinion.

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