Alameda County admits tallying error in ranked choice voting
My understanding is that calculating ranked choice isn’t the easiest thing to do.<p>In Australia we have a national electoral commission (AEC) who runs the process, have perfected this over decades. So much so that they also run the elections for Registered Organisations (unions) [0].<p>The story is similar in our state elections where our electoral commissions are so we’ll regarded you can hire them to run elections for your company [1].<p>This is all to say, trust in the process and the fairness and accuracy of the outcome are paramount to democracy. And that we’ve been doing ranked choice for decades, it works—don’t write it off because there’s teething issues.<p>I can see merits to the US approach of having thousands of effectively independent elections being run (for a county for example), and the Australian approach where it’s run nationally by a capable independent commission that holds itself to a very high standard.<p>Stories like this one, where a county is trialling a different election process, are important to share and appreciate—not because they stuffed up, but because they fixed it. It’s one of those counterintuitive times where admitting failure&#x2F;fault should build trust.<p>Democracy is slow on purpose. Statistics get us results on election day, but they don’t change the outcome even when they’re wrong. To borrow some jargon, I think it’s more important democracy is observable than it is fast.<p>Ranked choice voting is, to my knowledge, the most representative process to elect. No vote is wasted. You don’t have to game theory your choice of the lesser of two evils, you rank who you prefer.<p>It captures your opinion, not the shadow groupthink choices.<p>This is all to say, keep going it is worth it.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aec.gov.au&#x2F;ieb&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aec.gov.au&#x2F;ieb&#x2F;</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vec.vic.gov.au&#x2F;voting&#x2F;types-of-elections&#x2F;other-elections" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vec.vic.gov.au&#x2F;voting&#x2F;types-of-elections&#x2F;other-e...</a>