Instant Runoff Elections

Minneapolis is having her first election using an instant runoff ballot today and St. Paul voters are deciding whether or not to start doing the same. One of the opponents to instant runoff ballots interviewed on MPR the other day used the argument that we shouldn't have this type of ballot because it may disenfranchise some voters.

His reasoning:  Some voters might not understand how to use the ballot and only mark one candidate. If the election is close and it goes to secondary or tertiary votes, if that voter's choice wasn't one of the top two candidates, "his vote won't count."  I fail to understand how this is a different result than voting for anyone other than the winning candidate in a winner take all election, but it does lead to an interesting couple questions.

• What is the dominant strategy for voting in an instant runoff election when you think there won't be a candidate that captures more than 50% of the vote on the first round? What about if you think there will be one who gets a majority? (I'm sure there is literature on this. Or it might be a trivial question.)
  
• Will people actually follow that strategy? 
• What percentage of people will misunderstand the ballot and not vote for secondary and tertiary choices? What about failing to successfully vote at all? How does that compare to other ballot types?

There is probably literature on the second and third points, but I think it would be pretty interesting to run an experiment on an election day using actual voters to try and determine those two.

On the lighter side of elections, my secondary vote for Minneapolis mayor was for the candidate of the "is Awesome" party. (Hope that dude gets to take home an unmarked ballot or 10.) It made me kind of nostalgic for WoW, there's always a guild name like that.

My tertiary vote was for James R. Everett of the Social Entrepreneurship party. Entrepreneurship, that's businesslike, right? Apparently he's part of the SubZero Collective and he has a campaign flyer online. He has some interesting ideas, his education section specifically:

I kind of like the idea of schools teaching trade skills, kind of don't. There are plenty of chances to abuse it (I remember the kids taking trade skill classes when I was in high school basically spent half days at school then left.) But it could be made into a good thing.  Also, I hadn't thought of alumni events, but yeah, I could see those as good chances to provide examples and role models for students on the margin. It's interesting enough to get me to offer my spelling/grammar checking skills for their next political flyer.

Race in Brazil

I just heard a BBC story that blacks now outnumber whites in Brazil. The interesting part? Race is self defined in Brazil, from three choices: White, Black, Brown. It's purely color based, though there is the assumption that coloring is closely correlated with ethnicity. They then had a scientist on the program explaining how a genetic study he did runs against popular wisdom, many people who considered themselves Black had significant European genetic heritage, some even majority European.

I wonder what racism is like in Brazil, is it similar to what we see in North America or do they focus on different things?

This reminded me of a discussion my book club had of The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. A couple people had experience with Caribbean views on color. The view is definitely color based, indeed Black and White are dependent on what you look like at the moment. One girl (a northern midwest probably-burns-not-tans white girl) spent time as an exchange student on one of the Caribbean islands. She went for a weekend trip to the beach and her host family warned her "Stay out of the sun, if you come back Black, we won't let you in the house." She didn't have the heart to explain to them that, in the US, her host family wouldn't be considered white. Despite this highly fluid concept of color, there is significant racism against "Blacks."

I wonder what the face of racism is in Brazil.