Oakland adopted ranked-choice voting in 2004 and has used it successfully in every election since 2010. Other Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Albany and San Leandro, employ it for their elections.
All told, two states and 53 cities have made the plunge. The theory is that ranked-choice voting strengthens the principle of majority rule and discourages negative campaigning because candidates need to appeal to a wider range of voters. That’s something everyone in the Bay Area should support, given the vicious tactics utilized in the Nov. 8 election.
So why hasn’t Santa Clara County made the switch? Or the entire Bay Area?
As it turns out, Santa Clara County voters already approved moving to ranked-choice voting when they backed Measure F in 1998. But there was a problem. Despite being located in the heart of the technological capital of the world, the county’s voting machines did not have the capacity to implement the system.
So it was put on the back burner — for 24 years.
The board’s Finance and Government Operations Committee on Thursday was scheduled to hear a report from the Registrar of Voters on the potential to implement ranked-choice voting for all elected county offices. It now appears that the issue will be moved to the committee’s January meeting.
The committee and the full board should support the change. But it should strongly consider going back to voters before implementing the system. How we vote is one of the most fundamental aspects of democracy. The system the board employs should have the unqualified support of voters.
Ranked-choice voting carries multiple advantages, especially in primary elections that yield low voter turnout and consistently hurt minority candidates running for office.
It also gives voters greater say in who is elected. The current system works fine when only two candidates are on the ballot. But in an election with multiple candidates, which often occurs in a primary election, a candidate can win with only 20%-30 % of the vote. That means a majority of voters did not choose the winner. Too often that favors extremist candidates and/or candidates who engage in negative campaigning.
Under ranked-choice voting, voters order their candidate preferences. In a race with one seat, if their first choice does poorly, their vote is then transferred to their next choice, and so on, until someone receives 50% of the votes. For an election with two seats, the threshold for winning is more than 33%, and for three seats it’s more than 25%.
If, for example, six candidates were running for three seats, each voter would rank the six candidates in order of preference. A candidate who hit the threshold would win a seat and his or her votes that exceed the threshold would be transferred proportionally to the other candidates.
Then, the last-place finisher would drop off and that person’s votes would be transferred to those voters’ second choice. This reallocation would continue until there are three candidates each with more than 25% of the vote.
Cities that use ranked-choice voting report that voters do not find it too complicated. In fact, it encourages voters to become better informed about a wider range of candidates. Ensuring that elected officials have the broadest range of support would benefit Santa Clara County and all Bay Area voters.
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