RCV and the Examiner

London Breed: The YIMBY candidate

Joe Rodriguez in the S.F. Examiner:

Holy hell, the mayor’s race is a squeaker, with daily vote counts sending San Franciscans into a tizzy. Already, however, the race is spurring some supporters of candidate London Breed, who are mostly moderate democrats, to question the wisdom of our ranked-choice voting system. They want it gone. I first heard the rumblings over RCV (as the cool-kids call it) at Breed’s election party, Tuesday night.

"Cool kids"? Does Rodriguez think he's still writing for his high school paper? RCV is in fact the acronym widely used for Ranked Choice Voting. Google RCV and you get more than six million results. Does Rodriguez want to be "cool" by some juvenile definition? Apparently, judging from his picture below:

 

More from Rodriguez:

In the old system, if a mayoral candidate failed to garner a majority of votes (50 percent), a run-off election would be held between the top two vote getters.

"Garner"? More schoolboy prose. What's wrong with plain old "get"?

But RCV is referred to as “instant runoff” because instead of holding another election, the Department of Elections simply counts second and third choice votes until one candidate hits a majority.

Yes, but that's only a majority of the remaining votes after the RCV system plays out, which does not necessarily mean a majority vote overall:

Despite the hate, RCV has its benefits. Did you notice the slimmer volume of negative campaigning this season? That’s inherent in an RCV system, said Pedro Hernandez, deputy director of the organization Fair Vote, because negative campaigning can turn off voters who would otherwise rank a candidate second or third. “There’s more collaboration and listening to voters,” Hernandez said.

Criticizing RCV is a hate crime? Like his colleagues at Fair Vote, Hernandez is a dim bulb who apparently doesn't understand the importance of a debate about public policy between/among candidates during a political campaign that helps voters distinguish one from another.

The sheer volume of political mail was as heavy as usual, though Kim didn't criticize Leno and vice versa. Hernandez is implying that criticizing your opponent's policies/politics is somehow too "negative," as if we're back in high school and electing a homecoming queen. 

More from Rodriguez:

And under the old system, Jane Kim would have potentially split the vote with Leno since they are both progressives. This may have led some to try to dissuade Kim from running at all, said Jon Golinger, one of her campaign strategists. “The pressure on her not to be a ‘spoiler’ would have been gargantuan,” Golinger said. Instead, Kim’s votes ended up boosting Leno.

Kim and Leno did split the "progressive" vote here under RCV. Why is Kim more of a "spoiler" that Leno? Their first round vote totals are pretty close. If city progs had agreed to unite behind one candidate, they would have defeated Breed easily.

What we really needed here is a run-off between London Breed and Mark Leno that, at the very least, would have provided voters with a policy debate between the "progressive" Leno and the "moderate" Breed, who was supported by the city's Yimbys and, not surprisingly, by real estate and development interests.

Rodriguez on Masonic Avenue.