[EL] RCV in San Francisco

[Kogan, Vladimir]

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but the highlighted section below is clearly incorrect:

“SF Elections are Working — and Getting Even Better”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99861>
Posted on June 28, 2018 3:53 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99861> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Oped<http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-elections-working-getting-even-better/> from By SF election commissioners Charlotte Hill<http://www.sfexaminer.com/author/charlotte-hill/>, Christopher Jerdonek<http://www.sfexaminer.com/author/christopher-jerdonek/> and Viva Mo<http://www.sfexaminer.com/author/viva-mogi/>gi:

The current RCV system also facilitated higher voter participation than the previous December runoff system, which San Francisco used until 2004. Under that system, the first election occurred in November, followed by a second race in December if no candidate won an initial majority. Voter turnout often plummeted in the December runoff, on average by 31 percent. In the 2001 runoff for city attorney, less than 17% of registered voters participated. In the 1995 mayoral election, the number of voters declined by nearly 10 percentage points from November to December.

Some have asked why San Francisco does not use the “plurality” voting method, in which the highest vote-getter wins. Plurality voting is used to elect many governors, senators, and the president. But if plurality had been used in our mayoral election, the winner would have been elected with less than 37% of the vote, with more than 60% of voters casting a ballot for another candidate. The goal of any runoff system is to ensure that the winner has a majority (50% + 1) of the vote and is the candidate preferred by the most voters. San Francisco’s “instant runoff” elections fulfill both goals, but without the expense—both for taxpayers and candidates—of a separate runoff election. San Francisco saves approximately $3.5 million by not holding a second citywide election.
Due to high rates of ballot exhaustion<http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/files/2014/12/ElectoralStudies-2fupfhd.pdf>, the winner often does not get “a majority (50%+1) of the vote and is the candidate preferred by the most voters.” The most recent mayoral election is Exhibit 1: London Breed won with 45.6 of the vote.

Vlad Kogan

[The Ohio State University]
Vladimir Kogan, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
510/415-4074 Mobile
614/292-9498 Office
614/292-1146 Fax
http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
kogan.18 at osu.edu<mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20180629/a16dd86c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.png
Type: image/png
Size: 3605 bytes
Desc: image004.png
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20180629/a16dd86c/attachment.png>