Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Elections - City Councils and Commissions - Policies
xandrex
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby xandrex » November 8th, 2017, 2:52 pm

I even know someone who did Frey/Hodges/Hoch!
I don't get the Hoch in this grouping. Well, I do, but personally I think it says something about how little people actually understand issues in city elections. They've heard of Hoch ($$$) and he seems like a good guy, so okay.
They're actually not a low-info voter. They're definitely a more moderate person who was pretty strongly Frey. We'll people here might see the ranking as not making much sense, the indication was that they were the most moderate Dems in the race (even though it sounds like they didn't like Hoch much at all).

grrdanko
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby grrdanko » November 8th, 2017, 2:54 pm

None of my ranked candidates won and while my fourth choice would have been Frey, I'm still pretty uneasy that I didn't get to have a voice in that.
I'm pretty uneasy that my first choice Captain Jack Sparrow didn't win.

LakeCharles
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby LakeCharles » November 8th, 2017, 2:55 pm

If you ranked Frey or Dehn first, your 2nd and 3rd picks didn't matter a bit. I would have liked to put Frey 4th, to prevent Hoch from winning, if it came down to those two, but it didn't, so it didn't matter.

The only people for whom it would have matter are people who voted Nekima, Hoch, Hodges in some order, and wish they could have put their fourth toward Dehn instead of Frey. Which seems like an infinitesimal group of people.

David Greene
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby David Greene » November 8th, 2017, 3:00 pm

It was kind of lucky that Hoch was eliminated before Dehn. I did not expect that. If Dehn had been eliminated first, my ballot would have been exhausted rather than allowing me to choose Frey over Hoch.

I guess technically I "had a voice" because Dehn came in second, but...

I feel like we dodged a bullet. Hence the unease.

LakeCharles
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby LakeCharles » November 8th, 2017, 3:04 pm

Well if Dehn would have been eliminated at the round where Hoch was, you still would have had Hodges on your ballot, thus insuring Hoch would have been the next one eliminated, and then Frey would have beaten Hodges.

Anyway, I see what you are saying, and I wish I could have put Frey 4th too, but it's a real edge case.

twincitizen
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby twincitizen » November 8th, 2017, 3:11 pm

If you ranked Frey or Dehn first, your 2nd and 3rd picks didn't matter a bit. I would have liked to put Frey 4th, to prevent Hoch from winning, if it came down to those two, but it didn't, so it didn't matter.

The only people for whom it would have matter are people who voted Nekima, Hoch, Hodges in some order, and wish they could have put their fourth toward Dehn instead of Frey. Which seems like an infinitesimal group of people.
And Hodges got a TON of 3rd choice votes, though a large portion were likely from Frey or Dehn voters. Would it have made much of a difference if the Pounds folks had ranked Betsy 2nd instead of 3rd? Is there any way to tell that? Obviously it would not have been enough to put her over Frey, but it could've put her over Dehn (and his voters also could've ranked her 2nd instead of 3rd, raising her chances).

I think the lesson here, if you're a strong anti-Hoch/Frey voter who couldn't rank Hodges 1st, is that Hodges should've been your 2nd choice, not 3rd (or theoretical 4th, etc.) Again, it wouldn't have been enough to put her over Frey, but there's no way of knowing that at the time you cast your ballot.

tmart
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby tmart » November 8th, 2017, 3:16 pm

I mean, at some point, someone's going to be disappointed, right? We could force everyone to rank every candidate and then write that the winner had "100% support!" but it would obviously be kinda hollow.

The incentive to vote strategically does still exist with RCV. It usually makes sense to pick your third-choice with some consideration of whom you think is likeliest to survive. There are some other, weirder edge cases, too. But the incentives are substantially weaker than in non-ranked voting and the vast majority of people do end up, at the very least, putting their sincere favorite first.

talindsay
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby talindsay » November 8th, 2017, 4:21 pm

Yeah, the exact number of combinations doesn't really matter. You could pretty much keep the ranking of voters in some sort of table or entry from first to sixth (or whatever) and once the first choice drops out, push their other ranks "ahead" so the "first choice" vote is actually a "current choice" vote. If someone's second/third/whatever choice drops out, keep pushing until you hit a candidate that's still in or you've exhausted the rankings. Rinse and repeat until you get someone who's crossed the threshold or has the most after there's just two candidates left.
Yes, that's essentially the algorithm I and a colleague worked out in about 20 minutes on Facebook (complete with pseudocode!). There may be even faster algorithms. It turns out that for this algorithm, the majority of the time is spent preparing the data (sorting, etc.) for the fastest possible processing. A better ballot design might even eliminate the need for that.
It's a pretty easy perl script, and time doesn't really matter because the total number of voters is pretty small - I wouldn't waste time optimizing the data, just read it in to a convenient structure and go. In an actually *good* language, it would be even quicker. It's just not a challenging task.

Doing it by paper also shouldn't take too long. Just stack the papers by first choice vote, then when a candidate is eliminated re-sort that stack by next choice and redistribute into the remaining stacks.

Now, the multi-candidate elections are a whole different story, both technically and philosophically. I don't think we should use RCV for multi-candidate ballots such as the at-large park board seats on this election, mainly because it's extremely difficult for individuals to understand how the proportions of their vote end up being used to elect people, which makes it nearly impossible to decide how best to support the very candidates RCV is supposed to help.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby FISHMANPET » November 8th, 2017, 4:48 pm

The fact that 60% of Hoch voters went to Frey with Hodges and Dehn each getting 20% should send a really strong signal that there really was a Hoch/Frey camp and a "Dehn/Hodges/NLP" camp

talindsay
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby talindsay » November 8th, 2017, 4:54 pm

I meant to vote Hodges - Dehn - Frey but for some reason voted Hodges - Frey - Dehn so I guess I wasn't part of a camp. Actually I was a member of the "I like Betsy and I'll use my other votes to try and keep Hoch out of office" camp.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby FISHMANPET » November 8th, 2017, 5:22 pm

I would bet that far more Hoch voters ranked Frey later than Frey voters ranked Hoch.

