ME-02: Poliquin in denial

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It’s happening

https://twitter.com/cristinawmtw/status/1060830288639651845?s=21

Golden is likely going to win the 2nd round and if not the 2nd, almost surely the 3rd round given that both independents were left-leaning.  However, keep in mind that the final "round" of RCV could well be between Roberts and Kavanaugh given that RCV has never been ruled on in federal court and Poliquin hinted he would sue on OMOV grounds if he won the 1st round and later lost. 

A SCOTUS ruling on this could actually get quite weird, because Thomas believes there is no constitutional basis for OMOV whatsoever, so he could plausibly be the 5th vote to allow states to use RCV in a concurrence.  It's also very plausible Gorsuch rejects OMOV on originalist grounds.  Could also see one  or more of the liberals seeing this as a threat to the Warren Court decisions protecting urban voters in apportionment/redistricting and agreeing with Poliquin's OMOV appeal.  Something like Thomas and Gorsuch, concurring with Ginsburg, with Sotomayor and Breyer to uphold RCV in federal elections 5/4, with dissents by Roberts, joined by Alito and Kavanaugh, and by Kagan.  Alternatively, Gorsuch strongly upholds OMOV on originalist grounds or Breyer strategically joins Kagan and concurs with Roberts and RCV fails 5/4, or partisanship reigns and Roberts decides it for Poliquin or Roberts saves RCV for institutional "no, we aren't an arm of the Republican Party" reasons like he saved Obamacare.  5 of the 9 votes could be "shaky" here.  I'm only sure of Ginsburg and Sotomayor yes and Alito and Kavanaugh no.

I can't imagine any inherent federal constitutional issue with RCV.  The argument would almost certainly be over the process by which the reform was adopted (via citizen intiative as oposed to the state legislature).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/MESecOfState/status/1062459456318005249

There's around 40K votes left to count

Is this counting the first choice options, or figuring out the whole RCV thing?

Very good question.
Is the current recount just concerning the original, election night vote (to re-check and re-determine if someone or no one, reached the 50%+1 mark)?
Or is what is happening now the "RCV Round 1" accounting of votes?

I'm not sure anyone knows.  The ME SoS probably believes they are being transparent with all these "updates", but they seem totally unhelpful to me.

Even though Poliquin's legal arguments are totally worthless, IMO Maine has completely screwed this up in court of public opinion. 

Instant run-offs should be instant!  They should have published a complete accounting of all second and third place votes simultaneous to reporting the first place votes on election night.  They should not be reporting -any- first place votes without also reporting the run-off results. 

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why don't they just immediately publish all of the second and third choices regardless of whether they know if someone has 50% or not?   They don't need a "computer program" to do this, other than whatever computer is used to tally up the results of every single other race people vote on.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Ranked Choice is a fouking abomination. It needs to go

What's wrong with it? It gives power to third parties and allows people to state their preferences better.

I'm happy that Golden won, but RCV does not actually give power to third parties. It just appeases people who insist on voting for unelectable third parties. If, say, a left-wing third party actually managed to get more votes than the Democrat, it could result in Republicans winning.

The the scenario you describe, the most likely result would be the left-wing third party winning (unless the party was so extreme that most Democrats preferred the Republican, in which case it seems unlikely the third-party would beat the Democrat in the first place).  Which just proves that RCV does empower third parties.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Ranked Choice is a fouking abomination. It needs to go

What's wrong with it? It gives power to third parties and allows people to state their preferences better.

I'm happy that Golden won, but RCV does not actually give power to third parties. It just appeases people who insist on voting for unelectable third parties. If, say, a left-wing third party actually managed to get more votes than the Democrat, it could result in Republicans winning.

The the scenario you describe, the most likely result would be the left-wing third party winning (unless the party was so extreme that most Democrats preferred the Republican, in which case it seems unlikely the third-party would beat the Democrat in the first place).  Which just proves that RCV does empower third parties.

I think his point is this. Lets say there was an election with these first round results:

Democrat 400
Republican 300
Left Wing Third Party 420
Scattered 20

Under FPTP the left wing third party would win. But after the scattered votes and the Republican are eliminated, you could end up with a result like this:

Democrat 650
Left Wing Third Party 450

With the rest being exhausted.

Something like that kind of happened in a Minneapolis city council election last year. A Socialist Alternative candidate led on first prefs against two Democrats (Republicans aren't a serious party in Minneapolis politics), a progressive one and a more moderate "establishment" one. The moderate came in third and was eliminated, but most of his votes flowed to the other Democrat, thus allowing them to win.

Granted this assumes that most of the Republicans back the Democrat on lower prefs instead of backing the third party out of spite or just letting their votes exhaust. Its a different situation than that City Council election where the other candidates were both Democrats.

But in this scenario, the "left-wing third party" isn't really a third party because they are getting the most votes in the first place.  Maybe in an RCV system this is not unusual.  But under our current FPTP system, this almost never happens; much more likely the third-party, even if popular, gets 2% of the vote because people don't want to feel like they are wasting their vote.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

No need to make it stick now, because this guy's career is over.