ballp.it

Snakes In The Ball Pit => Yay, I get to talk about me! => Topic started by: Lemon on October 06, 2013, 12:08:20 pm

Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on October 06, 2013, 12:08:20 pm
I just scanned my sample ballot for the November 5th election for Mayor of Minneapolis so you can see everybody who's running! Click for larger view.

(http://i.imgur.com/xAJU30kl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/xAJU30k)

A couple things to note here.

Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Goose Goose Honk At Me Now on October 06, 2013, 12:32:22 pm
There's a dude who's listed as "Bob 'Again' Carney Jr".

I want to know how someone gets a nickname like "Again".
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Emperor Jack Chick on October 06, 2013, 01:12:49 pm
There's a dude who's listed as "Bob 'Again' Carney Jr".

I want to know how someone gets a nickname like "Again".
Cuddlegoose, October 06, 2013, 12:32:22 pm

By writing a 150 page transit reform manifesto! Here, let me link the first paragraph for you:

"The core of this book (chapters three through seven) lays out Phase RIGHT NOW! of a Transit
Revolution that I am proposing We the People, (aided and abetted by a community-organizing for-profit
business that I am leading) should demand be launched immediately, for, by, and in the City of
Minneapolis. I am campaigning for Transit Revolution both as a candidate for Mayor of Minneapolis,
and as the aforesaid business person -- starting a business to promote and deliver Transit Revolution. "

I am confident that he will operate without any sort of corruption, despite declaring how he wants to create a massive conflict of interest as his thesis. On page 4 he goes into a rant about Ranked Choice Voting. Page 5 he allies with Capn Jack Sparrow to decry wallstreet banking.

Lemon, this is a treasure trove!
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Isfahan on October 06, 2013, 02:25:49 pm
Man, what is it about crazy people and running for public office? Connie Marshall tried running for mayor of Louisville.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: montrith on October 06, 2013, 09:10:34 pm
Personally, I would give my vote to Mr. Abdul M. Rahaman aka "The Rock".  I mean, who doesn't agree with this?

Ideas for job/population growth: My concerns are about the arrangements that the money has with the people, specifically that the control that the banks have over the availability and value of the money.

Failing that, I think I would have to vote for Mr. Troy Benjegerdes, as so far he's the only one of the candidates that fulfills my demand of accepting Bitcoin donations.

If all the candidates for Minneapolis Mayor used public Bitcoin addresses for all campaign contributions, we’d automatically have instant transparency and accountability for money that comes in.

He would also like you to know that he has a Prius, and an electric tractor, and a Prius and wind turbines and a Prius.



By the way, Captain Jack Sparrow does have a website. It's very aptly named.

http://occupirate.blogspot.com/




Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Alpha Starsquatch on October 06, 2013, 10:23:45 pm
Man, what is it about crazy people and running for public office? Connie Marshall tried running for mayor of Louisville.
Isfahan, October 06, 2013, 02:25:49 pm

My money's on raw, crazy passion. These people are blessed with a subtle sense of self importance and as Kumquat pointed out Basil Marceaux episode, "single-minded fixation".
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Moriarty on October 07, 2013, 12:52:55 am
By the way, Captain Jack Sparrow does have a website. It's very aptly named.

http://occupirate.blogspot.com/
montrith, October 06, 2013, 09:10:34 pm

A bit less apt now that he's been kicked out of Occupy Minneapolis (http://occupirate.blogspot.com/2013/08/driven-out-and-kicked-out-only-to-form.html).

I didn't even know it was possible to get kicked out of the Occupy movement.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on October 07, 2013, 07:43:04 pm
I didn't even know it was possible to get kicked out of the Occupy movement.
Moriarty, October 07, 2013, 12:52:55 am
If you look at it, Cpt. Sparrow is quite talented at getting kicked out groups you didn't think someone could get kicked out of. In this blog post (http://occupirate.blogspot.com/2013/08/draft-pirate-needs-more-than-on-plank.html) (written by his campaign manager Chucky), he brags that he's been kicked out of Occupy Minneapolis, the Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Peace & Justice Coalition, the Free Mumia Committee, and the Pirate Party. I'm not sure why you would brag about this, but I guess it's evidence of a conspiracy against him.

