I spent some time reviewing how exactly a Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) ballot would work in Greenwich. It's not pretty. I took the last municipal ballot from November 2023 and tried to see how it would work using RCV. I used different tools provided by ranked choice voting advocates that help you to build a ballot. In every case, the tools didn't anticipate the size of various governing bodies we have in Greenwich. Forget about the 230 person RTM. RCV really doesn't work well with even our 12-member BET, or write-in candidates. Here's a sample of what the ballot could look like just for the BET.
I used https://www.rankedvote.co/, and https://www.rcv123.org/ to generate samples, and I reviewed the State of Maine sample ballot for the November 3, 2020 general election, and the sample ballot for the February 2, 2021 Queens, NY Special Election for City Council.
The legislature has a task force evaluating RCV right now. To my knowledge no one has yet attempt to see how it would work in practice, even though the sentiment of the legislature seems to be to try it out in municipal elections.
You can review my designs here. I would love to get feedback if someone thinks these design concepts could be improved.
- Greenwich has 230 member RTM where voters vote for members by selecting roughly 14-26 candidates per district. In this last election there were 41 candidates in District 8, for 26 seats. Ballot styles here: https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/sots/electionservices/town_ballots/nov-2023/nov-2023/greenwich.pdf
- We have a Board of Estimate and Taxation (our Board of Finance) whose chairman is selected from the party whose candidates collectively received the most votes. There was no anticipation of ranked choice voting. Do we now need to amend our charter to say the number of "first round votes?" We have had situations in the past where there have been third-party slates. I'm not sure we could use first round votes because those third party candidates may win, or they may be knocked out. But it upends the system as laid out in our charter.
- Greenwich has adopted one of the options for board of education which allows each party to nominate twice as many candidates as there are open seats. But minority representation rules sometimes create a system where a candidate with more votes is not seated because we have an 8 member board and no party may have more than half the seats. How is this meshed with ranked choice voting?
- On a perception level, at this time in our history, do we want to be implementing a system which will always require a computer in order to provide the results? What would a hand-count audit look like? We do not bring our ballots to Hartford and use a second scanner. We hand-count in a public audit.
- What does logic and accuracy testing look like? Again, how much are we now reliant on the programming? How am I to make my test decks? The test decks for ABs and EVs are not currently generated easily via the supplied systems. And any town can still make decks the old fashioned way by filling in bubbles. We would now need a system which generates the decks which has ranked choice programming, as well as the tabulators.
- How does this work with state senate districts which cross municipal lines (Senate 36 has all of Greenwich and part of Stamford and New Canaan). Is it all merged via a central system? How does a recount work? How do hand-counts work and get added in. We would need to move to adjudicated ballots where teams recreate the ballots so they all go through the scanners.
- How will this work for blind voters and other voters who require an accessible voting system?
- Why does Portland Oregon say it could take weeks to figure out the winner? Again, at this moment in history, do we want to move our state away from the immediacy of election results into a system where people are not certain of the winner for days after an election? https://www.koin.com/news/elections/ranked-choice-count-vote-explained/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFGrtNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbUjjwQ5BEv4LRsTWfkwnzq00qz6vS3yWRN7BL6GFSL7gH335TMPoOHDVQ_aem_KHukMn9oaBxV058TEo-vYw
Of all the concerns, however, the one that keeps me up at night is the sophistication of the programming necessary to do all the calculations to see who won. It will be near impossible to recreate the vote via a hand-audit like we do now. I've witnessed too many problems with the current State of Connecticut Election Night Reporting system to suddenly have confidence that all of this will be programmed perfectly.
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