[EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff
Gaddie, Ronald K.
rkgaddie at ou.edu
Sun Nov 13 10:15:04 PST 2011
The best indicators of continued voter mobilization in runoffs are:
1. Up-ticket major race
2. Increased spending between the primary and the runoff for the particular contest.
Charles S. Bullock III, Ronald Keith Gaddie, &Anders Ferrington. 2002. System Structure, Campaign Stimuli, and Voter Falloff in Runoff Primaries. Journal of Politics, 64 (Nov.): 1210–1224, November 2002.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2508.00170/abstract
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: Larry Levine [larrylevine at earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 12:04 PM
To: richardwinger at yahoo.com; Gaddie, Ronald K.; 'David A. Holtzman'; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff
Yep. And turnout usually is driving by what’s at the top of the ballot. When L.A. has a mayoral election that is decided in the March Primary the turnout for the May runoffs will drop, even if there is a citywide contest remaining for city attorney or city controller. The same is not always true of city council races. Often the turnout for a city council runoff will be higher than the Primary turnout absent the influence of a mayoral election. I would suggest there are two things at work in the San Francisco situation. One would be the presence, or absence of a presence of a citywide mayoral contest in the runoff. Two would be the fact that the runoff is in December, a horrible time to get voters to focus. All this adds up to a conclusion that there are factors at work in determining turnout that will not be cured by IRV or ranked choice. I look at each of those as a gimmick that would be change without substance.
Larry
From: Richard Winger [mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 9:46 AM
To: Ronald K.''Gaddie; 'David A. Holtzman'; law-election at uci.edu; Larry Levine
Subject: Re: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff
In all states, always, partisan primaries always have lower turnouts than general elections for important office like President, Congress, and Governor.
But most of the discussion on this thread has concerned municipal elections, especially San Francisco. San Francisco virtually always had a higher turnout in the first round in November, than in the second round in December.
I think that when Los Angeles has its first round for city office in April, and then a run-off for the offices for which no one got 50% in the first round in June, the April elections generally have a higher turnout than the June one. This generalization is certainly more true in the elections in the odd year before the presidential election, when city council is up but Mayor isn't up.
If a municipality has its first round on the same ballot as a statewide partisan primary, and its second round on the same ballot as a statewide general election, obviously the turnout in the election in November will be higher. The city turnout is a result of what is going on with the statewide state election. I think San Jose follows that pattern; at least it did in the past.
So, it all depends on the circumstances.
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
--- On Sun, 11/13/11, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net<mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net>> wrote:
From: Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net<mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net>>
Subject: Re: [EL] SF excludes 28% of participating voters from runoff
To: "'Gaddie, Ronald K.'" <rkgaddie at ou.edu<mailto:rkgaddie at ou.edu>>, "'David A. Holtzman'" <David at HoltzmanLaw.com<mailto:David at HoltzmanLaw.com>>, law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 13, 2011, 9:06 AM
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> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu]<mailto:[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<mailto: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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/G/Ronald.K.Gaddie-1
http://socialsciencequarterly.org
________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<UrlBlockedError.aspx> [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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<UrlBlockedError.aspx>] On Behalf Of Dan
Johnson
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 9:51 AM
To: Douglas Johnson
Cc: law-election at uci.edu<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
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><UrlBlockedError.aspx>
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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<UrlBlockedError.aspx>] On Behalf Of
Rick Hasen
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2011 8:52 AM
To: law-election at UCI.EDU<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
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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