Ranked choice voting continues to ruffle feathers across Bay Area
Election Day is just around the corner, and in the Bay Area that means the return of a controversial topic: ranked choice voting.
"Look, I have friends who hate ranked choice voting," explained Oakland City Council Candidate Len Raphael. "They're convinced it is the root of all evil in Oakland."
A longtime Oakland political observer, and now candidate, Raphael is talking about how the votes are tallied.
"You either love it or hate it," he added.
In Oakland this conversation, goes back to the city's very first ranked choice vote for mayor in 2010.
"Things look pretty good right now, but I don't understand ranked choice voting," Don Perata said in November of 2010. "So, who the hell knows?"
Peratta did get the most first place votes, a whopping 40% of them. So very few people expected his nine point lead to vanish - and that was just one race oddity.
"The second piece that was unusual about that race was that the ranked choice tallies were not released for three days after the first place tallies were released, and so the result was that for three days people said 'Well, Don Perata is gonna be the mayor.'" explained Corey Cook, professor and provost at Saint Mary's College. "And then they ran the algorithm and the ranked choice tally said 'actually, he's not.' it was very much perceived as 'something unusual had happened here.'"
Cook is a professor of political science and has studied every ranked choice vote in the Bay Area. He says the Jean Quan result was an outlier, and a cloud that hung over her for four years.
"Jean Quan, through no fault of her own, was viewed as not the legitimate winner of the mayoral election in Oakland," Cook said. "Even though objectively, she was the preferred choice. That dogged her, throughout her mayoralty, the idea that maybe she had one through some sort of fluke, or some sort of gaming, or some way that she understood a system that someone else didn't."
"There is a sense among a lot of people, and there still is, that only the first place votes are the only true measure of a winner," Raphael said of the sentiments.
Another ranked choice vote that is often cited is Chesa Boudin's victory in the San Francisco DA's race, even though Boudin did receive the most first place votes.
"In that particular race, the perception was he was only narrowly ahead, and therefore the moderates would effectively pool the votes of moderate voters and go ahead of him, because he was the most prefered candidate," Cook said of Boudin's win in 2019. "But the sense was, this prevented something we thought was gonna happen from happening."
So occasionally, ranked choice voting produces outcomes that frustrate some voters. But the system has been around for long enough that some critics have just decided to live with it.
"I've reconciled myself to it, because I know it ain't gonna change. And look, it had these laudable goals," Raphael said.
"If you think about it, prior to rank choice voting. 89% of Oakland elections were decided in a June primary," said Sean Dugar, founder of Collective of Organizers for Reformed Elections
Dugar is an advocate for ranked choice voting. He points to payoffs like larger, more diverse electorates in November. And as for people unhappy with election results.
"It's funny, right, because we've had great candidates, and we've had some not so great candidates elected under ranked choice voting," Dugar said of the outcomes. "We've had some great candidates and some not so great candidates elected not under ranked choice voting. Right?"
"In the vast majority of them, we would say this worked really well. All the races we're not talking about," Cook added. "Where the candidate actually increased their ballot share with each round."
So the odd outcomes are just that, outliers, and a function of our current politics, like it or not.
"That's been beaten out of me," Raphael laughed. "I got it. I know how it works."
