Flawed reporting on ranked choice voting

VTDigger ran an article on Gov Scott allowing Burlington to determine how we run our local elections, but it shows a lack of understanding of local history and does not interrogate misleading statements made by the governor.  

"One person, one vote"

The third paragraph states that the Governor "made clear that he opposed a statewide system of ranked choice voting because he believes 'one person should get one vote, and candidates who get the most votes should win elections.' "

Here Gov Scott is spreading the false narrative that ranked choice voting constitutes giving people multiple votes.  In March 2009, Burlington Ward 7 voters did not elect a winner in the City councilor race between Vincent Dober, Ellie Blais, and Eli Lesser-Goldsmith, and a runoff was held at a later date between Dober and Lesser-Goldsmith.  People who voted for Blais on March 3 were rightly allowed to participate in the runoff election.  Transferring your single vote to later stages of an instant runoff are no different. 

By blindly reprinting the Governor's words without remark, VTDigger helps to perpetuate the lie.

Prior history of ranked choice voting in Burlington 

The fourth paragraph states:

In his letter, the governor referred to an earlier era of ranked choice voting in Burlington. The city adopted the system for all city elections in 2005 but discarded it in 2010 after it led to the election of Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss — who had not won a plurality of votes and whose tenure ended in scandal.

There are two problems with this paragraph:

1. The city only used ranked choice for the mayoral elections of 2006 and 2009, and no other elections. 
2. The paragraph implies that Kiss only won re-election in 2009 because of ranked choice voting.  In fact, under the current rules, no one would have won the 2009 mayoral election in the first round because no one had 40% of the vote.  There would then have been a runoff between Kiss and Wright.  By looking at the ranked choice ballots, we can see that Kiss would have won this traditional runoff election. 

By getting basic facts about the history of ranked choice voting in Burlington wrong, VTDigger erodes trust in a system that works.

What does Scott think the "right" results were?

The fifth paragraph quotes Scott: “Ten years ago, Burlington voters rejected a similar instant runoff election system because it yielded flawed results”.

This is a rather vague statement that allows for multiple interpretations.  Republicans can point to the fact that Kurt Wright had the plurality of votes in the first round and (wrongly) claim he should have won.

Democrats can point to the fact that Andy Montroll was the Condorcet winner of the election.  Of course, it is only because we had ranked choice ballots that we knew that Andy Montroll "should have" won the election.  The solution to this is not to get rid of the ranked choice ballots, but to check whether there is a Condorcet winner before falling back to approval voting or instant runoff if there is no Condorcet winner.

By not interrogating this statement, VTDigger lets Gov Scott off the hook as he tries to please both Republicans and Democrats by eroding trust in a system that can be improved, but works better than the current one.