District 5: How Might Ranked Choice Voting Affect the Supervisor's Race?

Date, Year

Let’Äôs look at a real-world scenario from the upcoming November 2004 supervisorial races. Let’Äôs imagine the District 5 race with 10 candidates, four of them strong progressive candidates. What this example shows is the importance of voters using all three of their rankings, with the first choice being their favorite candidate and the second and third rankings being their runoff choices in case their favorite candidate doesn’Äôt win. Use of all the rankings is what facilitates coalition-building.

The most immediate difference between RCV and the previous December runoff is that with the old system progressive candidates likely would have had to battle it out among themselves to see which one made it to the runoff.  If they split the progressive vote too badly, it’Äôs possible that none of them would have made it to the runoff. And after attacking each other, they may have had difficulty uniting the progressive vote for the December runoff.

But with RCV, the incentives for winning are different. The way one of the progressive candidates will most likely win in District 5 is by using the rankings to build coalitions among all the progressive candidates.  These coalitions can be conscious and public, or tacit and subtle. A public coalition will have candidates saying to their supporters:  ’ÄúLook, I think I’Äôm the best candidate but in case I don’Äôt win, Robert or Ross or Dan also is a great candidate.’Äù  The coalition-building might extend to organizations, or even the candidates themselves, publicizing a ranking of their preferred candidates, or perhaps just a slate of three candidates with no recommended ranking, allowing voters to decide the actual ranking for themselves.  Or the coalition-building can be more subtle. What the coalition candidates want to avoid at all cost are bitter negative attacks or hit pieces against each other, because it will hurt their chances of picking up second and third place rankings from the supporters of the candidates they have attacked.

Note that ’Äúbuilding coalitions’Äù does not mean that the coalition candidates can not disagree with or criticize each other.  It means you do it from a principled place and in a principled manner.  In fact, a candidate might win the respect of voters for showcasing HOW to disagree with an opponent.  RCV encourages this kind of healthy behavior on the part of candidates, and encourages debate of issues and ideas, and candidates finding common ground as much as possible.

Here’Äôs an example for District 5, one of the most progressive districts in San Francisco.  Imagine 100 voters and ten candidates: ProgA (Prog meaning progressive candidate), ProgB, ProgC, ProgD; ModA (for Moderate candidate), ModB, Conservative, MinorA, MinorB, and MinorC (Minor candidates with no chance of winning).  Let’Äôs say after the polls close and voters have ranked their ballots, these candidate have the following number of first-place rankings: 

With 100 voters, a majority is 51 votes, so no candidate has a majority of first-place rankings, not even close.  It’Äôs a very split field.  Not only that, but a moderate candidate is in first place, because the progressive vote has splintered among four candidates who, combined, have 56 votes, more than a majority. With the old December runoff system, candidates ModA and ProgA would have advanced to the December runoff, even though between them they only have 39 votes (39 percent of the total).

So now we begin the instant runoff.  Candidate MinorC has the least number of first-place rankings and is eliminated from the runoff.  In fact, Candidates MinorA, MinorB and MinorC together only have five votes, and because their votes do not equal the candidate vote total of the next-highest candidate (Conservative with 8 votes), they cannot mathematically win and so they can be eliminated at the same time from the runoff. Of the five voters who ranked them first, three gave their runoff/second ranking to ModA and two gave it to ProgB.  Those votes are added to the pile of the ’Äúcontinuing candidates,’Äù and at the end of this round the vote totals are the following: 

Third round: No candidate has reached the majority threshold of 51 votes. So the candidate with the least number of total votes, Conservative, is eliminated from the runoff. Each ballot for the Conservative candidate now counts for the voter’Äôs next choice, which is their runoff choice. Of the eight voters who ranked Conservative first, six gave their runoff/second ranking to ModA and two gave it to ModB.  Supporters of the conservative candidate likely would list one or both of the moderate candidates as a second choice, being the continuing candidate closest to their political views. Third round vote totals are now the following: 

Fourth round:  We still don’Äôt have a majority winner, so the candidate with the fewest votes, ProgD, is eliminated, and each of her ballots is distributed to the voter’Äôs next/runoff choice.  These ballots would likely go to other progressive candidates.  Let’Äôs imagine that ProgB picks up 6 of the 10 votes and ProgC gets the other 4.  We now have the following vote totals: 

Fifth round:  Now the candidate with the fewest votes is ModB.  Let’Äôs imagine that ten of these ballots go to ModA, but a couple votes go to ProgA, who is acceptable to two moderate voters because he’Äôs good on neighborhood issues. Note that two of the votes going to ModA were from voters who originally had ranked Conservative as their first-place ranking, but then Conservative was eliminated and their vote went to their runoff/second ranking, ModB, who also now has been eliminated. So now the vote of those two voters goes to their next runoff choice, i.e. their third ranking, who is ModA. Here are the new vote totals: 

Sixth round: Still no candidate has reached the majority threshold of 51 votes. Now ProgC gets eliminated, and not surprisingly those votes go to the other progressive candidates as voters’Äô runoff choice. Twelve voters give their runoff/next-highest ranking to ProgA, and four give it to ProgB.  Note that four of the votes going to ProgA were from voters who originally had ranked ProgD as their first-place ranking, but then ProgD was eliminated and their vote went to their runoff/second ranking, ProgC, who also has been eliminated, so now the vote of those four voters goes to their next runoff choice, i.e. their third ranking, who is ProgA. Those votes are added to the pile of the continuing candidates, and at the end of this round the vote totals are the following: