[EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff

[Douglas Johnson]

A different view on whether the of ranked-choice voting in San Francisco was
"effective": 

 

According to the November 10 numbers from the Department of Elections, the
final round tally in the San Francisco Mayoral election was 79,147 votes for
Ed Lee, 51,788 for John Avalos, and 48,983 "exhausted" ballots. "Exhausted"
means the ballot did not contain a vote for either Lee or Avalos, thus the
voter was excluded from sharing his/her preference in the final runoff.

 

Percentage-wise, Ed Lee won the vote of 43.4% of voters participating in the
Mayoral election. John Avalos received the final vote of 28.4% of voters
participating in the election. And 28.2% of voters casting ballots in the
Mayoral primary were blocked from expressing their preference in the final
runoff (26.9% were exhausted and 1.3% were over/under votes).

 

In fact, less than half of those not voting for Lee or Avalos in the first
round listed either of them as their #2 or #3 choices. In the first round,
89,681 voters cast ballots for Lee and Avalos, while 90,431 voters preferred
other candidates as their first choice. As those other candidates were
eliminated, 41,254 additional votes were added to Lee and/or Avalos. But
48,983 ballots were "exhausted" and dropped from the counts.

 

By a 48,983 to 41,254 margin, San Francisco's ranked-choice runoff system
excluded the views of more participating voters than it added.

 

No system is perfect: without any runoff, Lee would have won 31% to 19%,
with 50% of the voters participating not casting a vote for either of the
top two. With a traditional runoff, the lower turnout that sometimes occurs
would also mean some of the primary voters would not cast ballots in the
runoff, though I would argue that is different because that would be by
their choice, not by the design of the election system (and note that in
some local CA elections, runoff turnout is higher than primary turnout). In
SF, it is the election system that dictates the exclusion of some voters
from the final decision whenever the counting goes more than three rounds.
[I should acknowledge what's surely going through Larry Levine's mind right
now: the election system in place influences campaign decisions, so this
paragraph's comparisons to alternative systems are imperfect because
candidates made decisions knowing they were in a RCV system.]

 

Amidst the cheerleading for ranked-choice voting, I believe it is important
to remember that the RCV system has substantial drawbacks too. I welcome the
discussion of whether the drawbacks of RCV are less than the drawbacks of
traditional no-runoff or later-runoff elections, but I would encourage all
debaters to acknowledge that RCV is also far from perfect.

 

- Doug

 

Douglas Johnson

Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

m 310-200-2058

o 909-621-8159

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

 

 

 

 

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick
Hasen
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 8:52 AM
To: law-election at UCI.EDU
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/11/11


 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=25303> "San Francisco Voters Effectively
Used Rank Choice Voting" 


Posted on  <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=25303> November 11, 2011 9:33 am
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>  

FairVote has issued this press release
<http://www.fairvote.org/san-francisco-voters-effectively-used-ranked-choice
-voting> .

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