Introduction to Collaborative Discussion

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        Introduction to Collaborative Discussion
    
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        Covid consequence: Supreme Court will let you listen in live
    

        Redistricting
    
By Emily GrecoAug 27, 2021
Emily Greco
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Organizer: Interactivity Foundation
Location: Virtual
This is the first of five sessions for 'Introduction to Collaborative Discussion," an online course that the Interactivity Foundation is facilitating in partnership with the Diversity Relations Council at Leisure World in Silver Spring, Maryland. In this course, registered participants meet weekly online via Zoom. The five class discussions for this course are participatory, interactive, and additive—they build on the ideas discussed and developed in prior sessions by the participants.

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Forms of RCV Key: SW= single winner, MW = multiple winners
Voting Method	SW or MW?	How It Works	Where It’s Used Some jurisdictions currently or planning to use this form of RCV
Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV) -What most people think of as “RCV” video[Video correction: Only a 1st-round winner is guaranteed a majority of all votes]	SW	If no candidate gets a majority of votes in the first round of counting, then the lowest vote-getters are eliminated round-by-round and their votes transferred to the next available ranking on the ballot until 1 candidate has more votes than the remaining candidates combined.	San Francisco, Santa Fe, Maine, New York City and more than a dozen other places; Boulder in 2023 for its first mayoral election
Top-4 Plurality primary with an IRV general election, similar to Final-Five Voting video	(MW then) SW	All candidates run against each other in a Plurality “choose-one” primary election. The top 4 candidates proceed to an IRV general election. Unlike regular IRV, this version does not eliminate a second election.	Alaska since August 2022
Contingent Vote (3 or more rankings) or Supplementary Vote (only 2 rankings) video	SW	All but the top 2 vote-getters are eliminated in the first round of counting. Votes for eliminated candidates are transferred to the highest ranked of the 2 remaining candidates on each ballot.	NC Court of Appeals 2010; London, UK; Overseas voters in AR, AL, GA, LA, MS and SC mark a regular primary ballot and a ranked ballot that counts if there is a top-2 runoff
Single Transferable Vote (STV), aka Proportional RCV (pRCV) video [ a “gold standard” proportional voting method to elect people]	MW	Candidates who receive the threshold of votes are elected. Any surplus votes are transferred to the next highest available ranking. Lowest vote-getters are eliminated round-by-round and their votes transferred to the next available ranking on each ballot until all seats are filled.	Cambridge, MA since 1941; Albany, CA as of 2022; some members of two boards in Minneapolis; Portland, OR starting in 2024; Boulder, CO 1917-1947; Australia Senate; Ireland lower house
Bottoms-Up 15% Threshold RCV video [ determine proportional allocations]	MW	Conduct IRV tabulation rounds but don’t stop until all remaining candidates have at least 15% support, whereupon candidates’ delegates are proportionally allocated.	2020 Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas and Wyoming Democratic presidential primaries to allocate delegates to the national nominating convention
Bottoms-Up Top-2 RCV primary with a “choose-one” general election	MW (then SW)	Conduct IRV tabulation rounds until 2 candidates remain. Voters vote again in a runoff election to decide which of the 2 primary winners gets the seat.	Seattle starting in 2027 Prop 1B ballot question
Preferential Block Voting (PBV), aka Sequential RCV video [ NOT proportional; a plurality of voters may elect all the winners]	MW	The first seat is filled using an IRV tabulation. Then all ballots are tabulated again using IRV but ignoring the winning candidate. The process is repeated until all seats are filled. (In the video some voters help elect 3 candidates, while voters who ranked Yellow #1 don’t help elect any.)	Utah municipalities may opt into an IRV and PBV pilot project through the 2025 elections. In 2022 Portland, ME voters approved changing from PBV to proportional STV.

Forms of Non-RCV Ranked Voting (includes only single-winner voting methods)
Voting Method	How It Works	Where It’s Used
Insurance Ranking [The ballot’s vote is solely dependent on candidate eligibility, not on the tabulation process.]	If the ballot’s 1st-choice candidate dies, withdraws or is disqualified after the voter has returned their ballot but before Election Day, the vote counts for the next ranking.	2023 Colorado Senate Bill 301 would have allowed military and overseas voters to use this for the 2024 presidential primary election (but the bill died in committee).
Borda Count video	Assigns the largest point value to a voter’s 1st choice, 2nd largest to the voter’s 2nd choice, and so on. The candidate with the largest point total wins.	In some overseas political elections and in various organizations and institutions – see Survey Monkey’s Ranking ballot
Bucklin Voting, aka Grand Junction System video	If no candidate gets a majority of 1st-choice rankings, then 2nd-choice rankings are added to the total. If still no candidate gets a majority, then 3rd-choice rankings are added in.	In more than 60 US cities in the early 20th century, including Denver, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, San Francisco, Cleveland, Newark, and St Petersburg
Count the Rankings [ arguably more a presentation of raw data than a tabulation method]	Voters must rank all candidates. Count and report the number of 1stchoices, the number of 2ndchoices, and so on for each candidate.	In organizations using Microsoft 365’s Ranking form
Condorcet Method video [actually, a family of voting methods, including Ranked Robin, Minimax, and Schulze}	The candidate that defeats all the opponents in pairwise matchups is the Condorcet winner. If no Condorcet winner exists, each method has a rule to determine a winner.	Mostly by organizations and political parties overseas, as well as high-tech organizations, such as IEEE. A few overseas municipalities use Schulze.
Coombs’ Rule video [ The video contrasts IRV and Coombs’ Rule.]	If no candidate gets a majority on the 1st round, then the candidate with the most last-place votes is eliminated. The process is repeated until one candidate wins.	A variant is used on the “Survivor” reality TV program

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Introduction to Collaborative Discussion

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Why should we learn about different voting methods?

How are ranked-voting methods similar and different?

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