The rest of the blog post gets even more insane as it talks about communes (SPOILER: Communism will end terrorism), sociobiology, and this fucking bombshell...
As far as transportation is concerned Sparrow has advocated car pools and community-owned vehicles.  More recently he now supports fellow Mayoral candidate Bob “Again” Carney, Jr's proposal for what Carney calls a Transit Revolution [disclosure: Carney is also Sparrow’s publicist.] “It is too detailed for a humble pirate to fully explain here, but I have looked at Carney’s plan for this and it is brilliant,”  Sparrow said.
I feel like Carney and Sparrow are trying to be corrupt politicians, but don't really have the hang of how it works yet.

But this is my favorite sentence from this whole piece...
And finally we need  to apologize to Iran for conspiring to depose the duly elected president and installing the Shah in 1952 {See Mohammad Mosaddegh) and for the horrendous way the shaw treated his people which resulted in torture, rape and murder on a massive scale.
Now you got the year wrong and you only spelled Shah right half of the time and you confused "Prime Minister" with Shah, but ignoring all that, I really love the idea that a pirate would be elected as mayor of an American city, and then immediately write...
Dear Ayatollah Khomani
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
That Morsey guy? That's Iran right?
Mr. Rouhani,
I was recently elected mayor of the 47th most populous city in America because I look like the homeless version of a fictional pirate from a Disney movie that came out ten years ago. Seeing as how it's my first day in office, I wanted to get down to the important stuff first, SO I want to tell you that I'm super duper sorry about that time sixty years ago when the United States government staged a coup to remove Iran's democratically elected leader. I know a whole bunch of people were murdered in the following years and it fostered a religious extremism and contempt for American policy that continues to this day and it seems to me the ducks have come home to roost. Do you guys have ducks over there? The tandoori chicken has come home to roost, let's go with that.
Anyway, sorry about that. I'll tell you, I was none to happy to learn about that happening, and had I been elected as mayor of Minneapolis back when they were considering that plan, I would have vetoed it. I guarantee it. The point is, as Shaggy would say: "It wasn't me." I love that taboolie stuff, what's it made out of? Cous cous? Anyway, please no more terrorism.

Sincerely,
General Jack Sparrow, Esq.
Captain Jack Sparrow
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: count_actuala on October 07, 2013, 08:12:27 pm
By the way, Captain Jack Sparrow does have a website. It's very aptly named.

http://occupirate.blogspot.com/
montrith, October 06, 2013, 09:10:34 pm

A bit less apt now that he's been kicked out of Occupy Minneapolis (http://occupirate.blogspot.com/2013/08/driven-out-and-kicked-out-only-to-form.html).

I didn't even know it was possible to get kicked out of the Occupy movement.
Moriarty, October 07, 2013, 12:52:55 am
He's a pirate, man, they don't roll with organizations.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Ansemaru on October 09, 2013, 09:45:07 am
If she was dating me, her mother would probably have a apoplectic fit over some of my beliefs, since in addition to being a Communist, I believe that Laura Ingalls Wilder is God, age of consent laws should be abolished, societal taboos such as incest and cannibalism are foolish, cleanliness and health should be free choices rather than societal mandates, personal sovereignty is more important than happiness, and people shouldn’t have to be socially acceptable.

Can we talk about how John Charles Wilson wants to do away with the taboos on incest and cannibalism in addition to abolishing the age of consent? Can we?

Also my god, I still have fits of laughter at "Laura Ingalls Wilder is God". Even now. It's like a joke that will continue to be hilarious until the heat death of the universe.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: chai tea latte on October 09, 2013, 05:27:33 pm
I just wanted to make sure nobody missed the Jeff Wagner campaign video, as it's easily my favourite thing about this so far.

Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on October 18, 2013, 10:22:17 am
So I know what you're thinking, you watched that Jeff Wagner campaign ad and you were like "That's fine, but I'm disappointed that he was wearing clothes. Could I see a campaign ad where he's naked? Also what is his stance on getting laid?"

Jeff Wagner appreciates your concerns.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: fluffy on October 26, 2013, 11:22:20 pm
Seattle's politics are kind of crazy too. Just like in the rest of the country, it comes down to conservative vs. liberal. In Seattle's case, that means democrat vs. socialist.

Well, aside from the occasional crazy Libertarian (http://colonizespace.blogspot.com/).

(For what it's worth, I already voted by mail and ended up voting mostly for the socialist candidates, because the nominally "democrat" ones are still pretty damn conservative, and their party platforms don't really seem all that different from republicans anyway.)

