[Noisebridge-discuss] Noisebridge Hackers Voter Guide?

Fri Nov 4 21:58:01 UTC 2011

On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:
>Totally opening a can of worms here all over the list.
>
>https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/San_Francisco_2011_November_Elections<https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/San_Francisco_2011_November_Elections>
>
>I'm tossing in this video for Paul Miyamoto.

I was just wondering the same thing, when my housemate sent me this guide
to voting by chicken john, attached here:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chicken: <chickenjohn at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 8:51 PM
Subject: How to vote for a mayor with Ranked Choice Voting
To: "Chicken: Subscriber" <jonathanselin at gmail.com>

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is
located at the end of this message.)
__

Before we go into the thinking of all this, since I know so many of you
skim, I’m gonna put my mayor picks up front here:

#1 Jeff Adachi
#2 Dennis Herrarra
#3 John Avalos

Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff

If you think it’s fun watching from the sidelines as the GOP scrapes the
bottom of the barrel looking for someone who is not a nutjob like Ron Paul,
not a drunk like Rick Perry, not a sexual assaulter like Herman Cain, not a
disaster like Michelle Bachmann… the list goes on… who’s gonna recruit
Lyndon LaRouche? As we watch in horror the freakshow parade across our
screens as the Republican party has its adolescence and we get some good
show, we got kinda the same thing going on here in SF. Watching the
Republicans is kinda like watching animals in a zoo. We will select a mayor
next Tuesday, and there are 16 candidates. And it’s a sideshow/shitshow.

First of all let me say that Ed Lee is a liar. He is a regent mayor ONLY
because he promised he would not run, so that there would be on ‘open seat’
for this election. Ed is the bad guy in this drama. He is the rumpled
overlord who is the wrong guy for the job. He’s a nothing. A guy that has
no ideas and just keeps everything 98.6. He is not a good representation of
SF, our values, our people or our tolerance. He’s a dud.

But he’s probably gonna win. He probably already has, actually. Absentee
ballots and all… And that’s really really sad. The reason he is likely
going to win is because there are so many candidates. It’s a matter of the
‘aggregate’. Let’s say 250,000 people vote. There are 16 candidates. You
have to get 50% of the vote (plus one vote) to win.

How people will vote in the #1 position:

Let’s say Ed Lee gets 30% of the vote.
Dennis Herrera gets 25%.
Leland Yee gets 20%.
John Avalos gets 15%.
Jeff Adachi gets 9%.
The other 11 candidates get the other 1%.

Let’s just say, to make the point. This isn’t how it will really go, but
let’s just say it goes like this, so we can see how Ranked Choice Voting
really works…

The first round of voting counts ONLY  your #1 choice. They count up all
the ballots’ #1 choices. If a candidate gets 50% of the vote (plus one
vote) that candidate wins. We are supposing that the ‘aggregate’ is 250,000
voters. So if someone got 125,001 votes, they would win.

But that is not going to happen. What is going to happen is more like
above. With the evil rumpled overloard Ed Lee the lying liar getting 30%,
or 75,000 votes. So an “instant runoff” is triggered. And we look to
people’s #2 and #3 choices to determine a winner, in a complicated way that
I will explain below.

Ranked Choice Voting is also called Instant Runoff voting.

Runoff elections have occurred often in SF. In 1999 Willie Brown and Tom
Ammiano had a run off election. 4 years later Gruesome Newsom and Matt
Gonzalez had a run off. Run off elections costs millons and millions of
dollars. Instant runoff voting costs no more then a regular election. You
may remember that Jean Quan, the Mayor of Oakland who can’t seem to control
her brutal police force was elected through Ranked Choice Voting even
though she did not have more first or second place votes than her opponent
Don Perata. Too bad that all the money Oakland saved on Ranked Choice
Voting will go to her recall election… but I digress…

In looking at the #2 votes, it get a little complicated. So please just
stay with me here… how we start counting #2 votes is by eliminating a
candidate. And counting their #2 votes. So lets say there is a nudist
running or something. He’s gonna get like 20 votes. He gets the least
amount of votes of any candidate for mayor. So we get rid of him, and we
look to his 20 votes and see what we have. Ahhhh… ten of the people who
voted for the nudist decided not to take part in Ranked Choice Voting, and
only voted for him in the #1 position. The ten other people all voted for
John Avalos for #2. The aggregate just went down to 249,990 voters. The #2
votes for John Avalos just got added to his tally of #1 votes. But we still
don’t have a winner.

