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

Sun Nov 13 09:06:23 PST 2011

What is your source on the 30% number? In my experience the November runoff
elections in California always have a significantly higher turnout than the
June (or March) primary. Same is true in L.A. mayoral races and frequently
in city council races - the runoff generates a higher turnout than the
primary. Apparently, there are numbers of voters who look at the primary as
not being the real election. They wait until the field is narrowed so they
can vote in the main event. 

Larry

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Gaddie,
Ronald K.
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 6:07 AM
To: David A. Holtzman; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff

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] On Behalf Of Dan
Johnson
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 9:51 AM
To: Douglas Johnson
Cc: 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
<mailto:djohnson at ndcresearch.com> <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

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

"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.

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