Anyway I guess we have nothing on Minneapolis.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on November 05, 2013, 12:55:42 pm
Because of the instant runoff voting, getting results from today's election is going to take some time (they don't predict to be able to crown a winner until tomorrow night), and I plan to post in here as the results trickle in.

But in the meantime one candidate we haven't talked about at all yet is Stephanie Woodruff. A DFL candidate, Stephanie is a 48 year old Cargill executive and a lesbian.

"Hey Lemon?" I hear you saying "That's all well and good, but is there video of her naked and COMPLETELY WRAPPED UP IN CLING FILM?

Yup. And there's banging club music besides.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: chai tea latte on November 05, 2013, 01:34:05 pm
What the heck is in your water supply down there?
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: cyclopeantrash on November 05, 2013, 01:36:46 pm
What the heck is in your water supply down there?
kal-elk, November 05, 2013, 01:34:05 pm

Freedom and Liberty.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: fluffy on November 05, 2013, 05:02:34 pm
Maybe the non-GMO crowd is on to something when they decry fluoridated water.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Emperor Jack Chick on November 05, 2013, 10:03:38 pm
A DFL candidate, Stephanie is a 48 year old Cargill executive and a lesbian.
Lemon, November 05, 2013, 12:55:42 pm

And an engaging public speaker!
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on November 06, 2013, 09:25:02 am
So, it turns out that the election results were actually less climactic than everyone was hoping for. People were super excited talking about Instant Runoff "rounds" (how IR works is every time you can't pick a winner, you kill off a loser and the remaining candidates eat his votes), and how the system will go down. With 35 candidates there might be 20 rounds! We might not have a mayor until Christmas!

These predictions ignored the fact that about 30 of these candidates were crazypants, and there's a very limited number of people who arrive and depart their polling place going "Tee hee hee" the whole time, and so the election map ends up looking like every election map does...

(http://images.scribblelive.com/2013/11/6/b1d8eaf5-245d-41c0-92ec-0dc3f3096f10_500.jpg)

All that green there is Betsy Hodges. How Midwest is Betsy Hodges? This is her victory photo.
(http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/442*328/25%20gal%20elex110613.jpg)

Which is also great news for the future. There was some very serious discussion of trying to add additional barriers to getting on the Minneapolis ballot (as a reminder: It currently takes $20 and nothing else) which was troubling, but the results here were clean enough that I don't think those talks will continue. The current process allows one upper middle class lobbyist to run against another upper middle class lobbyist while still being surrounded by a circus tent to keep the whole thing entertaining.

The race hasn't been called yet, for reason of pointless formality (a plurality of votes needs to be achieved before you can call a winner), but Hodges is beating her closest opponent 36% to 24% and he's already unofficially conceded the race twice.

But that's enough about the serious candidates, let's see how the lunatics did!


Anyway, here's the full results (http://apps.startribune.com/news/20131105-minneapolis-mayor-election-results/) if you want to see how your favorite did. I will now leave you to the rest of your internet life, where you will hear the name "DiBlasio" another six thousand times.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Runic on November 06, 2013, 05:31:31 pm
It might seem stupid to allow basically anyone to get on the ballot, but here in Georgia we take it to the other extreme with the most restrictive ballot requirements in the nation (http://www.macon.com/2012/03/01/1926351/georgia-set-to-keep-harsh-ballot.html). So I think you guys are on the right track. IRV is the future, I hope. I actually have a bunch of ideas on how to make voting in America work better, and if you guys don't mind me going on a bit I could write up a good post on 'em.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: chai tea latte on November 06, 2013, 06:06:51 pm
It might seem stupid to allow basically anyone to get on the ballot, but here in Georgia we take it to the other extreme with the most restrictive ballot requirements in the nation (http://www.macon.com/2012/03/01/1926351/georgia-set-to-keep-harsh-ballot.html). So I think you guys are on the right track. IRV is the future, I hope. I actually have a bunch of ideas on how to make voting in America work better, and if you guys don't mind me going on a bit I could write up a good post on 'em.
Runic, November 06, 2013, 05:31:31 pm

mixed member proportional is where it's really at.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Runic on November 06, 2013, 10:12:45 pm
Yeah, but you'd have to redo pretty much the entire American electoral system to make that happen, and I don't see that happening any time soon. Frankly, just about anything is better than First Past the Post.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: chai tea latte on November 06, 2013, 10:30:00 pm
Yeah, but you'd have to redo pretty much the entire American electoral system to make that happen, and I don't see that happening any time soon. Frankly, just about anything is better than First Past the Post.
Runic, November 06, 2013, 10:12:45 pm

