Republican Kurt Wright informed city officials verbally this morning that he wants a recount in the Burlington mayor’s race, largely to ensure that the city’s instant-runoff voting system worked properly.
“I don’t expect this to change the outcome of this race, but I do believe that we should take the opportunity to feelcomfortable about the process and the system,” said Wright.
On election eve, Wright was ahead of Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss in the first two instant runoff rounds, but lost in the third — and final — round after the other candidates’ second, third and fourth place rankings were tabulated. For a complete, ward-by-ward breakdown of the mayor’s race, click Download 2009BurlingtonMayorIRVbyward (PDF file).
Wright said he’ll send an official letter by midday. The recount will take place eitherTuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of next week.
The recount will be conducted by the Board of CivilAuthority, which is comprised of the 14-member City Council and theMayor, said Jonathan Leopold, the city’s chief administrative officer.Because Mayor Bob Kiss, Wright, the city council president, andDemocratic councilor Andy Montroll were candidates in the race, theywill not be allowed to take part in the recount.
Wright said he was ready to move on and not ask for arecount. However, Wright said he was overwhelmed with emails,phone calls, and well-wishers stopping him on the street — all urginghim to ask for the recount.
“This isonly the second election that this system has been in place, and Ithink some people still don’t understand how it is that the candidatewho got the most first place votes in the first round and then thesecond round can then lose in the third round.”
Wright said he’s already extending his apologies to fellow councilors, who will be the ones charged with overseeing the recount.
“This is not about me and I do not expect to be elected,however if there was some egregious error and I’m elected, great,”Wright said with a chuckle.
Wright said he has been urged to lead a citizen petitioneffort to dump IRV as the way to elect the mayor, but has rebuffed suchcalls.
“The citizens voted for IRV and if they choose to get ridof it, that process should be citizen-driven, too, and not encouragedby me,” he said.
The IRV recount would be completed by hand, and theprocess would involve a sorting process of creating separatepiles for each candidates’ first-place votes, and then subsequentlylook at the eliminated candidates’ second, third, fourth, and fifthplace selections and adding them to the piles of the two candidateswith the most votes, said Leopold.
Since it’s already known that Kiss andWright will have the most first-place votes, it should be easy to quicklysort through the votes of the other three candidates and recount thestacks, Leopold said.
The only costs incurred by the city would be the stafftime devoted to setting things up for the BCA, which Leopold said wouldbe minimal. Councilors would not be paid separately as it is part oftheir duties as councilors, for which they receive an annual stipend of$3000. The count itself could take as many as six hours to complete,Leopold estimated.
IRV supporters say the system worked just as it was designed — to have a series of instant runoffs until the candidate with the most support crossed the 50-percent threshold.
Here’s how it broke down election eve: In the first round, Wright had 2951 (33%) votes to Kiss’ 2585 (29%) and Montroll’s2063 (23%), and in the second round Wright had 3294 (37%) to Kiss’ 2981(34%) and Montroll’s 2554 (29%) after Independent Dan Smith and GreenParty candidate James Simpson’s votes were eliminated and their secondpreferences divvied up among the other three candidates. In the finalround, Montroll was eliminated and 1332 of his preferences went toKiss, while 767 went to Wright. That put Kiss on top with 4313 (51.5%)and Wright with 4061 (48%).
Interestingly enough, Kiss had compiled more votes than Wright aftervotes had been counted in six of the city’s seven wards. It wasWright’s strong showing in Ward 7 that put him over the top. His strongshowing in the other New North End ward — Ward 4 — allowed him to makeup the deficit in other parts of the city. In fact, both Kiss andMontroll bested Wright in the city’s other five wards.
UPDATE: Mayor Bob Kiss is out of town and unavailable for comment, said spokesman Joe Reinert. “He feels the numbers don’t suggest the need for a recount,” said Reinert. “All this will do is cost city time and city money, but its certainly his prerogative to make the request.”
Reinert added that the way the results have been portrayed by some is false: “This was not a one-lap race, or a two-lap race, it was a three-lap race and as such all that matters is who was ahead after three laps. I don’t think its been helpful for people to say that Kurt was ‘winning’ after the first around because that doesn’t exactly describe the way it works. There may be other ways to understand the how the IRV system works, but it doesn’t necessarily require a recount.”
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2009.
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A reader tried to post these comments, and had trouble getting past the authentication field, so I will post them for him as I think they add to the discussion (and I don’t need to restrict the good debate to my Facebook page).They come from Jack McCullough, who blogs at Green Mountain Daily and has a funny post up right now about another recount being requested.Here is a link to Jack’s recent post at GMD (even though he didn’t link to our Blurt recount coverage and opted for the Freeps, we’ll oblige the link here – LOL): http://greenmountaindaily.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4129Here are his comments: I think there are good reasons to conclude that monotonicity is a bogus objection.In order to emphasize the appearance of a paradox, criticism of IRV based on non-monotonicity is frequently presented in a misleading way, along the following lines: “Having more voters rank candidate Andrea first, can cause Andrea to switch from being a winner to being a loser.” This is not correct, however. It is not the fact that Andrea gets more votes that causes her to lose. In fact getting more first preferences, by itself, can never cause a candidate to lose with IRV. With regards to additional voters casting votes that rank Andrea as the top choice, IRV is indeed monotonic.http://www.fairvote.org/?page=2261
A previous poster, JB, sees no need for the recount since it's clear that Kurt Wright lost on the third round because "Andy Montroll's backers by a large margin preferred Bob Kiss to him." Now, that is how the Free Press reported it, but that is not correct.
