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

Sun Nov 13 06:06:46 PST 2011

Exhausted doesn't mean they were excluded; it means that they had no preference for any of the remaining candidates in the sort.  By not ranking the remaining choices, they threw a 'none of the above,' for all intents and purposes. Indifference can be interpreted many ways, and we can't know the explanation for the indifference.

What's fun about this is, on average, about 30% of voters don't make it back for a conventional runoff. They too are indifferent, but get the chance to vote with their feet.

Ronald Keith Gaddie
Professor of Political Science
Editor, Social Science Quarterly
The University of Oklahoma
455 West Lindsey Street, Room 222
Norman, OK  73019-2001
Phone 405-325-4989
Fax 405-325-0718
E-mail: rkgaddie at ou.edu
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/G/Ronald.K.Gaddie-1
http://socialsciencequarterly.org
________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of David A. Holtzman [David at HoltzmanLaw.com]
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2011 11:49 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff

As I’ve written here before, if you really want an RCV/instant runoff jurisdiction go back to having elections with more than one (1) election day, there is no good reason to narrow the final field to two (2) candidates.  With the certified equipment that allows choosing and ranking up to three (3), voters can fully express their ordered preferences among up to four (4).

I think some people, especially news people, just miss the blood sport - I mean “competition” - of head-to-head contests.

  - dah

On 11/11/2011 2:32 PM, Larry Levine wrote:

Yep. That would work. Until it didn't. What's wrong with a runoff between
the two top finishers. Let them discuss and debate the issues and let those
voters who wish to participate pick the one for whom they want to vote. Oh,
yeah, that's not reform.
Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Dan
Johnson
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 9:51 AM
To: Douglas Johnson
Cc: law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff

That would suggest the proper response is to drop the limit of three
rankings from the SF ballot. Then the number of exhausted ballots would
fall.

And then again, some voters really didn't have any preference between the
two of them and prefer to exhaust their ballot.

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com><mailto:djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
wrote:

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<mailto:douglas.johnson at cmc.edu>

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto: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<mailto:law-election at UCI.EDU>
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/11/11

"San Francisco Voters Effectively Used Rank Choice Voting"

Posted on November 11, 2011 9:33 am by Rick Hasen

FairVote has issued this press release.

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

--
Dan Johnson

Attorney at Law
111 West Washington, Suite 1920
Chicago, Illinois 60602

312.867.5377 (office)
312.933.4890 (mobile)
312.794.7064 (fax)
_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

--
David A. Holtzman, M.P.H., J.D.
david at holtzmanlaw.com<mailto:david at holtzmanlaw.com>

Notice: This email (including any files transmitted with it) may be confidential, for use only by intended recipients.  If you are not an intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this email to an intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing or copying of this email is strictly prohibited.  If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender and discard all copies.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20111113/cf074785/attachment.html>