Ranked Choice Voting Isn’t the Problem in New York City’s Mayoral Election

New York City Hall. Photo by Aude. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
New York City Hall. Photo by Aude. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

Confusion reigns. More than a week after Democratic voters from New York City’s five boroughs cast their primary ballots, we still don’t know who those voters chose as their party’s nominee for mayor. Seven days after the polls closed, the city’s Board of Elections issued preliminary results, then quickly withdrew them, citing a discrepancy in which test ballots were counted along with real votes.

Opponents of Ranked Choice Voting  are having a public field day, declaring that the results — or, rather, lack of results — prove the method is defective. It’s just too complicated, they claim, for the average voter to figure out.

They’re wrong. The New York City Board of Elections’s apparent inability to quickly, competently, and accurately count votes isn’t an indictment of Ranked Choice Voting. It’s an indictment of the New York City Board of Elections.

What’s going on here? What’s the problem?

One possible explanation is incompetence. Mike Ryan, the board’s director, went on extended medical leave after his relationship with a voting machine vendor led to calls for a conflict of interest investigation. His absence left the board’s operations in the hands of deputy executive director Dawn Sandow, who may be a token Republican appointee rather than a skilled administrator. An anonymous fellow GOP official tells the New York Post that Sandow “isn’t very qualified to run a large agency.”

Another possibility is that this Ranked Choice Voting exercise isn’t going very well because the powers that be in New York City politics don’t WANT it to go very well.  In a system where two parties continually dominate, and in a city where one of those parties enjoys a pretty firm stranglehold on power, RCV threatens to upset the (big) apple cart. It produces winners based on the broadest level of popular support rather than leaving voters with a binary choice between lesser evils. Party bosses hate that idea. It’s possible that New York City’s version of RCV was built to fail

A non-possibility is that Ranked Choice Voting itself is to blame for the fiasco. There’s simply nothing complex or confusing about it.

The voter simply ranks the available candidates from first place to last, something he or she probably already did when considering which candidate to vote for in “vote for one” elections.

At the election administration level, RCV MORE work, but it’s not COMPLICATED work. If no candidate receives a majority of “first place” votes, the candidate with the fewest such votes is eliminated. His or her votes are transferred to those voters’ second choices. This process repeats until one candidate holds a majority. Even in hand-counted elections it would be a simple and tedious chore, not rocket science. In the computer age, it’s a simple coding problem.

Among the explanations for the New York City debacle, I lean toward administrative incompetence rather than political conspiracy. But either way, New Yorkers shouldn’t let the opponents of Ranked Choice Voting defeat its future use. Where democratic processes are important, RCV is a needed improvement.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Real Law, Fake News: No, Ron DeSantis Isn’t Making People “Register Their Political Views”

Governor Ron DeSantis visits Florida State University. Public Domain.
Governor Ron DeSantis visits Florida State University. Public Domain.

Raw Story‘s headline is disturbing: “Florida goes full fascist,” quoting a tweet referenced in the story.  “Ron DeSantis sparks furious backlash with ‘authoritarian’ campus political surveys.”

“Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation requiring Florida students, faculty and staff to register their political views in surveys in an effort to promote ‘intellectual diversity’ at colleges and universities,” Travis Gettys reports.

OK, well, “reports” may be stretching it just a teensy weensy bit. In the Tampa Bay Times story Gettys cites, Ana Ceballos tells us the legislation “will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints,” not that those students, faculty and staff members will be required to respond to the surveys.

Looks like Mr. Gettys saw what he wanted to see instead of what was actually there. I empathize. It happens to the best of us.

What about Ms. Ceballos? Is her account accurate? Let’s consult the bill itself:

“The State Board of Education shall require each Florida College System institution to conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at that institution. The State Board of Education shall select or create an objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid survey to be used by each institution which considers the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.”

Nothing at all in there requiring students, faculty, or staff to “register their political views” (Gettys), or even requiring the schools to ask them about those views (Ceballos).

The surveys cover what’s being taught at the schools (a reasonable area of interest for the State Board of Education, and for the legislators who appropriate funding for those schools), and whether the people on campus feel free to speak their minds (a reasonable area of interest for anyone who supports freedom of speech).

When it comes to the main claims in the two stories, there’s just no “there” there. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s legislature aren’t requiring anyone to”register their political views” with this law. Ceballos’s story is, intentionally or not, fake news, and Gettys’s story is more fake news stacked on atop Ceballos’s.

I get it. Reading legislation is incredibly boring. But if you’re going to report on it, carefully reading it first seems like part of the job.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Missouri’s New Gun Law Should be Extended to Other Issues

Los Angeles Special Response Team (SRT) within Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prepares for raid on drug traffickers during Operation Pipeline Express. Public domain.
Los Angeles Special Response Team (SRT) within Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prepares for raid on drug traffickers during Operation Pipeline Express. Public domain.

On March 14, Missouri governor Mike Parson signed HB 85, aka the Second Amendment Preservation Act, into law.

HB 85’s first two sections can reasonably be read as “nullification” of a sort, insofar as they point out the unconstitutionality of a number of federal laws that violate the Second Amendment.

Oddly, however, the US Department of Justice seems more concerned with its third and fourth sections of the bill, which prohibit Missouri’s courts and law enforcement agencies from enforcing, or assisting with the enforcement of, those unconstitutional federal laws, and allow Missourians to those who violate the prohibition to sue for damages of up to $50,000 per occurrence.

In a letter to Parson, which the Associated Press describes but which I haven’t been able to find a public full-text version of, Acting Assistant US Attorney General Brian Boynton cites the US Constitution’s “supremacy clause” against nullification. But his main apparent concern seems to be that the bill (AP’s words, not a direct Boynton quote) ” threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities … noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.”

Replying to Boynton, Parson and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt clarify the bill’s intent: “Missouri is not attempting to nullify federal law. Instead, Missouri is defending its people from federal government overreach by prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies from being used by the federal government to infringe Missourian’s rights to keep and bear arms.”

Under the Constitution, Missouri’s government has every power to do that. It neither requires state governments and state employees to enforce federal laws, nor empowers the federal government to compel them to do so.

In the normal course of things, local and state law enforcement agencies assist federal law enforcement agencies with great enthusiasm.

Why? Well, money — the “federal grants and technical assistance” that Boynton refers to in his letter. The feds spread around money (including a share of loot seized under “asset forfeiture” laws) and material (including suprlus military equipment), and that bulks up local law enforcement budgets. Cops, like everyone, enjoy better (or at least cooler) equipment and more opportunities for overtime pay.

That’s a bad thing, not a good thing. It at least partially explains why 21st century America seems to be literally crawling with militarized  cops. Cops wearing military utilities instead of plain vanilla police uniforms. Cops carrying M-16s instead of .38 Specials. Cops driving armored vehicles and SUVs with “Seized from Narcotics Traffickers” stickers on them instead of plain vanilla patrol cars.

Unconstitutional gun laws aren’t the half of it. The war on drugs is probably a much bigger component in what amounts to a federal bribery scheme to get local cops off the job of enforcing local law and on the job of “assisting” federal thuggery of various sorts.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act is a good start, but it’s just a start. If we ever want to get law enforcement back to its legitimate peacekeeping functions, state prohibitions on working with the feds should apply to everything.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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