Two progs "Standing Together" against another prog

From a breathless Tim Redmond yesterday:

For the first time in history, two major San Francisco mayoral candidates are running a serious, all-out ranked-choice voting strategy—and the outcome of the election will test whether that system works.

In a press conference this morning, and a newly released ad[above], the two candidates appeared together to call for a fundamental change at City Hall. “This is an historic moment,” Kim said. “We need to stand together if we believe in change.” The two candidates also denounced the attacks coming from superPACs supporting London Breed...

As I've pointed out over the years, the Ranked Choice Voting system actually degrades the city's democracy by encouraging the above political behavior. Both candidates are San Francisco "progressives," that is, liberal Democrats who have few ideological differences. 

But if, without RCV, the two of them had ended up in a run-off after a primary, some interesting differences in their approach to, say, homelessness could be explored. (Leno is making ridiculous promises, while Kim proposes more realistic, incremental changes to the present system.)

But the RCV system eliminates run-offs, and by doing so saves some money, the only good thing about it. It's a bogus good-government policy that was the brainchild of city progressives like...Kim and Leno.

More Redmond:

Leno noted that so much superPAC money has come in for Breed that the spending caps have been lifted for all the candidates. “We didn’t put in place campaign finance reform to spend more money,” he said. The Big Tech and Big Real Estate folks who are funding the pro-Breed campaigns “are investors, making investments for favorable treatment at City Hall,” he said.

But the reform Leno is referring to has to allow such spending because our right-wing Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech.

Redmond reminds the Chronicle that this is the way the system is supposed to work:

The Chron’s argument is beyond bogus: This is the way RCV is supposed to work. It used to be called “instant runoff voting,” which is a good description: Without RCV, if Breed came in first and either Leno or Kim came in second, there would be a runoff among the top two. And if Leno was in the runoff, Kim would endorse him; if Kim was in the runoff, Leno would endorse her. It’s just that under this system, you have to do that in advance of the election. The Chron...may not like RCV. But what Kim and Leno are doing isn’t “gaming the system”; they are playing by the rules, and doing what the system was designed to do...

Redmond won't criticize RCV, since, like all good city progressives at the time, when he was the political editor at the Bay Guardian, he supported the stupid system when it was pushed by a who's-who list of city progressives. It's a system designed to limit serious political debate.

See George Wooding's excellent deconstruction of RCV: Ranked Choice Voting: Turning Losers into Winners.

By the way, the RCV system is unpopular. When city voters are polled about it, they always reject it overwhelmingly.

Besides, except for Conway's money, what important policy differences on city issues do Leno and Kim have with London Breed? 

When she first ran for District 5 Supervisor, Breed was the ideal RCV candidate in San Francisco---black, a woman, photogenic, no strong beliefs about policy---which is what enabled her to become District 5 Supervisor in the first place!

What we really need is to get rid of RCV and, while we're at it, give city voters a "none of the above" option on the ballot.