Sam Hemingway has a brand-new analysis of the results of Burlington's mayoral election on the front page today, and I think it's a mixed bag. Still, in light of the continuing discussion of what happened, almost anything that keeps people focussing on the data is probably worthwhile.
Not that there aren't some howlers in the article. For instance, “The fact that Montroll came in third is what cost him the election,” Gierzynski said.
I think it's very likely true that getting fewer votes than the winning candidate proved fatal to Montroll's election. How could it be any other way?
In addition, Hemingway seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about bullet voting as though it is some kind of distortion of the system, when in fact it is simply a way to vote your choices. If your preference is choice A, and no other candidate is acceptable to you, you will vote for A and leave the rest of your ballot blank. You will get what you wan: choice A gets your vote, and if A doesn't win none of the other candates gets any help from you.
We also get a relatively context-free comment from Garrison Nelson, an IRV opponent:
“The fact is, 71 percent of the voters voted against Kiss.”
Maybe they just ran out of enough space for the quote where Nelson said, “The fact is that 67 percent of the voters voted against Wright,” or maybe I just missed it.
As skeptical as I am (maybe that's a polite way of saying I think te pending recount is a waste of time), I hope the recount produces some useful information. I don't really expect that tobe the case, but I hope so.
Meanwhile, there's still an active conversation of IRV also going on over at Blurt.