[EL] RCV in San Francisco

[Rob Richie]

Vlad,

I find your "broken record" repetition on this  topic overly selective.
I'll make three points that include a correction and what I trust are
several useful numbers

*  You suggested last week that FairVote has given up on the goal of
representative outcomes -- that is, fair representation of both those in
the majority and the minority. That's not true. We just accept the
realities of imperfection. You set up ranked choice voting in contrast to a
theoretical model of majoritarian perfection that our current systems don't
remotely achieve.  Note, however, one could achieve your goal if we
followed Australia's model of mandating voting and mandating rankings.
Every RCV winner in Australia's House elections must earn a majority of
votes from registered voters who didn't want to risk being fined and who
cast a valid ballot.

* But we don't mandate voting in the USA and that's not FairVote's fight.
Americans don't include the huge majorities of eligible and registered
voters who don't vote in our primaries  (and most of our other elections)
in the "denominator" when we report percentages for winners. We don't
report undervotes when reporting winning majorities. If we did, we'd have
lots of low single digit "winners." And to be clear, the primary runoff
elections that you seem to give a free pass make it WORSE on average, not
better. We're now just over halfway through the primary season, and there
have been 23 primary runoff elections. Notably

-- The median runoff primary winner earned LESS than their vote total in
the first round. This obviously can never happen with ranked choice voting

--- The 23 winners all earned Vlad-defined "majorities" in the runoff, but
all but nine of them earned less than a third of the first round primary
vote. Only three surpassed the 46.2% earned by London Breed in San
Francisco despite the ballot that that limits rankings to three. (Vlad is
using the wrong denominator in San Francisco, as he counts first round
undervotes that no one uses when determining majorities in elections that
might go to runoffs.)

-- Of those three relatively strong runoff showings, only two had
majorities of the 1st round: one got 50.6% of the 1st round and the other
55.4%

-- In addition the runoff candidates might not be the most representative
candidates. The top two finishers in runoffs can include candidates who get
to the runoff only due to split votes. We've in fact had important runoffs
recently under "Top Two primary" rules where no candidates from the party
with the most primary votes made the runoff - that happened in 2016 in the
Washington State treasurer race (affecting Democrats) and a Georgia state
senate special election (affecting Republicans.) RCV is far more reliable
to have the strongest two candidates make the final round -- not with 100%
perfection, but clearly an improvement over runoffs without an RCV ballot.

--- Of course, most of our primaries this year have been held with
plurality rules. 10 winners of US House and US Senate primaries earned less
than 30%, and another 16 won less than 40%. Two (WV-3 and PA-13) Republican
primaries were won with less than 24% in heavily GOP district that Trump
won by more than 50%. Interesting to think about from a view of "majority
rule."

* So let's look at RCV, which absolutely outperforms plurality and runoff
elections -- it's not even close. Maine used RCV for the 1st time, with
very limited state-financed voter education.  Democrats had more valid
votes for governor in a primary than ever before in state history. Two
primaries requiring instant runoffs - the governor's race and the 2nd
congressional district. The impact of RCV were:

- Governor:  Janet Mills went 33.09% in the first round to 50.2% of the
first round vote total (and 54.1% of active votes in final round).

- CD-2: Jared Golden went 46.4% of the first round from an instant runoff
found of 54.3% of the first round vote total - that is, a higher winning
percentage than all but one of the 23 congressional primary runoff winners
this year using the same measure.

- But that's not all. These candidates were also seeking support from
backers of their final round opponent in a very real, meaningful way that
they knew might help them win in the campaign. London Breed was ranked 2nd
or 3rd by nearly half of her final round opponent's backers, giving her a
top three ranking from 63% of San Francisco voters In the governor's race
in Maine, Janet Mills was the top 2nd choice of backers of her final round
opponent Adam Cote, and 47% of his supporters ranked her 2nd or 3rd. In
other words, if you add the votes she had in the final round with Cote
votes ranking here highly she had the active backing of well over 70% of
Democrats. That's an impressive improvement from having only 33% of 1st
choices , and a nice reflection of the value of  Mills "seeking consensus"
in her RCV campaign.

So Vlad, please excuse me if I don't see your argument as a reason not to
improve our elections with ranked choice voting

Thanks for reading,
Rob









On Friday, June 29, 2018, Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> [image: 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
>
>
>
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