Well... I'll take the bait
First, we don't have runoffs in most of our elections. So your point is a non sequiter for most of voting. We have key primaries won by plurality all the time -- "Meet Ben Quayle, the new Congressman from Arizona" (winner with some 22% in his primary in a safely Republican district in Arizona). And without runoffs you have the spoiler dynamic -- "Meet Paul LePage, winner of the governor's election in Maine" (with 38% over Elliot Cutler's 37%, and a Democrat with 20% whose backers overwhelmingly would have preferred Cutler as second choice).
Second, it's a misnomer to say that ranked choice voitng (RCV/IRV) elctions turn into lovefests. Quan played hardball too in Oakland, and she had to do well in first choices to win (earning second in first choices in a 10-candidate field is good). RCV doesn't mean the ned of negative campaigning. Rather, it makes it less determinative --- and undercuts the advantage big money edges can give you when it is determinative. What Quan ALSO did - -and :Perata did not do -- is work the community. She went to every debate and community meeting. She shook a lot of hands. She reached out to a range of associations, both old ones and new ones.
This was very much the same in at least two of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races too. Candidates who worked hard and reached out across a district were able to overcome being outspent and not getting traditionally detemrinative endorsements.
This brings us to Ed Jew, the poster child for lazy RCV haters in San Francisco. I'll admit it: not everyone who wins with RCV is going to be an angel - obviously. But here's the thing. First, Ed jew won the most first choice ranings -- so he wins by plurality voting. Second, Ed Jew was BY FAR the candidate of choice of Asian American voters in an Asian American majority district. He worked the shoe leather, got to know people, and the big media jsut completely missed the story. Is that his fault that the media did such a crappy job by being so out of touch with his district that they didn't realize how well he was doing? You can blame the electoral system, but I blame the medai that has to learn to work harder -- and smarter.
Third,, runoffs in these kinds of races can be quite erratic in who advances. Believe me, you'll discover that soon enough in California with Top Two. In San Francisco, for example, there's one RCV race where no candidate earned even 13% of first choices. The candidate who wins with RCV is an African American in a distirct historically represented by African Americans (the only such distict in San Francisco). But she's not in the top two in first choices, so she and all the other African American candidates would have been shut out of a traditional runof -- a colossal misfire. But again, get ready for that with Top Two (which is why I suggest going to top three or four and using RCV in the final round).
- Rob RIchie, FairVote
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Rob Richie
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