So we eliminate the next candidate. And place that persons’ #2 votes. If
your #2 vote gets eliminated, we count your #3. And we keep doing this,
eliminating candidates and re-allocating their votes until one of the
candidates gets to 50% of the vote (yes, plus one little vote). All the
while, the aggregate shrinks, and that 30%  the lying scumdog Ed Lee has
becomes 31%. 32%. 35%. 43%... until darkness falls… Ed will get very few if
any #2 or #3 votes. He will win by the aggregate shrinking because of so
many candidates.

Side note: if you don't vote for three different candidates and your
candidate gets eliminated, or if your #2 and #3 candidates are eliminated
before your #1 candidate, you will have what's called an Exhausted Ballot,
meaning your ballot didn't count in the runoff portion of the election.
Remember in District 10 last year when Malia Cohen won after 20 rounds? The
real winner was Exhausted Ballots, with 9503 votes. Malia got 3879.

So back to next Tuesday – there are only really 5 candidates in this
election:
Ed Lee
Dennis Herrera
Jeff Adachi
John Avalos
Leland Yee

There is a slight chance that Ed could lose. He could lose to Dennis. It’s
somehow possible. It’s crazy, but it’s possible. I want it to be possible
that John could win. But I’m going to give you my strategy, and you are
welcome to embrace it, spit on it, yell at me, or write Chicken John as a
write in candidate. For better or worse, here it is:

Jeff Adachi is the smartest guy in the room. Every time I see him, he’s the
smartest guy in the room. The mayor of San Francisco should not be a
rumpled idiot. We should have the smartest guy in the room leading us. I
support Jeff Adachi for my #1 vote.

For my #2 vote, I vote for Dennis Herrera. Dennis runs a staff of 300
people. He’s a good guy. He’s not a jerk. He’s not an egomaniac. He’s fun.
Funny. Full of life. He’s regal. Stately. I like him. I actually think that
Dennis is going to get more votes then Jeff. But I don’t care, because if
Jeff gets eliminated before Dennis, then it’s the same as voting for Dennis
in the #1 slot.  Same for John.  I like John. I’ve done some things for his
campaign. He’d be a good mayor. If he gets more votes than Dennis, Dennis
will get eliminated. And my #3 vote for John will become a #1 vote for John
(if both Jeff and Dennis get elimated).

If you vote for John Avalos and no one else, it’s like not voting if he
gets eliminated. You MUST put Dennis on your ballot somewhere if you want
to block Ed Lee. He has a chance, though a small one. This is my advice to
you.

I personally do not like nor trust Leland Yee. He seems to be the sleazy
politician type who says whatever the crowd in front of him wants to hear.
He ran for his senate seat unopposed and went crazy with billboards and
fundraising and flyers and mailers… he was running for mayor while he was
running unopposed for Senate. That was kinda icky. I mean, he’s been in
perpetual candidate mode, who’s doing his job?

David Chui is going to be the big loser in this campaign. It’s going to be
so embarrassing for him to get less votes then Phil Ting, our assessor.
I’ve got $20 that says ole Phil smokes David Chui…

Terry Baum the Green party candidate wins with the best slogan: “Let’s make
San Francisco the town that everyone else thinks we are!”

Finally, Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff. If for no other reason, he will be the
gentlest Sheriff in history. I don’t know why he wants that job, but if he
wants it he can have it. The other people running are all cops. Don’t
encourage them. Cops beat people up with sticks and shoot them in the face
with rubber bullets. Fuckers. No cops for Sheriff. Ross for Sheriff. He’s
not a cop.

You can vote any day at City Hall, you don’t have to only vote on Tuesday.

Go get ‘em…

Chicken

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