If you look at the numbers, you see that Montroll got 2063 first-preference votes. In the third round, when we were down to the two finalists, 2099 votes were allocated to Kiss and Wright. Also–across the board, there were voters who voted only for one candidate. This was true of the Montroll voters as well. If 15% of Montroll voters, voted only for Montroll, there would have been only 1750 Montroll votes to distribute. So, the 2099 votes allocated in the "final" runoff included votes from ballots that had Smith or Simpson ranked first, and Kiss or Wright ranked third. The outcome of the final round ALSO reflects the preferences of the Smith and Simpson voters.
It is fairly clear to me that very few of us really understand how the system works. When I was involved as Chair of the Charter Change Committee, sheperding IRV through the process, I bought the argument that people don't have to understand how the voting system works, they just need to understand how to mark their ballots.
My view has changed. I think it IS important for voters to understand how our voting system works. Otherwise, how can they have confidence in the outcome of elections? I hope that the Council (and I will be involved in the recount) can work with Channel 17 to produce an educational video that will help build understanding of how vote counting works with IRV.
Finally, I would note that when we were studying IRV at the Council level, we never got into the kinds of issues raised in Chris Roy's posting.
seems like the kiss spokesman should just graciously welcome the recount rather than sounding annoyed that some people want to double check the numbers? the only thing worse than a sore loser, is an arrogant winner.
I agree that a recount makes sense, if only to make sure that the machine/computer tabulations are indeed correct. Verification seems in order.
Any need to do a recount doesn’t have anything to do with instant runoff voting.False. For me this is an important verification of the new mechanics involved in employing IRV. We used to run ballots through a “scan-tron” at the polling places and that was it.Now mayoral ballots are captured on memory cards in each ward, transported to city hall, aggregated in one machine and then tabulated in another. This introduces a number of new potential failure points in the chain of the votes’ custody that weren’t there before.I voted for Bob Kiss as my first choice in this election and the last one, and I am really glad this recount is happening. I lobbied Kurt to do it and I promised him I would vigorously defend him against these types of charges. So here we are.It’s not sour grapes. He’s responding to the desires of so many of us who would like to see human eyes count paper ballots.
Any need to do a recount doesn’t have anything to do with instant runoff voting. The rules are transparently clear. The last place finisher is eliminated, and ballots listing that candidate first are added to the votes for the candidate listed second. You then eliminate the new last-place finisher and re-allocate those ballots and so on.At the end of the day you have a perfect reflection of what voters would have done on an Election Day if given a straight-up choice between Kiss and Wright — and Kiss wins by 3%.I don’t know what Wright expects to learn from a recount. he won’t learn about instant runoff voting, as the results already make it very clear that what happened was that Andy Montroll’s backers by a large margin preferred Bob Kiss to him.I know losers have a hard time handling defeats, but c’mon, get over it!
Oh, come on Joe, This isn’t gonna take too long or cost that much and it will do a lot to explain/instill confidence in IRV and the process… that doesn’t seem like a bad thing.I definitely agree on the 2nd paragraph though, the language people have been using is pretty ridiculous, Kurt led in the 1st and 2nd rounds he did not win in any way whatsoever.
I think it is crucial that ballots are tabulated according to class: That is, how many were Smith/Montroll/Kiss, how many were Montroll/Smith/Wright, etc. Tha tis much more important then gross numbers by ward. Only then will folks truly understand how IRV worked.Also, we could then find out if the following example of the nonmonotonicity paradox from Approval Voting by Steven Brams, PhD, NYU Dept of Politics occurred:Assume there are four classes of voters (total: 17 voters) ranking three candidates:1. 6: abc2. 5: cab3. 4: bca4. 2: bacBecause nobody has a majority of 9 votes on the 1st round, c, the candidate with the fewest first place votes (5), is eliminated. His 5 votes go to a, who wins with 11 (6 + 5) votes.Now assume the 2 class (4) voters change their preference ranking to the following:1. 6: abc2. 5: cab3. 4: bca4. 2: abcAgain, nobody has a majority of 9 votes on the 1st round. Because b gets the fewest first-place votes (4), he is eliminated, and his 4 votes go to c, who wins with 9 (5 + 4) votes.In summary, candidate (a) wins when he is ranked second by the class (4) voters, but he loses to (c) when he is ranked first by these voters.
“All this will do is cost city time and city money, but its certainly his prerogative to make the request.”It will do a lot more than that. It will make a lot of us feel better about the integrity of the result- something you cannot put a price on.
It’s nice to know that the recount won’t be a burden to the taxpayers but I still fail to see how it will help voters better understand the system. a recount is a recount without explanation or education. Isn’t there a more appropriate way to help the voters “understand how it is that the candidate who got the most first place votes in the first round and then the second round can then lose in the third round.”I’m not opposed to a recount I just fail to see how it will fulfill Mr Wright’s intended goal.