Well, yeah, for sure.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: 🍆 on November 09, 2013, 01:33:24 am
Since this is a Minnesota-related thread, I feel it's as good a place as any to mention the Pioneer Press sports page the other day had a gigantic headline that just said "F+" (referring to the current Vikings season). I would have snapped a picture but I was sleep deprived and exhausted so I just stared at it and giggled stupidly.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on November 05, 2014, 11:23:31 am
Terrible news, the Filing Fee ballot initiative (http://election.startribune.com/results/summary/metro-city-questions) (scroll down to Minneapolis City Question 1) passed by a healthy margin. This means you can't just bring $20 into a clerk's office and get yourself on the ballot, which means Minneapolis may never see an election that fun again. Plus side is that you can waive the filing fee if you have enough signatures, but that still means closing the ballot to people without any structure or motivation, but who have $20 and want to see "Party Pary Party Party Party Party Party Party" on everyone's ballot.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: nigeline on November 05, 2014, 07:01:48 pm
Terrible news, the Filing Fee ballot initiative (http://election.startribune.com/results/summary/metro-city-questions) (scroll down to Minneapolis City Question 1) passed by a healthy margin. This means you can't just bring $20 into a clerk's office and get yourself on the ballot, which means Minneapolis may never see an election that fun again. Plus side is that you can waive the filing fee if you have enough signatures, but that still means closing the ballot to people without any structure or motivation, but who have $20 and want to see "Party Pary Party Party Party Party Party Party" on everyone's ballot.
Lemon, November 05, 2014, 11:23:31 am
I wonder if they have to be Minneapolis residents or if we could get some stupid reddit dicks to sign off on Jack Chick's candidacy.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on November 06, 2017, 11:51:57 pm
DANCE, SKELETON THREAD!

Tomorrow morning I'll be getting up early to vote in the local election. This time around, there is only a shameful 16 candidates available for Instant Runoff voting. I have my three selected, but here's a few people I won't be voting for...

Ian Simpson (http://ianformayor.com/) is running from The Idea Party
Sounds exciting, doesn't it? I'm sure you'd like to hear some of these ideas, wouldn't you? Well, that's gonna be difficult, because Ian's site is just a paragraph of text that literally ends with "Ok bye!"  But it seems that Ian's candidacy is simply an awareness campaign for the ideas of the idea party, which has four ideas. Unfortunately, none of them are interesting enough to be F+ worthy, but I'd put it to Ian that we've already tried the plan of putting low income citizens in large concrete structures and that's how we created the Prison Industrial Complex.

Anyway, I'm already bored of Ian. Let's move on.


L.A. Nik (https://www.rockinthistown.com) (independent)
Now we're talking!!! Hey Nik, what are your views?

NSFW content. Click to show.

Interesting. Are you endorsed by any well-known candidates or organizations?

NSFW content. Click to show.

Hey Nik, spending in Minneapolis has been in the news as people wonder who
NSFW content. Click to show.
Okay, have a good day Nik!


Perennial candidate Captain Jack Sparrow (http://occupirate.blogspot.com/) is running again, but this time around he's got a platform! Sort of! Captain Jack Sparrow (who still has not seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is running from the Basic Income Guarantee party.  I could summarize his position on basic income, but I'd probably misinterpret his words so I'll just quote the man himself:
Another way to prevent violence, is to stop glorifying the purveyors of violence, those from the past, as well as those in the present. In Europe, the Vikings went on a rampage, where they would attack undefended villages, killing everyone, including the women and children.
Right, I... what now?
Even the clergy were killed in the name of Odin.  They were also in the Americas, initiating the genocidal activities towards the Native Americans, which was then continued after the arrival of Columbus, some 500 years later. The Vikings left a legacy of murder, rape and slavery wherever they went.
Why are you
I am calling for the elimination of  the word "Vikings" in the name of the Minnesota football team.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, gotcha. Okay, moving on.


What's the socialist candidate up to?
Amnesty for all immigrants, the end of the economic embargo against Cuba, expropriation of drug companies, prosecuting and jailing cops guilty of killing and abuse, a massive public works program to employ millions of workers at union-scale wages, and the organization and unionization of workers.

Uh huh. I look forward to you enacting all of this as Mayor.


