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IS ANYONE STILL
HAPPY WITH
RANKED CHOICE
VOTING?
BY GUEST AUTHOR

5 YEARS AGO

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POLITICS

Youve got to give them credit:

the San Francisco Department
of Elections is putting the best
face on a tough challenge.
Recognizing that San Franciscos
ranked choice election system is
still new to many voters, the
department has launched an
advertising campaign using
the universally-recognized
smiley face, to encourage voters
to mark all three of their choices
on the ranked-choice ballot.
While education efforts like the departments advertising
campaign, along with gamification efforts like this mock IRV
effort, help educate voters about the process of ranked choice

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voting, it is also important to think about the likely outcomes of a

system that can elect leaders with only a fraction of the first place
votes, without necessarily vetting their records and through a
process that rewards candidates for constructing alliances rather
than tackling problems.
As Reset readers all probably know, in San Francisco elections

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voters can rank their top three choices. And if no candidate

receives a majority of the votes, the second and third choice votes
are counted in rounds until one candidate achieves a majority.
Prior to the adoption of rank choice voting, the top two candidates

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faced each other in a run-off election if no candidate won an

outright majority in the primary election.
In one supervisorial race last year, the ranked choice vote counting

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went to 20 rounds, and the ultimate winner in the final round was
the candidate who started in third place after the first round (with
12% of the first place votes). There were similar if less dramatic
outcomes in other races with the candidates who came in second
or third in terms of first place votes ranking up and winning
elections.
The educational challenges surrounding ranked choice voting,
which the Department of Elections is working diligently to address,
include ballots that are not counted at all because voters rank more
than three candidates and their ballots are spoiled, along with not
rankingall three candidates, and thus not participating fully as the
ranked choice system goes into effect round after round until a
winner was chosen.

A Mayor Without a Mandate

I wrote a few weeks ago about how the ranked choice system is
leading us toward a mayor without a mandate. There are so many
candidates in the race for mayor that the winner could have less
than 25% of the first place votes. While second and third place
votes will eventually aggregate to an overall majority in the ranked
choice system, in all likelihood the next mayor will be in the position
of only being able to declare the first place support of about a
quarter of the San Francisco electorate.
This failure to gain a majority mandate is only one of the problems
with the ranked choice system and probably not the worst. The
more significant flaws in the system are the lack of full vetting of
candidates and how the candidates themselves change their
behavior tonavigate the system.

The Ed Jew Factor

A few years ago a candidate was elected supervisor in San
Francisco Supervisorial District 4 through the ranked choice
system. He served only briefly, at least as Supervisor. He went on
to serve prison time for soliciting a bribe and for voter fraud
because it was revealed after the election that he did not live in
San Francisco.
The voter fraud issue is exactly the kind of information that would
have been uncovered in a traditional run-off election. But in a
ranked choice system, where candidates themselves feel the need
build coalitions at all costs and in which the press has a limited time
to vet many candidates, important information like where a
candidate actually lives goes unexamined.

I Want To Be Your Number Three

The proponents of ranked choice voting make many strong
arguments and you can see many of them here.
One of their chief arguments is that the system gives more voices a

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chance to be heard and it is simply impossible to argue with their

logic. Whether it is a third party candidate or a progressive
underdog like now-Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland the system
absolutely gives more candidates a chance to be heard and for that
reason alone it could be worth preserving.
But proponents have also argued that the system is beneficial
because it saves money, promotes positive alliance-building and
reduces negative campaigning.
When it comes to saving money, the cost of an election seems small
in comparison to the citys nearly $7 billion dollar budget. Investing
a small amount in more democracy and more opportunities to vet
our candidates seems like an appropriate expenditure, particularly
in comparison to how much damage can be done by electing just
one (more) flawed politician.
Without doubt, most voters are sick of negative campaigning but
is negative campaigning really worse than the kind of insipid
pandering that can replace it? And while negative information and
campaigning can be corrosive is fully vetting our candidates, even
when that vetting finds negative information, really something to
avoid?
We are already seeing sad spectrum of candidates actually saying
they want to be our second and third choices, and then
accommodating themselves to be the least objectionable
alternative.
My former Supervisor who represented our district so ably for
eight years that he is an argument against term limits (another blog)
is now gaining attention for employing this strategy.
It might very well be a great political plan we can congratulate
him and his strategists for their insight into ranked choice voting.
And we cant blame them. In the sense they are merely running a
campaign the rank choice voting system is engineered to promote.
But it should remind us: how we design our political systems
shapes both who we elect and how they act once in office.

They Govern as They Campaign

There are many examples of our campaign systems shaping our
policy. Does anyone really think we would have a failed ethanol
subsidy if the presidential campaign calendar didnt start in Iowa?
Would we really still have such a dysfunctional Cuba policy
if Cuban Americans in Florida were not perceived to be swing
voters in the ultimate swing state?
The reality is our elected officials are shaped by their campaigns
and the campaign system they must navigate.
We dont know what will happen in November and the reality is
that right now the incumbency of the Mayor is probably doing

more to shape the race than ranked choice voting. But we know
enough about ranked choice voting to start understanding how it is
shaping our candidates in the long term.
If we like the idea of electing candidates who figure out how to be
the least objectionable to the most people then we probably
should love ranked choice voting. If we prefer candidates who are
not afraid to take strong stands on a consistent basis perhaps we
should take a look back at the run-off system we just jettisoned.

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