FWIW I voted Hodges - Dehn - Frey so my vote didn't elect the mayor!

mattaudio
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby mattaudio » November 8th, 2017, 5:28 pm

A neighbor of mine and personal doppelganger wrote a tabulation script in python. But the city didn't release the raw data until they released their tabulation.

tmart
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby tmart » November 8th, 2017, 6:06 pm

Writing a tabulation script is indeed trivial. Complying with election law is not. Some pertinent questions are:
- Does there exist an RCV-compatible ballot reader which is certified by the state and federal governments?
- Does it output data in a format compatible with your script, with a sufficient paper trail?
- Does there exist a process at the state and federal levels for certifying RCV tabulation software?
- How burdensome is that process? How long does it take?
- How much does all of this cost, compared to the cost and time spent on a hand count?

I'm assuming the city at least explored all these questions before deciding on their current process.

Incidentally, my experience working in software strongly biases me against electronic voting and vote counting. I'm OK with getting preliminary, unofficial results from a machine, but at the very least we need regular, random sample audits by hand, and my preference is for entirely hand-counting official results. So I really have no beef with getting the results the next day.

David Greene
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby David Greene » November 8th, 2017, 6:14 pm

^ Agree 100%. Electronic voting scares me. It should scare every computing professional.

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Homewood2009
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby Homewood2009 » November 8th, 2017, 6:46 pm

I even know someone who did Frey/Hodges/Hoch!
I don't get the Hoch in this grouping. Well, I do, but personally I think it says something about how little people actually understand issues in city elections. They've heard of Hoch ($$$) and he seems like a good guy, so okay.
They're actually not a low-info voter. They're definitely a more moderate person who was pretty strongly Frey. We'll people here might see the ranking as not making much sense, the indication was that they were the most moderate Dems in the race (even though it sounds like they didn't like Hoch much at all).
I ranked Hoch first, Frey second, and Captain Jack Sparrow third. Hoch got my 1st vote because he has deep roots in Minneapolis which was most important to me. Frey got 2nd because I believe him when he talks about how much he loves his chosen hometown. None of the other candidates were appealing to me in any way so I threw the third one away. Minneapolis has been my home for my entire life, I have seen many changes for the better in the past ten or so years which makes me very proud of my hometown.
Ranked Choice Voting is not one of them. It's not confusing, I just don't see any benefit to the city. We shouldn't need more choices on the ballot to energize people to get out and exercise their right to vote.

tmart
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby tmart » November 8th, 2017, 7:59 pm

The benefit is making elections more competitive, and it's been quite successful at that. IMO the big story of this election is that lots of voters broadly agreed with Hodges ideologically but didn't think she was effective in her role, and that type of candidate would struggle to break through against an incumbent in primary/FPTP elections.

We also see lots of perspectives that we wouldn't have under the old system. You might be happy with candidates like Frey and Hoch, who would have done well in primaries in an open year anyway. But tens of thousands of people got to cast meaningful votes for candidates like Dehn and Levy-Pounds, who never would have even been on the ballot without RCV, and who influenced the debate in a meaningful way. There are lots of socialists in Minnesota, and for the first time I can remember, we saw one come within spitting distance of a city council seat.

There's also much less threat of a "spoiler effect," so people's ballots better reflect their sincere beliefs rather than political posturing, and there's less threat of elevating a candidate who's broadly disliked but popular with a minority.

talindsay
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby talindsay » November 8th, 2017, 11:18 pm

^ Agree 100%. Electronic voting scares me. It should scare every computing professional.
Me too.

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Homewood2009
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby Homewood2009 » November 9th, 2017, 7:03 am

The benefit is making elections more competitive, and it's been quite successful at that. IMO the big story of this election is that lots of voters broadly agreed with Hodges ideologically but didn't think she was effective in her role, and that type of candidate would struggle to break through against an incumbent in primary/FPTP elections.

We also see lots of perspectives that we wouldn't have under the old system. You might be happy with candidates like Frey and Hoch, who would have done well in primaries in an open year anyway. But tens of thousands of people got to cast meaningful votes for candidates like Dehn and Levy-Pounds, who never would have even been on the ballot without RCV, and who influenced the debate in a meaningful way. There are lots of socialists in Minnesota, and for the first time I can remember, we saw one come within spitting distance of a city council seat.

There's also much less threat of a "spoiler effect," so people's ballots better reflect their sincere beliefs rather than political posturing, and there's less threat of elevating a candidate who's broadly disliked but popular with a minority.
Thank you. You described it's benefits in a way that made me think about it differently. I've not really had a meaningful conversation about RCV with someone, so hearing it the way you described it, makes it a little clearer. I just wish we had a way to avoid having fifteen different candidates next time.
I'm glad Jacob Frey won even though he wasn't my first choice. He seems pretty enthusiastic about our city and I think he will do some things to make it even more livable.

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Homewood2009
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby Homewood2009 » November 9th, 2017, 7:06 am

^ Agree 100%. Electronic voting scares me. It should scare every computing professional.
Me too.
I agree 100% with you on this. Especially the touch screen variety. Thankfully we don't use those in Minneapolis.

jebr
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Re: Minneapolis Mayoral Election 2017

Postby jebr » November 9th, 2017, 7:25 am

I think that paper ballots with electronic counting (with random manual audits to ensure accuracy) is the best of both worlds. It'd take a lot for me to be comfortable with electronic voting, and the current implementations in other states makes me say no to bringing it here with any permutation of current technology.




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