Finally, John Charles Wilson isn't on the ballot this year (I suspect due to the filing fee mentioned earlier in this thread), but there's another candidate named David John Wilson (https://daveunicorn.com/). Let's learn more about him
(http://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/4999938b-5b2c-481d-9d86-587ddc99f38c/6bf6ca18-9215-47bb-9578-37668c82d048.gif)

Oh, fuck off.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on November 09, 2017, 01:15:33 pm
And now, a (sort of) brief explanation of why Instant Runoff Voting totally rules and should be adopted everywhere

The 2017 Minneapolis Mayoral Election had 17 candidates on the ballot. 9 of them were for the Democratic Party (it's called Democratic Farmer Laborer up here), 1 of those was the incumbent, a couple of those we'll get to in a minute. The remaining candidates were a hodge-podge of parties: the Socialist, the Libertarian and several made up parties, including "Rainbows, Butterflies, Unicorns" party which isn't at all infuriating. There was no Republican on the ballot, although L.A. Nik said he was running as a Republican but forgot to mention that when he put himself on the ballot because, and I'll let you in on a little secret here, L.A. Nik is pretty dumb.

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, the major issue for this specific election was about the Minneapolis Police shooting people. Specifically the separate incidents wherein Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, and Justine Diamond were shot dead by police. There's plenty that could be said about this, but I wanna stay on the topic of Minneapolis mayoral candidates, so...

All of these shootings happened under during the term of our current mayor Betsy Hodges, (a Democrat in the current model),there were questions raised in her handling of the police department. Eventually, Hodges "asked" the Minneapolis police chief to resign. But, nobody's really satisfied with the changes to the MPD currently. This includes the Blue Lives Matter crowd, as Betsy's most frequent response to police violence has been strong statements condemning specific actions, which they see as a sign of weakness.

So here's where we introduce Tom Hoch, a Downtown Rich PersonTM who is retiring as the CEO of the Hennepin Theater Trust and is now looking for something else to do. So what abouuuuuuutttt.... Mayor? Hoch runs as 1 of 9 DFL candidates in the race, has no trouble fundraising about $800k for the election, turning it into the most expensive mayoral election in the city's history. Tom Hoch, who is gay and running as a DFL candidate, definitely isn't a Republican, despite what his voting record, donation record, and the words that he says would lead you to believe. No, he's simply the "Law & Order" candidate. Because crime in Minneapolis has spiraled out of control. He's the man to fix it. Other candidates are (to coin a phrase for probably the first time) "soft on crime". Also Tom Hoch has absolutely no idea where all these suspiciously funded hitjobs are coming from. Dishonest Facebook ads? Misleading websites? Dunno what that is, he certainly never paid for them though.

On Betsy's other side is a candidate named Jacob Frey, a Democrat in the more traditional Midwestern sense (Teamsters, AFSCME, other employee unions) who makes Police Reform his central issue: A failure in police/community relations is the fault of the mayor, and Jacob's got himself nearly a million dollars to keep saying that.

Another DFL Candidate, Raymond Dehn (a Democrat more in the Bernie model) takes it a step further: Police shouldn't have guns. Take guns away from cops. The media asks him if he wants to retract that statement and he tells them to fuck themslves. He's a progressive who has some unkind words to say about our current mayor, but not as many as Nekima Levy-Pounds, former President of the Minneapolis NAACP who stated that Betsy Hodges is the problem with the city.

So there's the 5 major candidates, whom I've drawn in broad strokes, because I want to take us all to the actual result. You can either look at This table on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_mayoral_election,_2017#Results) or this animation (http://vote.minneapolismn.gov/results/2017/2017-mayor-tabulation) to get a picture of how the thing works, but...

IR Voting tries to declare a winner, and it will eliminate losers until it does so. Each time a loser is eliminated, IR goes through those ballots and gives those votes to 2nd (or 3rd) choices. And then repeats the process again and again until either...
Here's what Round 1 looks like...

Jacob Frey25%
Tom Hoch19.3%
Betsy Hodges18.1%
Raymond Dehn17.3%
Nekima Levy-Pounds15%
(everyone else)~5%
Christopher Robin Zimmerman (Libertarian)literally 1 vote

Okay okay, so this looks like a pretty much set race. And in round 1, when we take out everyone with <2% of the vote, it's still pretty much the same.

Jacob Frey25.6%
Tom Hoch20%
Betsy Hodges18.6%
Raymond Dehn17.8%
Nekima Levy-Pounds15.5%

At this point though, we have to remove someone substantial from the list, so the next round removes Nekima and distributes her votes.

Jacob Frey28.2%
Raymond Dehn23%
Betsy Hodges22.5%
Tom Hoch21.8%

This changes the race considerably. Dehn eats up more Nekima votes, and all rest get shuffled around to anyone who isn't Tom Hoch. Now Hoch is on the bottom, and needs to be eliminated.

Jacob Frey37.7%
Raymond Dehn26.2%
Betsy Hodges25.7%

Really, if there was one consistent truth in this whole election, it's that no matter what, Betsy Hodges deserves to be in 3rd place. Still without a winner yet, so let's see where her votes go...

Jacob Frey44.7%
Raymond Dehn33.5%

In this particular case, the system never got to it's goal of 50%+1, but it kept eliminating candidates until it found a winner. Jacob Frey is the new mayor-elect of Minneapolis, and got there in a really crowded field with lot of different takes on the same issue. With negative campaigning and dark money being a thing that happened in this election, it wasn't able to create the idea of a "Splitter" candidate. Nobody was bullied into going against their voting impulses because you have to vote against a bastard. You made 3 choices and the system picks from there. I'm not gonna say this completely fixes the idea of smear campaign politics, but it does a lot to help.

For the most dramatic example of this, I want to show you the results for Minneapolis, Ward 3 (http://vote.minneapolismn.gov/results/2017/2017-ward-03-tabulation). For this particular election, there were four candidates.


Early results had a lot of people calling the election for Ginger, who had a commanding lead in the first round.

Ginger Jentzen3,297
Steve Fletcher2,709
Tim Bildsoe2,552
Samantha Pre-Stinson1,007

However, when the Green candidate got removed...

Ginger Jentzen3,598 (+301)
Steve Fletcher3,103 (+394)
Tim Bildsoe2,734 (+182)

...those 2nd choice votes were distributed more-or-less equally, rather than the expectation I'd have, which is that the Socialist would be most of the 2nd choices for the Green Candidate. But this means that when you remove another candidate...

Steve Fletcher4,861 (+1,758)
Ginger Jentzen3,844 (+246)

The people who voted for the one democrat voted for the other democrat afterwards and Steve beats Ginger handily. I fully expected her to win, but that's not how people voted.

One of the most constructive parts of this process is reënforcing the idea that people don't fit neat little stereotypes. A lazy commentator would say "All Nekima votes will go for Dehn, since they're both involved in the Black Lives Matter movement" and be very proud with their rightness until you actually look at the results and realize that, while more votes went to Dehn than any other candidate, they were spread a lot more evenly than that, and more of those votes went to Betsy Hodges than to Frey and Hoch combined.

We like to build really simplistic strawmen to describe most voters but, when you give them honest-to-god choices, people are a lot more complex than that.

In addition to all that, you still get to have silly candidates running and the system works well enough to deal with them appropriately. They can run (which they should) and lose (which they should). If the silly candidates fuck up the system, the system itself is brittle.

In summary: Instant Runoff voting is totally the best, and all elections should be done this way.



(and for the record, Betsy Hodges was my third choice too)
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Emperor Jack Chick on November 09, 2017, 01:51:15 pm
betsy hodges is everyone's third choice.
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on December 14, 2017, 08:42:27 am
Tangentally related to this thread:

L.A. Nik just opened a bar. It's called World Famous SuperStar Bar. (http://www.citypages.com/music/la-nik-just-opened-a-bar-its-called-world-famous-superstar-bar/463931393)

(http://stmedia.stimg.co/ctyp-nikniknik.jpg?w=800)
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Achilles' Heelies on December 14, 2017, 09:53:15 am
Tangentally related to this thread:

L.A. Nik just opened a bar. It's called World Famous SuperStar Bar. (http://www.citypages.com/music/la-nik-just-opened-a-bar-its-called-world-famous-superstar-bar/463931393)

(http://stmedia.stimg.co/ctyp-nikniknik.jpg?w=800)
Lemon, December 14, 2017, 08:42:27 am
Hell yeah, next year F Plus Live can be World Famous!
Title: Wanna see who's running for mayor?
Post by: Lemon on June 22, 2018, 10:31:13 am
We've talked a lot in this thread about people who won't be mayor of Minneapolis.

Now here's a guy who won't be a Senator